County home listing prices down from Jan.
An analysis of data from Realtor.com shows the median home listing price in Lane County in February was $521,236, down 1.1% from median listing price in January of $527,000.
More homes were listed for sale in February than the same month last year — 316 versus 258 — and the median listing price was 2% higher than what was asked for in February 2023 at $517,450.
“A 2% year-over-year increase in median home prices suggests a stable and balanced market, contrasting with the rapid increases of previous years,” said John Romito, owner and principal real estate broker at Heart and Home Real Estate in Eugene.
Overall, a handful of factors are keeping the local housing market relatively stable, Romito said. Those factors include high homeowner equity that prevents surges in foreclosures, which can drive the market down and homeowners not selling due to lower mortgage rates obtained in prior years.
“This stability is beneficial overall, reflecting healthy market conditions without the extremes of previous years,” he said.
The county’s median home size for the new February listings was 1,794 square feet at $302 per square feet, an increase of 3.7% from February 2023.
Listings spent a median of 73 days on the market in February — the same as January, and 12 days longer than the national median listing time of 61 days. It also is 29.46% more days on the market compared to February 2023.
Median house price increases go hand-in-hand with higher prices for square footage in homes but that price hikes have been small due to inflated
costs of building materials reducing in 2023 after record high prices in previous years. Romito said.
Even with materials costs coming back down, Rominto said housing remains unaffordable for many buyers in the county.
“Lane County as a whole leans more towards the unaffordable end of our local economy,” he said. “First hand, we are seeing many first time home owners struggle with affordability.”
Lane County in a ‘softer seller’s market’
Local data available at data.registerguard.com indicates market hotness as a metric comparing the demand for homes to the availability of listed homes and the speed at which they sell.
Romito said the hotter the market, the more of a seller’s market it is. His agency follows a similar metric called a Market Action Index, ranking on a scale of 0 to 100.
He said during the pandemic-era market that the Market Action Index was regularly over the 90s — an indicator of what Romito called one of the strongest sellers’ markets they’ve ever experienced.
“If the number is over 30, we are considered to be in a sellers’ market,” Romito said.
“Last week Lane County had an index number of 41, showing a much softer seller’s market (compared to pandemic index rates),” he said.
Romito said one anomaly in the market is the number of homes being sold for cash.
“Last month in Eugene, 26.9% of our home transactions were cash purchases, which is extremely high.”
Median listing prices in Oregon dip slightly
February’s median listing price of $549,250 in Oregon was slightly down from January, and the median home listed for sale was 1,846 square feet at $306 per square foot.
Nationally, the median listing price of $415,500 was up slightly from January with 1,819 square feet at $224 per square foot.
Statistics from Realtor.com only pertain to houses listed for sale in Lane County, not ones that were sold. Median home prices and volumes issued by Realtor.com represent only single-family homes, condominiums or townhomes and existing homes. It excludes most new construction and pending and contingent sales.
Hannarose McGuinness, The Register-Guard’s growth and development reporter, contributed to this story. Contact her at 541-844-9859 or hmcguinness@registerguard.com
The USA TODAY Network is publishing localized versions of this story on its news sites across the country, generated with data from Realtor.com . Please leave any feedback or corrections for this story here . This story was written by Ozge Terzioglu.