A December article over in Businessweek regarding the national market correction points out that a market correction follows a timeline; home prices often follow sales trends by about “9-12 months.”

Home prices in the Eugene area did not slow down a lot in 2006. As a college town, this city may see sale prices for rentals increase as the rental market heats up, which may drive continued speculation that has slowed down in cities like Las Vegas and LA.

The sweet spot for home buyers in Eugene right now looks to be the $400-550k market. These homes sit on the market much longer than others, and prices seem depressed when you look at the sq ft $ for homes in this range. Since mortgage rates remain low by historical standards, this year might be a good time to upgrade.

Popularity: 43% [?]

I like to see technology companies in Oregon thrive, so here’s a little plug for a company in Fall Creek Oregon called Insite Virtual Tours

Here’s what they did for the Campbell House. Obviously the Cambpell House isn’t for sale, so not entirely focused on the buying and selling homes, but that’s ok. They claim to limit the fish-eye factor, something that the market can definitely use, although I noticed a little fish-eye business going on. It’s probably the nature of 360′ views to give you a little of that no matter how flat the lens.

$100-200 to “merchandise” a home worth $300k or more seems like a no-brainer. Provided the marketing costs don’t add up too quickly! A good enough reason to put together a Marketing Plan.

Popularity: 24% [?]

It looks like the Pacific Northwest real estate prices continued to grow in Q4 2006, or at least Portland and Seattle did. Portland median home prices grew 12.3% in Q4, according to Forbes.

Below is a chart showing the Eugene-Springfield growth rate for the last couple years. Unfortunately the Q4 2006 OBM Eugene data wasn’t available on the OBM website.

Popularity: 30% [?]

The Office of Federal Enterprise Housing Oversight (say that 10x quickly) has a nice tool that allows you to pull home price growth data by month, by State. Basically, the HPI. Or as they put it so succinctly, “Annual Percent Change in OFHEO State-Level House Price Indexes through 2006 Q3″

See the chart below - clearly there’s two historical trends here since 1975, the year they began to index. The first trend shows steady growth in California, with several years of housing price declines in Oregon (1980-84).

The home price decline during this period may have been courtesy of a logging industry that dried up, with no industry to provide a an economic backbone hedge for Oregon. The second trend, one that probably matches the current growth trend more powerfully, suggests an inverse relationship between home prices in California, and those in Oregon. People cashing out of California?

Popularity: 6% [?]

Megan over at Trulia alerted me today to two new products they’ve released - Local Heatmaps, just what it describes, and Trulia Trends, a PDF showing the latest pricing trends for MLS listings, year-over-year as of Jan 07.

The new heatmap charts are fantastic and definitely deserve to be blogrolled. I especially like that for the week ending Jan 3rd, Lane County is the most popular location for home searches on Trulia.

As I’ve mentioned before, I especially like the neighborhood growth data by week. This can give buyers or sellers useful information. Especially if a neighborhood appreciates at double-digit rates for longer than 6-9 months, and continues that trend with the latest weekly data. Or in the case of buyers, if the latest weekly data shows a significant decline in price.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Reba Haas with Rain City Guide started an interesting thread It started with a post about photos and ends with a discussion about whether or not the public can trust such photos.

Home sellers would not fault an agent for removing a dumpster from a photo or using a little extra light to give the place more panache. What’s interesting about this debate though is that it’s happening at all, and in a public forum.

I feel compelled to point out that there are MUCH better products out there than paint, if you plan to edit or resize photos (ethically). Paint is especially bad at pixelating a photo after resizing it. I recommend IrfanView instead. It’s a solid shareware applications that’s nearly as good as photoshop, but without all the complex layers and tools.

True, this post is not really about dating. But the trackback is. It’s about putting your best foot forward (like you would on a date) using best practices and better tools. Also, cutting out the old fisheye pictures, or limiting their use. Do buyers really like those shots? I personally can’t stand them. Zillow and the Web2.0 real estate startups are proof that buyers want the best information they can get, not more fluff in the form of overworked camera angles.

Popularity: 33% [?]

Here’s an interesting chart from Trulia. It shows how 2BR homes appreciated significantly more than 1BR and 3BR homes from early Dec to early Jan.

How many homes did they count each week? Trulia, you should tell us. Give your readers another column in order to “weigh” the value of these numbers.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Yahoo Real Estate is showing that Eugene foreclosures increased 23% from November to December. Why are some of the foreclosure listings showing a November start date? Also, some of the foreclosure listings show an auction date that’s a month earlier than the listing itself. I don’t know how accurate that 23% number can be.

Popularity: 8% [?]