These Are The 10 Best Places To Buy A House In Louisiana For 2019

There’s a the age old question everyone thinks about when they decide to move to a city in Louisiana:

Should I buy a place or rent?

Well, we aren’t here today to solve that problem for you exactly. We are just assuming you’ll do the right thing and a buy a place 😉

And while we are happy to tell you the best place to live in Louisiana, this analysis is going to tackle the question of the best place to buy a house as an investor. That is we are going to try and determine the up and coming cities in the Pelican State.

To do that we are going to look at places in Louisiana that are growing faster than average, but where home prices are below average. In every day terms, the “deals”.

The best deal in Louisiana at the moment? That would be Rayne according to our analysis.

Here’s a look at the top ten places to buy a home in Louisiana for 2019:

1. Rayne (Photos | Homes For Sale)
2. St. Gabriel (Photos | Homes For Sale)
3. Donaldsonville (Photos | Homes For Sale)
4. Abbeville (Photos | Homes For Sale)
5. Eunice (Photos | Homes For Sale)
6. Jeanerette (Photos | Homes For Sale)
7. St. Martinville (Photos | Homes For Sale)
8. Grambling (Photos | Homes For Sale)
9. Crowley (Photos | Homes For Sale)
10. Bastrop (Photos | Homes For Sale)

The methodology that wen’t into this can be a bit complicated, so we’ll break it down for you in as much detail as we can below.

If you’re not worried about finding a deal on good places to live, check out the most expensive places to live in Louisiana and, for those of you on a budget, the cheapest places to live in Louisiana.

For more Louisiana reading, check out:

• These Are The 10 Best Counties To Live In Louisiana
• 10 Best Places To Raise A Family In Louisiana
• These Are The 10 Best Places To Retire In Louisiana

How do you determine the best places to buy a home in Louisiana for 2019?

We were in real estate for almost five years and have been working on this site for another three. Suffice is to say, we’ve put a lot of thought into what goes into finding a good place to buy a home.

So all that thinking has come to this moment where we get to spell out how we’d approach finding an up-and-coming place to live in Louisiana. Put differently, the analysis will try to find places in Louisiana with undervalued homes relative to pent up demand.

To do that we looked at the most recent American Community Survey Census data for 2013-2017 and compared it to the previous vintage (2012-2016). Specifically, we used the following criteria:

• Y-o-Y Change In Population (People want to live here)
• Y-o-Y Change In Median Home Prices (People are willing to pay for it)
• Home Prices Relative To The State Average (It’s still kinda cheap)

We want places that are growing, have seen home prices increase in recent years, and are still “cheap” for Louisiana with the following caveats:

• Home prices had to be within 20% of the state average (Much lower than that and you get to some of the more dangerous places)
• Home prices increased in the last year, and
• Above 5,000 people (Bigger cities have more data points)

So of the 473 cities and towns in Louisiana, only 63 places made it through our initial filters to even be considered.

We then ranked each place from 1 to 63 for the criteria mentioned above with 1 being the best for that criteria. We averaged the rankings to create a “best place to buy” index with the place having the lowest index being the best.

Turns out that Rayne is the best potential gem in the not-so-rough in the Pelican State.

Read on for more on these places.

This area is in a part of Acadiana, which was founded by the Acadians, after their expulsion from Nova Scotia in the mid-18th century.

Various cultures of indigenous peoples lived here along the Mississippi River for thousands of years prior to European colonization. The Houma and Chitimacha peoples lived in the area. During the early years of colonization, they suffered high rates of fatalities due to infectious diseases and resulting social disruption. Descendants of both tribes were federally recognized as organized groups in the 20th century and they each have reservations in Louisiana.

