If you’re looking for Fort Polk Housing, our housing market is strong.  What you’re about to read is a good hard look at the Fort Polk Housing market utilitzing thousands of points of data over the past 10 years. Use this report to help yourself make a decision of whether or not to invest in our housing market.

Fort Polk – Joint Readiness Training Center – JRTC

Remember the housing bubble burst that struck the U.S. back around 2008? Few areas of the country were unaffected by the housing crash. In fact I can only think of a few places that weren’t heavily affected – Houston, Dallas, and you may have guessed it… Fort Polk ! If you’re moving to the Fort Polk housing area you’ll likely live in the towns of DeRidder, Leesville, Rosepine, or on post at Fort Polk. This article applies to home sales in the Fort Polk area, specifically DeRidder housing values, Leesville housing values and Rosepine housing values. For the purposes of the article I’ll refer to all of the above as the “Fort Polk area”.

Below is an x-y scatter plot consisting of 3,838 homes that sold in the Fort Polk area from 2006 to 2017. All sample data pulled are homes that sold in the $70-$125 price-per-square-foot range. Each green dot represents a home sale. If you look at the scatter you’ll see that the densest concentration of green dots tends to follow along the blue line called “concentration band”.  This means that since 2016, the bulk of homes sold in the Fort Polk area have increased from approximately $85/sf to $105/sf. The red line is the calculated trend line accounting for all homes sold in the $70-$125 price-per-square-foot range. As you can see the selling price of homes in the Fort Polk area has increased from $87/sf to $98/sf since 2006.  Fort Polk area homes have increased in value over the past 10 years!

X-Y scatter plot of 3,383 Fort Polk area homes selling price per square foot from 2006-2017

At face value maybe this doesn’t seem like a big accomplishment that Fort Polk housing has increased in value over the past ten years, until you compare this to the rest of the country. Take a look at this price index* chart put together from economist.com. As of 2017 the cities of Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Riverside, San Diego, St. Louis, Tampa, and Washington DC all have still not recovered from the housing crash.  Houses in these places are selling less often and for less money they were in 2006.

* price index takes into account both what houses are selling for and how many houses are selling.  (check this out if you want to see how price index is calculated)

Major U.S. Cities with negative Price Indexes over the past 20 years

Now what happens if we overlay Fort Polk housing price index onto the chart above? I have done that, and you can see it on the chart below.  You might notice that the blue line for Fort Polk oscillates much more than the other lines.  This is because of PCS orders at Fort Polk.  Fort Polk is the largest employer in the state of Louisiana. The upswings and downswings in price index are from personnel moving in and moving out.  The years of upswings indicate that an increased amount of homes were sold.  Years with downswings indicate less homes sold than the year before.  Nevertheless, you can see that the house price index for Fort Polk housing has actually increased over the past 10 years while for the majority of the U.S. house price indexes have fallen.

House Price Index – Fort Polk, Louisiana vs major U.S. Cities

Let’s look at the same houses above in real terms, meaning, what did they actually sell for when they did sell?  Below is the same graph above except it’s been switched to only take into account the prices of homes sold, not how many homes sold. Not surprisingly you’ll see that for the major U.S. cities I’ve already mentioned, not only are less of them being sold, but they are selling for less than they did back in 2006.  Now take a look at the blue line that represents Fort Polk.  To me this is the sweetest thing.  You know why?  Homes in the Fort Polk area have increased since 2006 from an average selling price of $120,000 to an average selling price of $155,000.  What this means is people who move to this area have access to the American Dream – affordable houses that are increasing steadily (not wildly like a housing bubble) in value.  The only places that I can think of with regard to housing as good as Fort Polk are Houston, TX and Dallas, TX.

I hope this gives you some insight into the Fort Polk housing market. I hope this gives you the actionable intelligence you need to make a decision to invest in the Fort Polk housing market. While no real estate agent can gaurantee your home will increse in value, what I can tell you is this:  The Fort Polk Housing Market is selling more houses, for more money, than 10 years ago.  If you are moving into the area or out of the area please contact our office for help in buying or selling your home at (337) 419-2080.

Below are homes for sale in the Fort Polk housing area:

• homes for sale in DeRidder, Louisiana
• homes for sale in Leesville, Louisiana
• homes for sale in Rosepine, Louisiana

Give one of our agents a call!

To buy or sell a home call DeRidder LA Real Estate, LLC