Tagged: real estate

The city of New Orleans is seeking developers to revive the property where an empty office tower sits on the banks of the Mississippi River. And officials are being careful not to limit the ways in which the valuable real estate can be used.

The 33-story World Trade Center building could be torn down or renovated.

The New Orleans Redevelopment Authority will auction 125 properties in several neighborhoods, including Lakeview, eastern New Orleans, Holy Cross, Gentilly, the 7th Ward, St. Roch and Uptown.

The auction will occur at 1 p.m. Oct. 27 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. Registration is at 11 a.m.

A Metairie man has been sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for defrauding hundreds of investors in a Texas real-estate deal out of millions of dollars.

U.S. District Judge Lance Africk also on Thursday ordered Michael B. Smuck to pay more than $789,000 in restitution that he still owes investors. Prosecutors say Smuck already has paid nearly $3 million to one group of investors he bilked.

Smuck, who pleaded guilty in May 2010 to one count of mail fraud, solicited investments in acquiring a Houston apartment complex called Briar Meadows.

The cost of land along Veterans Memorial Boulevard — east Jefferson Parish's main commercial corridor —has reached historic highs indicating a strong retail market, according to SRSA Commercial Real Estate of Metairie.

SRSA partner Donald Schwarcz tells New Orleans CityBusiness his figures show the strip's most valuable property costs as much as $60 per square foot, six times as much as land in eastern New Orleans, four times the cost along Lapalco Boulevard in west Jefferson and nearly twice as much as the most expensive commercial areas of St. Tammany Parish.