By Andrew Rodriguez and Tony Bertucci, Bertucci Investment Group
If you own a house in New Orleans East and you are ready to be done with it, the East version of the “sell my house fast” conversation is its own thing. Twenty years after Katrina, the East is still where retail resale gets thin, insurance premiums climb faster than anywhere else in Orleans Parish, and a real cash offer usually nets more than a listing once you count the holding costs, concessions, and repair credits the retail buyer demands at inspection. We are a family-run Louisiana cash home buyer based at 128 Colby St in Metairie, and we buy houses in 70126, 70127, 70128, and 70129 every month. This is the honest local guide for East Bank sellers east of the Industrial Canal.
The New Orleans East Seller Situation
Most sellers who call us from the East fall into one of a few groups. You inherited a slab-on-grade brick ranch in Village de l’Est or Read Boulevard East from a parent who bought in the 1970s, you live out of state, and the succession is dragging. You still own the house you bought before Katrina, rebuilt it once, and the roof or the AC is asking for a second round you do not want to fund. You have a tenant-occupied rental off Chef Menteur that has stopped penciling since insurance renewed. Or the storm from two seasons back left damage you never got fully paid on, and every June the anxiety comes back.
The common thread: the East is where holding a house costs more than most people think, and where the retail buyer pool has been shrinking for years. Listings in 70127 and 70128 sit longer than the parish average, and when an offer does come in, it usually carries a financing contingency, an inspection contingency, and a repair-credit ask that eats the number you thought you were getting.
Why New Orleans East is a Cash-Buyer Market Now
Three local factors changed the math out here, and they are not going back.
Insurance. Louisiana’s private homeowner market has been unwinding since 2020. Carriers pulled out, Louisiana Citizens absorbed the overflow, and East Bank policies are among the highest premiums in the state. A retail buyer who wants to finance the purchase has to secure a policy the mortgage company will accept, and that quote is usually the deal breaker.
Flood zones and elevation. Large sections of the East sit in AE flood zones, some in VE near the lakefront. Even a slab home that never flooded post-Katrina still triggers flood insurance at closing for any financed buyer. A cash sale does not need a lender’s flood determination or an elevation certificate.
Appraisal risk. The comp set in the East is thin. A financed offer can fall out on a low appraisal, and there is no way to force a new value when there are only three closed comps in a half-mile radius. Cash closes on the number you agreed on, not the number a third-party appraiser writes six weeks later.
Why Bertucci Investment Group
We are a family-run cash home buyer, not a national iBuyer, and not a lead-generation site that sells your info to a rotating cast of investors. Bertucci Investment Group has closed hundreds of transactions across South Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, holds a 5.0-star rating on 128 verified Google reviews, and is A+ accredited with the Better Business Bureau. Every offer we make is honored. Every closing is on the seller’s timeline. Every call is answered by someone who can make the decision, not a call-center rep with a script.
Long-term relationships with title companies, attorneys, and municipal offices across Orleans Parish are what let us close fast in the East specifically. We know which title companies can pull an Orleans Parish civil-district-court succession filing without a two-week hold, which adjusters are current on East Bank AE and VE flood-zone properties, and which contractors we already have on retainer for whatever the house needs after we close. That network is why sellers here refer their neighbors.
Neighborhoods We Buy In
We buy houses in every part of the East, and we underwrite them by the block, not by a national algorithm.
- Village de l’Est (70129), including the Versailles community.
- Read Boulevard East and West (70127), from Bullard back to Downman.
- Little Woods and West Lake Forest (70128, 70127).
- Pines Village, Plum Orchard, and the Chef Menteur Highway corridor (70126).
- Michoud and the eastern edge of Orleans Parish (70129).
- Historic Gentilly Woods and Pontchartrain Park just west of the Industrial Canal, where the East Bank story runs into Gentilly proper.
The Process
The BIG process for a New Orleans East house is the same one we run in Metairie, Kenner, and Gretna. It is deliberately boring, and that is the point.
- You call or text (504) 920-4747, or fill out the form on the site. We ask a few questions about the property. Address, condition, occupancy, why you are selling. Ten minutes.
- We come out and walk the house. Usually within 48 hours. We are not staging a home inspection. We are pricing what we actually see. You do not clean, you do not repair, you do not move anything.
- We send a written cash offer within 24 hours of the walk. No obligation. If it does not work for you, no follow-up pressure.
- You pick the closing date. Most East Bank closings run 7 to 14 days from acceptance because we use local title attorneys who know how to pull an Orleans Parish civil-district-court file on a normal turnaround. If you need longer to move out or clean out, we schedule around you.
- You close and get paid. Certified funds at the table, or wire the same day. No repairs, no commissions, no closing costs on the seller side.
Common Seller Objections
“You are going to lowball me.” Our offer is the number you net. No listing commission (typically 5 to 6 percent), no seller-paid closing costs (typically another 2 to 3 percent in Louisiana), no repair credits, no concessions, no holding costs while a retail buyer’s financing works itself out. On an East Bank house that would take four months to sell retail, that arithmetic usually closes most of the “lowball” gap by itself.
“I want to fix it up first and get retail.” Sometimes that is the right answer, and we will tell you so. If the house needs $20,000 of work and the retail comps support a $60,000 higher sale price after that work, list it. If the house needs $80,000 to reach a comp set that has moved sideways for three years, the math points the other way. We are honest about which one you are looking at.
“The house has code violations and open permits.” That is normal for us. We buy houses with active City of New Orleans code enforcement notices, blight designations, expired permits, and unresolved post-storm damage. See our post on selling a fire-damaged Louisiana house for how we handle houses the retail market treats as unfinanceable.
