Eugene's Housing Market Is About To Change Forever!

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]I really do think that Eugene is on the precipice. I was talking to a local builder just the other week and we were talking about his strategy moving forward and what he was looking for in terms of building. And right now, yeah, he's doing a lot of custom builds, but you know, he really enjoys building spec building for the retail market, but the only place that makes sense right now is in the higherend price points in Eugene.

[00:00:24]What you will see with local builders specifically is they're finding infill lots around town and they're building homes that are luxury homes in a luxury price point because that is the only place where they can find a margin to make the development costs work to bring a home to the retail market as opposed to working with a client who found their own land is willing to you know build their own house and do their own thing.

[00:00:48]And that is really telling of how the market is behaving overall and how our the housing in Eugene is playing out because man it is I really do like I think that we are on the precipice of a new wave. Something's got to give. And what does that mean for Eugene moving forward? I'm Hannah Caldwell. I'm a local real estate agent in Eugene. I help families relocate to Eugene from places like California, Colorado, Washington, Utah all the time. And understanding how Eugene housing has developed and what it means for how, you know, what is available and what the market is going to look like moving forward is really important to these buyers because it can play such a role in them understanding where they want to find a home in Eugene. So, what I'm going to cover in this video is we're going to go into a little bit of history. We're going to look at the how housing has developed in Eugene over time, what that looked like, why it worked, and then what is happening now and why it is different and why it is not working the same way that it used to. So, we're going to look at an old model and then maybe a new model. We are also going to look at what that means for neighborhoods specifically, which neighborhoods are going to benefit from this precipice that we're in, which neighborhoods are going to be having more of a hard time in this sort of environment. And then we're also going to talk about what this means for buyers, sellers, my predictions moving forward in, you know, like I said, I think this is the precipice. I think that like we are like literally like teetering on the edge right now. And so I think 2026, 2027, 2028, there's going to be massive change in terms of policy, in terms of direction, in terms of just what Eugene is going to look like moving forward. And that is definitely going to play a big role in decisions for people relocating to Eugene. So with all of that said, let's get into it and talk about the original waves of development in Eugene. because I've talked about this in previous videos because it plays so much into like the styles of homes that you see in specific neighborhoods in Eugene, the different waves of expansion that happened since basically Eugene's inception. So obviously Eugene was formed right around like the late 1800s, like 1890. It was a very small town. So you have kind of like the downtown core and the original downtown of Eugene is where the downtown is now.

[00:03:13]So if you look back at photos, it's really cool photos of like Eugene in like 1931. You can see Wamit Street as being like the primary street, you know, going down the middle of downtown. But that is exemplary of why all of the neighborhoods that surround downtown are the oldest, most established neighborhoods in Eugene. So that's going to be, you know, Jefferson Westside.

