The Ballpark's Dark. Saturday Isn't.

Good Thursday morning from The Seawall. The Shuckers left town, and Saturday night filled the hole four times over.

For three weeks running the easy answer to "what are we doing this weekend" has been the ballpark. Not this one. Biloxi is up in Rocket City through Sunday and Keesler Federal Park sits dark until Tuesday. Which turns out to be fine, because Saturday the 22nd is the most crowded night this coast has had all month — a sold-out blues room, a reunion concert in the restored Saenger, and a national comic at the IP, with a jam band the night before to warm it up.

Add the Blue Dog still on the wall at WAMA in its third weekend, two Saturday markets, and afternoon storms that'll chase you indoors around one o'clock, and the only real problem this weekend is choosing.

Full guide below — plus a 1938 cottage in Bay St. Louis that says it isn't in a flood zone, and a thirteen-year-old dog we're asking you about for the third time.

A ballpark going dark for a week is the kind of thing that makes a town take inventory of what else it has. Turns out: quite a lot.

Bottom line: The heat is still here, but the bone-dry stretch we had last weekend is over. Friday and Saturday both carry a real afternoon storm chance after about one o'clock, and it's the pop-up kind that soaks one block and skips the next. Sunday looks clean. Do the outdoor things in the morning, keep a plan B for the afternoon, and don't cancel anything over a 30% — just watch the radar. No heat advisory is posted for the weekend as of Tuesday. It is, however, still August.

The Coliseum, Beau Rivage Theatre and The Sound are all dark. With the ballpark out too, the blues room and the Saenger are carrying this weekend by themselves — and they're carrying it fine.

Editorial pick — Saturday, the Saenger. Anthony Gomes is the better show on paper and you can't get in, so let's talk about the one you can. Eighteen dollars puts a family inside a theatre that spent years boarded up and reopened in June, watching Coast kids sing the good parts of three musicals for one night only. Then walk the half mile over to Ground Zero after and catch whatever's spilling out the door. That's a full Saturday for less than a tank of gas.

📩 Venue owners: email your lineup to [email protected] by Tuesday noon.

Freddie Mac PMMS — most recent: 30-year 6.67% · 15-year 5.96% (week ending Aug 13).

Rates ticked down again — 6.67% on the 30-year and 5.96% on the 15-year, both a hair under the week before. Freddie Mac's chief economist says purchase and refinance applications are already responding, which tells you how tightly wound buyers are right now: they are watching, and they move on a tenth of a point. Don't over-read it, though. A tenth of a point is not a market. The bigger story on this coast is still underneath the rate line — inventory keeps climbing and price cuts keep showing up in all three counties. More houses, softer asks, and rates that aren't going anywhere dramatic. If you've been waiting for the market to hand you leverage, this is closer to it than last summer was.

Two things I can do for you, and I'd rather say them straight than bury them at the bottom.

🏠 If you're thinking about selling. The number in your head for your house is probably from 2022, and a lot has moved since. So let me build you a home value report on your actual address. Not an automated guess off a website — a real comparative market analysis out of the MLS: what's active near you, what's pending, and what has genuinely closed in the last five months, which is the only window that tells you anything true. It's free, there's no obligation, and you do not have to be selling this year to want to know the number. Reply to this email with your address, or call or text me at 228-325-1502.

🔑 If you're thinking about buying. I can represent you on any home on this coast — including this week's House of the Week, which is not my listing. I'll set up the showings, tell you what I actually think while we're standing in the kitchen, and write the offer when it's the one. And I do the thing most agents skip: before we go looking, we run your numbers. I'm a Ramsey-trained financial coach and I've led Financial Peace University classes at my church in Ocean Springs, so I would rather tell you honestly what you can carry than help you buy a payment that eats you alive for thirty years. That conversation is free too, and it's my favorite one.

Either way you're talking to me — not a call center, not a form that goes somewhere else. Same guy who writes this newsletter.

— Rob · 228-325-1502

Robert Recio · Licensed Real Estate Salesperson, MS #S-62221 · REAL Broker, LLC · Serving Hancock, Harrison & Jackson counties. House of the Week is a market feature, not our own listing unless noted. Equal Housing Opportunity.

"Everybody keeps telling us it's a bad time to sell because rates are so high. Is that actually true, or is that just something people say?"

Mostly it's something people say. High rates do cool buyer demand — that part is real and you can feel it. But they cool seller supply just as hard, and that's the half nobody mentions. Millions of people are sitting on a 2% or 3% mortgage they will never see again, and they are not moving unless life makes them. That's precisely why inventory sat so low for so long, and it's why the sellers who do list into a market like this face less competition than they'd face in a boom.

