Brandon Ray sees opportunity in Little Rock’s tornado-ravaged Walnut Valley neighborhood.
The 25-year-old homebuilder owns three houses on Cobble Hill Road, one of the streets hardest hit in the March 2023 storm that tore across west Little Rock. Ray lives in one house he helped renovate and is building two others on the street. He’s built and sold two additional houses in the neighborhood on nearby Pleasant Cove.
Nearly three years after the storm, the neighborhood still has some empty lots scattered across a landscape lacking much of the foliage that existed before the storm.
The area has become a central part of a federal case study examining catastrophic storms’ impacts on property values. The lesson is clear: Property owners who can weather a temporary dip in prices may be rewarded with an upswing that can lift values above even pre-storm levels.
There are now newly built houses in the neighborhood sitting near empty lots or between older homes that survived. And those newly built homes have been selling for more than houses in the area sold for before the tornado. Last year, four new houses in the Walnut Valley area sold for more than $300,000, a threshold that wasn’t reached in 2022, the year before the storm.
The price per square foot has increased too. In 2022, three houses on Cobble Hill sold at an average price per SF of $101. Last year, three newly constructed houses on Cobble Hill sold at an average price per SF of $189.
Housing prices have escalated nationally and statewide in recent years, and Ray said the Walnut Valley market is “definitely higher than it was pre-tornado.”
“The housing prices have gone up but it’s not due to just the market,” he said. “Everything’s just gotten expensive and they are nice brand-new houses.”
Leaders of the Walnut Valley Homes Association, which counts the owners of about 450 homes among its members, are seeing the same thing. They say the area, which had about 100 houses that were lost or severely damaged in the storm, is recovering as more people move back into the neighborhood.
Ray has noticed a mix of starter homes and people building their “forever homes” in the neighborhood.
“Slowly but surely, a lot more people are coming in and building.”
Recovery Cycle
Researchers with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis studied the tornado’s impact on Little Rock housing and found that it took a toll on houses that weren’t even damaged. The study found that housing values for undamaged homes decreased based on a property’s proximity to a damaged property.
The value of undamaged houses within 250 meters of a damaged property fell by 36%. The impact was smaller for homes further from damaged properties. The study also found that the effect lasted less than a year and that prices bounced back.
During 2022 and the first three months of 2023 before the storm, the median sales price in the Breckenridge/Walnut Valley area was $210,000. After the storm, the median price fell to $192,000 but rebounded to $250,750 in 2024 and to $267,500 this year.
Ray said he noticed that houses on Jamestown Court, a street with less damage, were passed over by prospective buyers after the storm.
“As a buyer, you don’t want to go, ‘Oh, I want to buy a house right where all the damage is,’ but I genuinely think it does present the opportunity now,” he said.
Jean Hurst, a Realtor with Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Arkansas Realty, has sold several houses in the area since the storm. Hurst said she’s noticed prices have increased and said that one Walnut Valley house sold for $384,900 last year. “Which is quite a bit higher than it ever was before, but they are newer,” she said. “It’s almost like a new little neighborhood.”
Missing Trees
The front porch of one of Ray’s houses under construction offers a clear view across the neighborhood. It’s a view that wouldn’t have been possible before the storm wiped out a large share of the neighborhood’s trees. That’s had an impact on some buyers, according to Weston Holloway, a realtor with Michele Phillips & Co. Realtors.
“Some people like the idea of getting into a brand-new home in the heart of Little Rock, but the lack of trees and privacy and the cozy feel you get with mature trees, that’s definitely been a knock in that area,” he said.
Jenny Bishop, president of the Walnut Valley Homes Association, said some trees have been donated, but most are saplings that will take a long time to grow. Many residents have planted trees in their yards, but she said it’s not realistic to think the area will return to its “very wooded” condition any time soon.
Still, Bishop said she and others like the neighborhood’s location and expect the mix of new construction and older homes to be a lure.
“We have homes that are 50 years old right next to homes that were built in the last two years,” she said. “We are going to have a good mix of homes that are on the higher end of the market and homes that are on the lower end of the market because of their age. I think it’s a great opportunity for just about anyone to be able to purchase a home there.”
Holloway thinks the neighborhood, which is near the Breckenridge Village shopping center, will recover with time.
“I think a lot of the investments into the shopping center and a lot of the retail and restaurants that are coming in will help revitalize that area,” he said. “It’s a matter of getting some trees and some more plants and a little bit more vegetation around the properties. Once that’s done, I think it will be full steam ahead for that area and that just takes some time.”
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