[00:03:33]It's going to be a little bit of the base of College Hill, like right south downtown. It's going to be West University. It's going to be a little bit south university. So these are homes that were built, you know, in the 1900s to the 1940s, really like the original small Eugene. And then there was a wave of development that happened. So the University of Oregon grew drastically in the '60s. It's kind of wild because around 1960, the student population of the University of Oregon was around 10,000 students and then by the end of the '60s, it was at 17,000 students. And then from the '60s till now, it like hasn't had that percentage of growth that quickly since. like we've kind of hovered in the 20,000 you know student range for quite a long time. So there was like this massive jump in the 1960s and with that came this wave of expansion in Eugene. So I call it like the 1960s7s a little bit 80s expansion wave of Eugene. And the way that Eugene has always expanded is okay people are moving here. Things are happening. We need to extend the urban growth boundary. There's some land that's on the outskirts of town. It's less expensive. Let's as a city let's invest in infrastructure. Bring the infrastructure out to those areas and then bring in builders or whomever that are going to develop new homes. For a long time, this looked like some of the big builders in Eugene were Maltbec, the Breeden Brothers, and these were local builders. I mean, the Breeden Brothers still exists. Malttobec still exists in Eugene, but they're no longer doing largecale developments. We're talking, you know, tens, 20s, up to hundreds of homes in a neighborhood. That's not who's building in Eugene anymore. Most of those companies transitioned into custom builds because over time, that's where it financially made more sense. So that was the the 1960s7s80s expansion that includes kind of like the southwest um like things that are like immediately around Churchill. It includes quite a bit of the south hills, a little bit of Fairmont. It was also like a period where you know they were really taking risks architecturally. So you get all of those really cool homes in the Fairmont neighborhood. We have quite a lot of mid-century modern that happened during that period. Closer in Ferry Street Bridge was part of that expansion. A little bit of River Road was part of that expansion, but you can kind of see it. So there was like core Eugene, which is like downtown Jefferson Westside and everything close to University. And then there was second wave, which was all of that 1960s, '7s, '80s build. The next wave was the 1990s into the 2000s and that you see we just kept doing the same thing. Okay, let's push a little bit further and it went out in all directions. It didn't just it wasn't like we were only pushing south or we were only pushing north or we were only pushing west. like it kind of went in all directions in these waves. So then you get like upper southwest hills, you get some of the deeper south and then also like southeast like Spring Boulevard homes in that area. You get a lot of north so you get lots of Fairy Street Bridge still expanding and then you get North Gillum almost exclusively in the '9s 2000s. That's really when we get westward expansion. So then you're really growing in Bethl Danabo. That is like really when Santa Clara like began to expand significantly. Um so again it was move the urban growth boundary, have the city bring infrastructure, bring in builders. At this time in the '9s 2000s, you start to see those local builders phase out and we start to see more institutional builders. So like more nationwide corporate builders, but we still do have some local builders that are operating on a bigger scale than I would say the Breeden Brothers or Maltsec, but are still not quite like nationwide. So that was the '9s, 2000s.

[00:07:09]Then you hit 2000s and this is where everything like late mid2010s till now really is where everything kind of came to a screeching halt, right? And why did that happen? It's because several things. We'll get into all of those things, but that you start to see it. So where did expansion happen in the 2010s and on? We were still using that old model. We were like, okay, let's keep addressing the urban growth boundary.

[00:07:35]what's the furthest on the edges of Eugene? Honestly, at this point, it was like, what land is left available? The movement of the urban growth boundary was significantly slower. So, really, we've just been finding parcels here and there that still are within that urban growth boundary of the 1990s, and filling them in where we can. And so, that's looked like developments again in Danabo, so out west towards the airport.

[00:07:57]It's looked like a couple developments in North Gillum, so we're talking about the nines. It's been major selloffs of certain things. So like the nines was the sale of a golf course and the golf course was then converted into housing.

[00:08:10]And so like it needs to be pretty large tracks of land that are still available in the urban growth boundary and there's just fewer and fewer. So it's in these weird places. We're looking at the developments on Moon Mountain and the Holt Homes development over on that side of like Laurel Hill and like that is like pretty significantly removed from lots of Eugene. And so we're really kind of now in these stuck little places and it's just gotten worse and worse and worse till where we're at in terms of expansion now is infill and changing some wetlands um pretty much. And why did this start to happen? Why are we not currently moving the urban growth boundary, bringing infrastructure out to the outskirts of Eugene and then bringing in larger development? Several reasons. So the first one is I mean as you can assume is actually the disappearance of the firsttime home buyer. When we look at the 1980s, '7s, 80s first-time home buyers were in their late 20s. They generally speaking, they could still be a single inome household and afford a home. And so there was a lot of reason to build because we had a lot of first-time home buyers. And then the first-time home buyers became move up buyers. They built equity. They found larger homes. They had families. And then they bought those move up homes.

[00:09:18]And then the move up buyers had built lots of equity. And now they've become luxury buyers. And it pushed this cycle of purchasing. And as long as we have to fill that bottom rung, we have to fill that first-time home buyer to then push the move up buyer to then push the luxury buyer and to keep those markets going. Well, now in 2025, the average age of a first-time home buyer was 40.