What's actually changed on the Coast is that inventory is finally climbing — so the real question was never the national rate. It's what your street looks like right now: how many houses are sitting within a half mile of you, what they're asking, what's actually closed since spring, and what your specific year built and flood zone do to the number. Two houses on the same block can be in completely different markets. (Which, conveniently, is a thing you can find out for free. See above.)

145 Bay View Court · $789,000 · 3 BR / 2 BA · 1,750 sqft · built 1938 · Bay St. Louis

Bay St. Louis took the worst of Katrina's surge. Whole blocks of this town went into the water and came back one porch at a time. So when a house here says 1938 on the deed and it's still standing under its live oaks with the moss hanging down, that isn't a charming detail. That's a résumé.

145 Bay View Court is a white clapboard cottage with a green metal roof, an iron fence, and a lawn somebody clearly loves — a few steps off the beach and an easy golf-cart ride from Old Town. Inside it's 1,750 square feet of the good old stuff: original hardwood, plaster walls, built-ins, a sunroom. Updated where updating helps and left alone where it doesn't. Out back there's a deck with a built-in serving bar, a fire-pit courtyard under mature shade, a detached cottage that works as a guest room or an office, and a garage-workshop big enough to have opinions about.

Two things make it unusual. It's sold fully furnished and already running as a short-term rental, so it pays part of its own way from the first month. And the listing describes it as sitting in a non-flood zone — which in Bay St. Louis would be unusual enough that I'd treat it as a question rather than a fact. That phrase is the listing's language, not a flood determination, and low-risk is not the same thing as no-risk: FEMA's own guidance is that most homeowners policies don't cover flood at all, and plenty of claims come from outside the high-risk zones. Pulling the actual FEMA zone, the elevation certificate and a real insurance quote before you fall in love with a house is exactly the kind of thing I'd do for you.

The numbers: $789,000 · ~$451/sqft · 3 bed / 2 bath · 1,750 sqft · 0.23-acre fenced lot · built 1938 · sold fully furnished · detached cottage + garage/workshop · no HOA · MLS #4157042 · Amy P Wood, Amy Wood Properties · 228-216-7649.

Want to walk through this one? It isn't my listing — but I'm a licensed Mississippi agent with REAL Broker, and I'll get you inside it, pull the flood determination and the rental history before you fall for it, and write the offer if it's the one. Call or text 228-325-1502, or just reply to this email. — Rob

We've told you about Leo twice. Once in June, again in July. He is still there.

Leo is a 13-year-old Black Mouth Cur at the county shelter on Audubon Lane in Gautier, and he has spent this entire summer in a concrete kennel. The shelter's own write-up says it better than we can: at 13, Leo should be "supervising snack time from a fluffy dog bed, not waiting in a shelter kennel."

He is not a project. He's neutered, he's vetted, and he can go home today. By every account he's a joy — still has pep in his step, loves a treat with the enthusiasm of a puppy, gets visibly excited when he knows one is coming, and flatly refuses to be left out of whatever's happening in the room. What he wants is a couch, a family, and somebody who thinks a loyal old dog is worth having around.

Here's the thing nobody says out loud: adopting a senior is the best deal in the shelter, and almost nobody takes it. You skip the chewed baseboards, the housebreaking, the crying at three in the morning. You know exactly who the dog is on day one, because he's already himself. What you're buying is a couple of good years — and for a dog who has spent his thirteenth one in a kennel, a couple of good years is the whole ballgame.

Third time we're asking. Somebody go get Leo.

And Virginia is still waiting too. The Lab we ran two weeks ago — the stray out of Moss Point who leans into people and hands out soft little kisses like she's making up for lost time — hasn't gone home either. She walks well on a leash and she's good with other dogs, so bring yours down for a meet-and-greet.

Jackson County Animal Shelter · 4400 Audubon Lane, Gautier · (228) 497-6350 · $50 adoption fee, which covers initial vaccinations, worming, spay/neuter, and a certificate good for a free health exam from the Jackson County Veterinary Society. Applications are done in person — you have to go meet him, which is the right way to do it anyway.

He has a credential. His friend has a sign. It is 7:40. The lights have not come on because there is no game. This week's Low Tide Laughs has filed from the outfield wall.

Sponsors: SudsyCo Rentals · MapPulse Agency · Cornerstone Numismatics.

No ballgame, and the Coast barely noticed. A sold-out blues room, a theatre somebody spent years bringing back, and a stage full of kids singing the good parts. Some weekends you find out what a place has when you take away the easy answer. Pick something. Take someone with you.

Rob — The Seawall