Courtesy of Shannon Howard
To some St. Louisans’ chagrin, the Post-Dispatch ran an article last summer titled “North County, Suburbia in Crisis,” suggesting many neighborhoods there were suffering from weak housing prices. Yet as the writer noted, “North County is a big place, and it can’t be painted with one brush.”
“When we’re trying to paint a picture of North County, you have to use a smaller brush,” says Prudential Select Properties broker Rory Schwartz, who’s lived there nearly his entire life. Though he admits North County was “the hardest-hit area in the past six years,” largely due to predatory lending and the high rate of foreclosures, he sees signs of encouragement. Whereas a third of his business was foreclosures and short sales four years ago, those sales make up only about 10 percent of his business today. And overall, average prices in North County were up 12 percent from 2012 to 2013.
Asked to pinpoint neighborhoods that are in high demand, Schwartz mentions Maryland Heights, Bridgeton, Hazelwood, and Florissant. “No matter what it is, if it’s nice, it’s selling,” he says, noting that 115 North County homes sold for $200,000-plus in 2013, approximately 50 percent more homes in that range than a year earlier.
Prudential Select Properties realtor Shannon Howard—who at one time ran NOCO, The Online Magazine of North St. Louis County—says there’s also some rehab activity in Ferguson, where investors and young couples are fixing up historic properties. Homes along the Missouri River bluffs are a perpetual draw, she adds. “I have a client from Chesterfield who never in a million years imagined she’d be looking in North County,” Howard says. “But when she saw what she could get for her money and how beautiful Old Jamestown is, she couldn’t believe it.”