[00:09:38]Just from 2023 to 2025, the percentage of first-time home buyers decreased by 10%. So, if you don't have that base buyer pool pushing the next levels, then it's going to stagnate the entire market. So the disappearance of the first-time home buyer, the time with which it takes them now to be ready to purchase a home has made a significant impact on the drive to develop in the same scale and in the same like price point and everything that was happening in the previous waves. Also, obviously, interest rates caused a big stagnation in the market when affordability and interest rates, you know, that was part of the disappearance of the first-time home buyer, but it's also kind of a lock-in feature of the market where, you know, if people purchased at low rates in the early 2020s, they don't want to move. They don't want to lose their low interest rate. And so when builders are looking at building homes, if there's not buyer demand because they are scared of moving out of their interest rate and now this brand new home that this builder has built, they're going to have a 6 and 12% interest rate. Like there's going to be far fewer buyers for that new construction. The other thing that has really played an impact especially in Eugene locally on the stagnation in terms of expansion is the city and the city budget. And like all of this is obviously plays into the greater economy overall, but the city of Eugene is has been operating at a budget deficit for like several years and like recently in terms of looking at what that budget is going to look like in the next 10 years, we're looking at up to a $10 million deficit in the budget. So, previously in those previous waves of expansion where the city was really financing part of that because they were backing the infrastructure development and infrastructure growth, well, now the budget from the city is not there to be able to do those mass infrastructural extensions into parts that didn't already have them. So, some of that cost then falls on a builder if they want to to take that on. And then you know the city itself has raised systems development charges, permitting costs, permitting timelines like all of these things have gotten more difficult to attain which makes it more difficult for a builder to gain value in making mass developments or like larger expansions of tracks of land. So quite a lot of reasons why this has all happened. But where does that leave us now? And the city has already been kind of doing this for the last, I would say, 5 years is really pushing density, right, and pushing infill. And they've been doing that by changing city policy. They've been changing zoning laws. They've added middle housing zoning. So, what we've done is we've tried to make it easier to build uh ADUs on properties. We've made like for infill lots. If we, you know, are demoing an old house, we've made it easier for that lot that was originally a single family home to now be developed into maybe two or three units of middle housing that are going to look kind of like town homes or, you know, like tiny homes. So, just creating density. But what we haven't done is again extend the urban growth foundry. So, what that does is there's been a lot of apartment building. Um, there's been a lot of town home building, but oftent times that is closer into downtown core. Like there's been a lot of high-end condos, which is, you know, not an accessible price point when we're talking about trying to build back up that firsttime home buyer base of the market. Like even these condos that are, yes, attributing to higher density, but they're not lowering cost and they're not becoming a a new entry point for first-time home buyer. And then a lot of the other units are of course apartment units and even those are at market value rents which are high and unaffordable for a lot of people.

[00:13:22]And so the most recent study on Eugene is that Eugene needs roughly 1,300 homes a year for the next I want to say it's 7 years to hit necessary housing supply.

[00:13:33]Right now they're on track to doing like high 900s to a,000 homes a year. The problem is is that we need half of that 1,300 to be low-income housing. And right now, in terms of the thousand that are on the docket for being built, only a hundred of those are affordable housing. So, we are in this sort of like I said, it's just a work. We're at a breaking point like something is going to have to happen and would say that the city of Eugene is working towards this.

[00:13:57]There are a lot of new models being utilized in Eugene that haven't been utilized in a lot of America. Several nonprofits, Dev Northwest, Square One Villages are all taking on new multi-unit developments that are on this community land trust model that are supposed to provide single family homes at a more affordable price point to try to to build that base of the first-time home buyers back up, have them start building equity, get that market a little bit more balanced again. But obviously, when we're trying something new and it's not been seen before, there are risks and there's a learning curve.

[00:14:34]So, those are being built. Dev Northwest finished Nelson's Place, which is in West Eugene, which is finished that in 2025, and you know, it had, I want to say, 31 units, and there are still some for sale. So, what that says to me is that although they are at a much more affordable price point, people are still hesitant about the model. People are still not sure if that is actually, you know, a good decision from a home buying's perspective because it's different. It's like owning a manufactured home in a park, right?

[00:15:02]except for the land is held in a land trust on a 99-year lease. So like you're not paying space rent or lot rent.

[00:15:10]Really, it's a nominal charge similar to an HOA as opposed to a manufactured home in a park where you're paying space rent that is significant that is privately owned that is going to keep increasing on a regular basis on par with rents. So it's a similar model to that and I think that people are hesitant about that, right? They we all want this traditional like I own the home and I own the land.

