New Orleans is the center of gravity, culture-driven, year-round, and tightly permitted, with the Northshore, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, and the Gulf Coast filling out the map. Much of the stock is historic, and much of it sits at or below sea level.
Hurricanes, water, and a hard marketAfter Laura, Delta, and Ida, Louisiana’s property market consolidated hard: fewer carriers, higher premiums, and named-storm deductibles as a fact of life. Flood is the existential peril, excluded from every standard policy, and historic French Quarter and Garden District stock carries rebuild and code costs far above its insured value.
Louisiana claims most often fail on the flood line, no separate policy, or limits far below the real exposure, and on named-storm deductibles that land in five figures. In New Orleans, operating outside the permit regime adds a second failure mode, because an illegal rental gives the carrier an argument. Confirm flood coverage, your named-storm deductible in dollars, and your permit status, all three, before the season.
Louisiana has no statewide STR registration, but New Orleans runs one of the strictest city regimes in the country: owner and operator permits, applications accepted only in quarterly windows, a lottery capping most residential blocks at one rental, mandatory training, occupancy of two adults per bedroom, and a required $1 million commercial general liability policy. The French Quarter is largely closed to rentals and the Garden District is restricted. Baton Rouge, Lafayette, and Shreveport run their own permits, Shreveport with neighbor notification. Statewide platform tax collection began in 2025, and combined New Orleans taxes can pass 25 percent. Confirm the permit window and the coverage before you buy.