“I inherited it and the succession is not finished.” Also normal. We close through Louisiana succession all the time. See selling an inherited New Orleans house without probate delays. We do not need the judgment of possession before the walk, and we do not need every heir on the same page before the offer.
“I am behind on the mortgage.” We buy pre-foreclosure regularly. If you are getting sheriff-sale notices, the calendar matters. Read our Jefferson Parish foreclosure timeline for how the process runs; the Orleans Parish version is broadly similar and we work both.
New Orleans East Sell-My-House-Fast FAQ
How fast can you actually close on a New Orleans East house?
7 to 14 days from a signed offer is the realistic range. We have closed in 5 days when an Orleans Parish succession was already complete and title came back clean, and we have gone longer when a seller needed 45 days to relocate. The point is you pick the date. We do not push a “24 hour” closing that no Louisiana title company can actually deliver.
Do you buy houses in 70127, 70128, and 70129?
Yes. Those are the three ZIP codes that make up most of what people mean by New Orleans East, along with 70126 west of Downman Road. We buy in every one of them, in any condition, and we do not have neighborhood exclusions inside the East the way some national buyers do.
Will you buy a house that flooded in Katrina or in Ida?
Yes. Prior flood history does not disqualify a property for a cash offer. It matters for the price we can pay because it affects the insurance and resale math, but it does not stop the deal. We buy houses that have flooded more than once, houses that were gutted and never rebuilt, and houses that were partially rebuilt and abandoned.
Can I sell a New Orleans East house I inherited if the succession is not finished?
Yes. We work with Louisiana succession attorneys who can move an Orleans Parish civil-district-court filing forward while we hold the contract. The offer, walk, and paperwork can all start now. Closing waits on the judgment of possession, which is usually the shortest part of the whole process once it is filed correctly. For a full walkthrough, read our inherited New Orleans house guide.
What about a house with a tenant still in it?
We buy tenant-occupied rentals in the East regularly. You do not need to evict, and you do not need to time the sale to a lease expiration. We take the property with the tenant in place, honor the existing lease, and handle the transition. Owners of tired East Bank rentals off Chef Menteur, Read, and Bullard call us for exactly this.
Do I pay any fees or closing costs?
No. Our cash offer is the amount you net at the table. No commissions, no seller-paid closing costs, no repair credits, no inspection give-backs. If we say $180,000, you leave the closing table with $180,000 minus only any liens or mortgage payoffs against the property itself.
What if my New Orleans East house has open code violations or a lien?
We buy them. Louisiana permits selling a house with a City of New Orleans code violation, a mortgage lien, a tax lien, or a judgment. The lien attaches to the sale proceeds and gets paid at closing out of what you would have netted; the title work identifies exactly what and how much. We have not walked away from a deal over code enforcement.
Ready When You Are
If you own a house in New Orleans East and you want a straight answer on what a cash sale looks like, call or text (504) 920-4747. You can also visit us at 128 Colby St, Metairie, LA 70001, or start online at our contact page. We answer every call, we walk every house, and every offer we make is honored. Family-run, based in the metro, closing East Bank homes on the seller’s timeline. That is the whole pitch.
For more context on how we buy houses across the New Orleans metro, see our process page, the 128 verified Google reviews, and the team behind BIG.
{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “FAQPage”,
“mainEntity”: [
{
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “How fast can you actually close on a New Orleans East house?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “7 to 14 days from a signed offer is the realistic range. We have closed in 5 days when an Orleans Parish succession was already complete and title came back clean, and we have gone longer when a seller needed 45 days to relocate. The point is you pick the date. We do not push a 24 hour closing that no Louisiana title company can actually deliver.”
}
},
{
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “Do you buy houses in 70127, 70128, and 70129?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “Yes. Those are the three ZIP codes that make up most of what people mean by New Orleans East, along with 70126 west of Downman Road. We buy in every one of them, in any condition, and we do not have neighborhood exclusions inside the East the way some national buyers do.”
}
},
{
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “Will you buy a house that flooded in Katrina or in Ida?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “Yes. Prior flood history does not disqualify a property for a cash offer. It matters for the price we can pay because it affects the insurance and resale math, but it does not stop the deal. We buy houses that have flooded more than once, houses that were gutted and never rebuilt, and houses that were partially rebuilt and abandoned.”
}
},
{
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “Can I sell a New Orleans East house I inherited if the succession is not finished?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “Yes. We work with Louisiana succession attorneys who can move an Orleans Parish civil-district-court filing forward while we hold the contract. The offer, walk, and paperwork can all start now. Closing waits on the judgment of possession, which is usually the shortest part of the whole process once it is filed correctly.”
}
},
{
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “What about a house with a tenant still in it?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “We buy tenant-occupied rentals in the East regularly. You do not need to evict, and you do not need to time the sale to a lease expiration. We take the property with the tenant in place, honor the existing lease, and handle the transition.”
}
},
{
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “Do I pay any fees or closing costs?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “No. Our cash offer is the amount you net at the table. No commissions, no seller-paid closing costs, no repair credits, no inspection give-backs. If we say $180,000, you leave the closing table with $180,000 minus only any liens or mortgage payoffs against the property itself.”
}
},
{
“@type”: “Question”,
“name”: “What if my New Orleans East house has open code violations or a lien?”,
“acceptedAnswer”: {
“@type”: “Answer”,
“text”: “We buy them. Louisiana permits selling a house with a City of New Orleans code violation, a mortgage lien, a tax lien, or a judgment. The lien attaches to the sale proceeds and gets paid at closing out of what you would have netted; the title work identifies exactly what and how much. We have not walked away from a deal over code enforcement.”
}
}
]
}