[00:15:31]So I I personally am just not sure what that model is going to look like, but there's going to be more. Rosa Village with Square One Villages is going to follow a similar model and that's being built, you know, this year breaking ground in 2026. That's going to be 50 plus units. So there's going to be more of these style of affordable housing being built. And so maybe as there's more built and more people take advantage of it and more people buy and sell within it, then it'll be more normalized and people will feel more comfortable with it. I just am not sure what that's going to look like moving forward. So now let's talk about the neighborhoods that this stagnation and like this like time and place where we are right now, what how is it affecting them, which neighborhoods are going to benefit from this? Which neighborhoods are going to struggle? And this is what it looks like. So the neighborhoods that are going to benefit most of course from this need for expansion but like you know like this congestion in the market.

[00:16:25]The neighborhoods that are going to benefit most are the neighborhoods where there never will really be more. And those are going to be your closein walkable neighborhoods high level of amenities high level of services. So I would start looking at college hill south university west side. I would be curious to see what will happen moving into, you know, the next five years.

[00:16:48]Some of those, most of those have already seen the highest level of appreciation in Eugene. And that's just because inventory is going to remain limited. It's going to stay in high demand. It is the most accessible. And you know, that's what people are looking for, especially because when we look at Eugene overall, we still are at a net positive influx of population growth and that's mostly from relocation. So, if people are still moving here, they're all looking at the same areas and they're all looking at the same desirable amenities and they're all looking at similar commute times and so they're all picking areas based on that.

[00:17:22]And those areas are the ones that are not going to ever have more inventory.

[00:17:26]The neighborhoods that right now are going to struggle and have seen this consistent struggle are neighborhoods that are still finding some growth. So, there is still new construction happening in West Eugene. So Bethl Danabo, the neighborhood that I live in, for example, is Meadow View Park by Lenar Homes. And because there are still new homes coming to a market, Bethl Danabo, that is does not have the things that boost desiraability like the amenities, like the walkability. You know, Eugene does a pretty good job, I would say, connectedness. So, like we do have the Amazon bike path that can get you from like literally from my neighborhood, which I would argue is like the furthest west within the urban growth boundary that you can be can get you all the way from my neighborhood to downtown on a bicycle, not on roadways, which is pretty incredible. But even with infrastructural additions like that, it's still behind. Like, we still just don't have, you know, as much in terms of entertainment, in terms of food and dining, in terms of, you know, there are good parks. I've always been a real real advocate for Eugene city parks and recck and I think that they do an incredible job and I think there is a lot of investment from the city in parks but even still you'll see that like the density the number of parks per area in West Eugene is far less than what it would be in south or you know I would even argue like fairy street bridge like all of those places seem to have more in terms of density in terms of parks and outdoor enjoyment spaces restaurants all of those things so that's why Bethl Danabo has had lower almost stagnant levels of appreciation over the last year. And I see that continuing because obviously if it's the only place where we're adding more inventory, but it's not gaining the cultural and infrastructural investment that lots of the core parts of established Eugene have, then values are just going to stay there because it's not going to have the level of buyer demand is not going to be as high. The inventory is going to continue to grow. Whereas in neighborhoods closer to downtown, your inventory is not going to grow and your buyer demand remains because everybody wants to be close to all the fun things.

[00:19:33]Remember in Eugene everything is close.

