Many hurricane Ida survivors continue to relocate, looking for a place to call their home. Several are having trouble finding a rental property. Real Estate broker and owner ofKeaty Real Estate, Jim Keaty, says families are checking into rental homes the moment others are checking out.
"For instance, if you look on VRBO, there is more than 100 rentals in our area usually, there are zero today" Jim Keaty said.
Keaty says the day after the storm, requests for rental properties started flying in.
"We're trying to place as many people as possible, just put a roof over their head. I have heard of people driving to Hot Springs, the closet place to get a short term rental" Keaty said.
According to the real estate broker, long term rental availability increased since the national eviction moratorium ended last week, but it's not a 12 month lease families are looking for.
"There's a lot of unknowns right now. So it's a lot of, we don't know what we're going to do, can we stay here for a week then evaluate? Were seeing a lot of that" Keaty said.
Keaty says, so far, the storm has not brought an influx of buyers.
"New Orleans is going to have electricity, they're going to go back, start recovering, build the roofs back, and restoring the community. Whereas Katrina was a different story, within two weeks they were like ok, were not going back. Within a 24 hour time period, we had sold every property we had listed" He said.
Keaty says you should contact a Realtor, even if you are not trying to buy a home, because they will often have information about rental properties.
