What’s tickling me right now is these listings.

As you see, this is for an apartment just a couple of blocks from where I live, which is to say it’s in a flooded, scabby, partially inhabited neighborhood. For your reference this is one block off Canal from Mandina’s restaurant. In early November they were asking $1,500/month for this two bedroom half-a-double camelback shotgun. Inexplicably, they have been unable to find a tenant, so they have generously lowered the rent by $15/month since then, have been advertising it nearly every week, and are still somehow unable to find a tenant.

This apartment has actually been on the market for much longer, but craigslist automatically removes old listings after a while. Anyway, this place just illustrates the total lunacy in our rental market right now. People are fixing up flooded property, taking their insurance money and spending it on luxuries like granite countertops, jacuzzi tubs, and stainless steel appliances with the expectation that they will attract rich tenants who will pay absurd rents to live there. Are you insane?!?!

This landlord even goes so far as to say “Household income must be 3x monthly rent.” WHAT??????? 3 x $1485 = $4,455, or $53,460 per year. If I made $53,460 I wouldn’t be looking for a rental apartment in a flooded neighborhood that’s crawling with immigrants and hookers you moron, I’d be buying a condo downtown. How much money have you already lost by keeping this apartment vacant for six months?

I don’t mean to pick on this person in particular (this place is actually a bargain compared to lots of stuff out there), but I just want renovators and prospective landlords to take a minute and think about what you’re doing. What people are looking for right now is affordable housing. Nobody gives a shit about granite countertops and bamboo floors. Rich people are not moving to New Orleans right now. When they do, go ahead and install that heated marble floor and charge Manhattan prices for rent, but I wouldn’t hold your breath if I were you. For now, throw down some vinyl flooring and rent the place out to some laborers. Face it, your property isn’t on Henry Clay Ave, and all the velvet curtains in the world can’t block out the stink of shit that’s coming from the rotting, ungutted house next door.

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