BATON ROUGE- Thanks to strong activity in East Baton Rouge and Livingston parishes, the number of houses sold in metro Baton Rouge rose 8.8 percent in October from a year ago.
    
There were 766 homes sold in October in the nine-parish area. That's according to figures released Tuesday by the Greater Baton Rouge Association of Realtors' Multiple Listing Service. That compares with 704 sales in October 2014. This was the fifth month in a row sales have gone up year to year.
    
There were 163 homes sold in Livingston Parish during October, a 23.5 percent increase over the 132 sales in October 2014.
    
East Baton Rouge Parish had 408 sales in the parish in October, 11.5 percent more than the 366 sales in October 2014.