This holiday season brings scant cheer for Lane County residents trying to buy a home. Home prices are on a plateau — a frighteningly high one.
Home and apartment construction have been brisk in Eugene-Springfield in recent years, but demand outstrips supply. Like much of the rest of the West Coast, we keep the distinction of being among the least affordable places in the nation.
The average home sales price in Eugene-Springfield was $469,200 in November, the latest report from the Regional Multiple Listing Service shows. A year earlier, it was $455,700. Average sale prices here have been largely level since mid-2022, fluctuating in the $450,000 to $500,000 range, according to RMLS data.
The inventory of homes for sale is thin. At the current pace, there’s 2.9 months of inventory in the Eugene-Springfield market, the same as a year earlier, according to RMLS data. A balanced market has six months of for-sale inventory, experts say.
What does 2025 hold? More of the same, some real estate brokers say.
The rise in mortgage rates in the past year has deterred sellers and buyers, says Eugene real estate broker Christopher Dean of Bennett & Dean Real Estate. Higher rates raise a home’s monthly cost to buyers, while potential sellers who hold low-rate mortgages are loath to sell and then take out a higher-rate loan to buy a new home, he says.
“First-time buyers who are faced with overpriced rents are still motivated to buy, but we have quite a few people who would like to sell their current home and buy something else, who are holding off,” says Dean, a former president of the Eugene Association of Realtors.
Dean says he’s had some out-of-area clients opt against moving to Lane County “due to the lack of affordability here.” He adds: “I recently spoke with a recruiter who said they lost several potential new hires due to the housing market here.”
Lane County’s “limited housing inventory and strong demand have kept prices steady, even with higher interest rates,” says Jacklyn Pettigrew, a broker with KJ Hybrid Real Estate in Eugene and the current president of the Eugene Realtors Association. “Some local buyers feel discouraged by Lane County’s prices, especially first-time home buyers. For out-of-state buyers, reactions vary. Relocating buyers from California often find Lane County affordable and appreciate the value they get compared to their (California) markets. However, buyers coming from areas with lower costs of living can be surprised by the average home price here,” she says.
Oregon leaders have long fretted over the high cost of housing. Gov. Tina Kotek wants to pump up housing
production, especially of apartments that are taxpayer-subsidized so their rents stay below market. But experts haven’t figured out a politically acceptable way to increase production of market-priced single-family homes.
“Most families want to live in single-family homes, not apartments or small attached units,” writes Katryn Hickok, executive vice president at Cascade Policy Institute, a Portland-based free-market-oriented advocacy group. The state should weaken its urban growth boundary laws to let cities expand, so developers can “build neighborhoods that people want to live in,” Hickok writes in a recent article on the CPI website.
A 2024 report by Oregon Housing and Community Services, a state agency, says the crisis has worsened in recent years. “Home prices have far outpaced wage gains over the past decade in the for-sale market,” says the report.
In 2023, only 29 percent of Oregon households could afford to buy a typical home, compared to 53 percent a decade earlier, the report says. “Rapid rent increases have largely eroded the wage gains Oregon renters experienced over the last five years,” it adds.
Some data for the statistically inclined:
• Homes sold in Eugene-Springfield in November were on the market an average 60 days, a little higher than the previous two years, according to RMLS.
• Active listings in the metro area were up a bit, to 800, compared to just over 700 a year earlier.
• Construction has been steady, but not enough to drop prices. In Eugene 2022-2024, a total of 2,189 new dwelling units were built, 1,134 of them apartments, the rest single-family homes, duplexes and condos, according to city data. Many of the apartments were student housing near the University of Oregon.
• Lane County’s population is growing. Last July 1, it stood at 383,000, up from 381,000 in July 2021, according to Portland State University’s Population Research Center. The county will hit 385,000 this year, and 394,000 by 2030, PSU forecasts.
“Looking ahead to 2025, I expect prices to grow modestly,” Pettigrew says.
Bricks and Mortar is a column anchored by Christian Wihtol, who worked as an editor and writer at The Register-Guard in Eugene 1990-2018, much of the time focused on real estate, economic development and business. Reach him at Christian@EugeneWeekly.com.