Selling Houses

Ascension Parish

Sell your house in Gonzales

Gonzales is an incorporated city, which puts the permit file on your house at a city office rather than at the parish. The city also bills your water and your natural gas, so the account list a buyer inherits is a city list signed for at City Hall. The 2020 census counted 12,231 people and 5,504 housing units inside the limits, split between a core built before 1980 and a large block added since 2010.

Talk to an agent who works Gonzales

Who issues a building permit inside the Gonzales city limits?

The city does. Gonzales is one of three incorporated municipalities in Ascension Parish, with Donaldsonville and the town of Sorrento, and its Permits and Licensing office handles work inside the limits from South Irma Boulevard. Applications and inspection requests run through the MyGovernmentOnline portal.

The city enforces the 2021 International Codes with Louisiana amendments and the 2020 National Electrical Code on anything submitted on or after January 1, 2023. Its published rule on timing is that an inspection requested after 8:00 a.m. is completed the next business day, which is worth knowing when a repair has to close before a contract deadline.

What is held by the city and what is held by the parish?

The split is clean once you see it. The city holds the permit and inspection file, the water and gas accounts, and floodplain administration for addresses inside the limits. The parish holds everything about ownership and value: the Ascension Parish Assessor carries the assessment, the parcel record and the homestead exemption, and the Ascension Parish Clerk of Court carries the conveyance and mortgage records.

That means two phone calls, not one, when you are assembling a file before listing. It also means a permit that predates your street being annexed sits in the parish system rather than the city one.

What do you hand a buyer for the utility accounts?

A short list, because the city is most of it. Gonzales manages water utility service and gas utility service within the city limits and bills both. A residential water account opens on a $100 deposit and a residential gas account on a $75 deposit, refunded when the account closes and the balance is clear, and the city asks a resident to come to City Hall to sign the service contract.

Write down the city account numbers and a normal summer and winter bill before you list. Buyers ask what the house costs to run, and on a city system that question has an exact answer.

Does a Gonzales seller need an elevation certificate?

The city's floodplain and stormwater office provides flood determination, map inquiries and elevation certificates for addresses inside the limits, and it administers a Community Rating System program. Ask there first for a copy before you pay a surveyor to produce a new one.

You want it because the Louisiana Real Estate Commission's mandatory Property Disclosure Document asks for the flood zone classification, for the source and date behind it, and for whether a flood elevation certificate will be shared with the buyer. Ascension was one of the parishes the National Weather Service names as most severely impacted by the August 2016 flood, and buyers here read that section of the form closely.

Neighborhoods in Gonzales

  • Park Vista. 250 parcels carry this name in the parish assessor's parcel layer, the largest single subdivision name inside the Gonzales city limits.
  • Pecan Grove Estates. 171 parcels, with two further Pecan Grove filings beside it: Pecan Grove West at 84 parcels and Pecan Grove Garden Homes at 64. The garden home filing is a different product and a different plat.
  • Kennedy Heights. 133 parcels under the name inside the city, plus a separate Kennedy Heights Estates filing of 23 recorded in an adjoining section.
  • Cypress Village Condominiums. 80 parcels recorded as condominium, alongside Ashton Villas Condominium at 29. A condominium here sells with a declaration and association paperwork that a detached lot three streets over does not have.
  • Carrington Court. Two filings under one name a decade apart: Carrington Court recorded with 1999 and 38 parcels, Carrington Court II with 2009 and 72. The year in the recorded name is the fastest way to tell which one your deed points at.

Housing stock to check

  • Of 5,961 housing units in the 2019-2023 American Community Survey, 30.3 percent were built between 2010 and 2019 while 24.3 percent date to the 1960s and 1970s. Gonzales has two clear vintages rather than one.
  • 67.3 percent of units are single-family detached and 8.0 percent are mobile homes. Of 5,565 occupied units, 3,825 are owner occupied and 1,740 are rented, so a fair number of city addresses are somebody's rental.
  • In a house from the 1960s or 1970s here, the service panel and the original supply lines are what a buyer's inspector writes down first. Find the receipt or the city permit for whatever has already been replaced.

Ascension Parish records and permits

Before you list in Gonzales

  • Gonzales runs its own Permits and Licensing office on South Irma Boulevard and takes applications and inspection requests through the MyGovernmentOnline portal. If the work predates the annexation of your street, the file is with Ascension Parish instead, so check both when the date is not obvious.
  • Water and natural gas are city services inside the limits. The city takes a $100 deposit on a residential water account and $75 on a residential gas account, and service is signed for in person at City Hall, so the transfer is an errand the buyer has to run rather than a phone call.
  • Flood determination, map inquiries and elevation certificates for an address inside the city are handled by the city, which also administers a Community Rating System program. Keep the elevation certificate with the policy declarations page and any claim paperwork, because the state disclosure form asks for all of it by name.
  • The city permits your house but it does not assess it. Assessment and homestead exemption stay with the Ascension Parish Assessor, whose Gonzales office is on E. Worthey Street, and that office states the exemption is not granted automatically when a house changes hands.

Gather

Permit history for past work

Pull the permit record for the roof, the windows, the panel, the water heater, and any addition. An open or missing permit on work already done is the item most likely to surface during inspection.

Inspect

Ceilings and the roof line

Look for stains, sagging drywall, and daylight in the attic, then walk the outside and look for lifted or missing shingles and tiles. Water shows up on a ceiling long after it started somewhere else.

Resolve

Replace every burned-out bulb

Match the color temperature across a room while you are at it. A house with one dead bulb per room photographs dim and shows dimmer.

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Last updated September 19, 2026