Formerly called La Chapelle, the land that would become Abbeville was purchased by founding father Pre Antoine Dsir Mgret, a Capuchin missionary on July 25, 1843 for $900. There are two theories how the town was named. The theory that is generally accepted is Mgret named the town after his home in France. The second theory which also cannot be discounted states that it is a combination of “Abbe” for Abb Mgret and “ville” the French word for town – thus Abb’s town. Some support for the second theory is found because the town in France is pronounced “Abbville” by its denizens. However, in 1995, Fr. Jean Desobry discovered the diocesan archives of Amiens the proof of Mgret’s birthplace. In the archive, the dossier of Fr. Antoine Jacques Dsir Mgret was found, and that he was born on May 23, 1797, at Abbeville and became founder of Abbeville in Louisiana. Dr Mary-Theresa MacCarthy wrote in her article Un Autre Abbeville in the 1996 edition of Bulletin de la Socit des Antiquaires de Picardie,

One-time lawman and pioneer land developer C.C. Duson is credited with founding Eunice, which was named for his second wife, Eunice Pharr Duson. He and his brother, W.W. Duson, had already founded Crowley, Louisiana in 1887, and now he looked to the north of the parish for future development. Duson bought 160 acres of land from Willie Humble of Prairie Faquetaque and mapped out a town site, laid out in lots 50-by-140 feet, 12 lots to the block. Next, he persuaded the Southern Pacific Railroad to extend a branch line from Crowley to his new town. Then he began what he and his brother had learned how to do as well as anyone: promote land sales. It was chartered as a village on September 12, 1894, and incorporated as a town on June 4, 1895.

In the 18th century, the land on which Jeanerette now lies was originally procured from the Spanish government by Pierre Zerangue. Zerangue received an -order of survey and settlement- from Spain for 1,052 acres. Under Spanish law, if a person occupied a piece of property for two years, they could apply for title to the land under an -order of survey settlement.- Nicholas Provost secured the property from the present-day experimental farm to the St. Mary Parish line. He engaged in sugar cultivation, based on slave labor, until his death in 1816.

In the 16th century, the area between the Atchafalaya River, in Louisiana, the Gulf of Mexico and Trinity River, in Texas, was occupied by numerous Indians tribes or subdivisions of the Attakapan people. The Indian Territory was not closed to outsiders, and several traders roamed through it on business. Europeans did not begin to settle there until French explorers claimed and “founded” Louisiana in 1699. They referred to the territory between the Atchafalaya River and Bayou Nezpique, where the Eastern Atakapa lived, as the Attakapas Territory, adopting the name from the Choctaw language term for this people. The French colonial government gave land away to soldiers and settlers.

Crowley was founded in 1886 by C.C. Duson and W.W. Duson. Incorporated in 1887, W.W. Duson, General Manager of Southwest Louisiana Land Company, plotted and developed Crowley. W.W. Duson’s daughter, Maime Duson, married Percy Lee Lawrence, who founded the First National Bank of Crowley. The 7-story building was once the tallest building between Houston and New Orleans. They lived with their three children, P.L. Jr., Pattee, and Jack at 219 East 2nd Street. The house is now on the historic register.

Bastrop was founded by Phil Collins, a Dutch businessman accused as an embezzler. He had fled to the then Spanish colony of Louisiana to escape prosecution, and became involved in various land deals. In New Spain, he falsely claimed to be a nobleman. He received a large grant of land, provided that he could settle 450 families on it over the next several years. However, he was unable to do this, and so lost the grant. Afterwards, he moved to Texas, where he claimed to oppose the sale of Louisiana to the United States and became a minor government official. He proved instrumental in Moses Austin’s plan to bring American colonists to what was then northern Mexico.

Next 10 Cities

There You Have It – The Best Places To Purchase A House In Louisiana for 2019

There’s our analysis of the best places to buy a house in Louisiana. And, to be clear, we aren’t necessarily saying these places are the best places to live, just that it looks like they might be in a couple of years based on the data.

In fact, every place in the following table meets our criteria, so even though it may not look super long, remember we started off with all 473 places in the state.

So if we’d could rent or buy in these cities, we’d definitely buy.

For more Louisiana reading, check out:

• These Are The 10 Richest Cities In Louisiana
• 10 Safest Places In Louisiana

Detailed List Of The Best Places To Buy A Home In Louisiana