[00:19:36]When I say that I live in the furthest west part of Eugene within the urban growth boundary, I still drive to downtown in 15 minutes. So if you are moving from Seattle or LA or San Francisco or Vancouver or Portland even like your commute time is going to drastically decrease even if you are living on the furthest outreaches of Eugene. So but that's what we're looking at. The neighborhoods that are going to benefit most from where we're at and what development is coming are the established neighborhoods. The neighborhoods that are going to continue to struggle are the neighborhoods, at least the housing development is happening because they're the only places that inventory is being added and it's still being added at a relatively slow rate. We're not pulling the cultural and infrastructural developments with it. It's really just the residential growth and that's what's going to cause those areas to struggle a bit more. Understanding these neighborhoods that are going to benefit and then are also going to struggle is a lot easier when you have, you know, a bigger picture of all of these neighborhoods. If you're thinking about making a move to Eugene and you want a more in-depth look at everything that Eugene has to offer, then please download my free Eugene relocation guide, you can scan the QR code here or it's in the description box below and that will help you have all of the information, all of the Eugene neighborhoods at your fingertips. So, what does this mean if you are a buyer looking in Eugene? Well, there's areas of opportunity. If you are moving from a place where had a long I would say a 30 minute or longer commute to your job. If you are moving from a place where there had been rapid levels of growth for years and years. So I'm thinking like the Portland metro. If you like look at Beaverton or Hillsboro over the course of the last 10 years, the growth has been explosive. And I know that that's similar in a lot of other markets, especially markets that are metro suburban areas close to like major cities. If you're moving from somewhere like that, Eugene is going to look a lot different. And so, if you are willing to say, I'm okay with a 15-inute commute. I would like a little bit more space. I don't need to have the fanciest coffee and the fanciest restaurants right around the corner, but I'm happy to drive 15 minutes to them. Then there's a lot of opportunity for you in these outlying neighborhoods of Eugene.

[00:21:45]Obviously, if you are a seller, there are things to consider. Yes, if you are in one of those markets where inventory remains low and demand remains high, then you are sitting in a fine position, the market in Eugene has softened overall. Even in these neighborhoods that have historically been high demand, high frenzy, you know, like major in 2021, you're thinking like so many multiple offers and hundreds of thousands of dollars over asking price.

[00:22:12]That no longer exists. So even in those neighborhoods, high desiraability, pricing, preparation is so important.

[00:22:18]But if you are selling a home in one of those later waves of expansion homes in Eugene, if you are in the 1990s to 2000's wave or 2000s and newer wave of expansion in Eugene, if that's what you own right now and you're looking to sell, then pricing is going to be extremely important because your buyer pool is small and you are competing with new inventory coming on the market, especially in West Eugene. There will be some coming in Santa Clara in 2026. So, if you are thinking about moving out of one of those areas into a different maybe you're moving out of state or you're moving into a different town, then pricing is going to be your most important thing to factor in when you're looking at selling your home. Let's talk about what the future holds for Eugene, my predictions, what's happening in the city, and what how this could impact what housing looks like moving forward.

[00:23:07]Like I've said so many times, things are about to change in 2026. We already have the ball rolling, like I said, on affordable housing. Eugene has tried to push affordable housing. We have new affordable housing developments breaking ground in 26 like Rosa Village. We have the downtown riverfront development which is supposed to have 75 units of affordable housing but is also includes over 700 units of standard market price housing. So huge influx of units of housing coming in 2026 and 2027 in those developments alone. But right now the city is actively working on an 8-year housing plan. It involves buildable land and housing needs analysis and it is going to be the key factor in what happens in city policy. It's supposed to be completed this year in 2026. And this will have the biggest impact on whether or not the city decides to expand the urban growth boundary and really, you know, I guess kind of do what the rest of Oregon's been doing when you look at Portland and Portland metro. But like is Eugene going to basically open up expansion or is it not? Is it going to bet on what we've kind of already been doing for the past 5 years, which is like infill will work and like we'll just keep pushing density and we'll be able to get there. This housing plan will be finalized in 2026. So that means in 2027 we will have a much clearer picture of what the future of Eugene will look like if they decide to extend the urban growth boundary. What we're going to see is an influx of my guess would be and my hope would be investment in Eugene from large-scale builders from large corporation from business development. I'm just hoping for a great level of investment into the city. We've already started to see that a little bit with the Clear Lake overlay which is pushing industrial development in West Eugene and is supposed to include in a long-term plan a new school. It's supposed to include multiple parks and multiple housing developments. And I think that like LAR Meadow View is a little bit a part of that. The problem is is that West Eugene is so much wetlands and there are requirements for if you want to build if we want to expand into this wetland area, then we need to find replacement protected areas for these. If we're going to basically get rid of what the protected areas we have, we have to mark off new protected areas. And this will cost the people that are looking to invest in Eugene. So either we will see a huge level of expansion. It'll start in 2027. In 2028 through 2035, we're going to see an entirely different Eugene, or we're going to see what we've been seeing the last 5 years, which is pretty significant housing constraints, kind of inflated value, a difficult housing market for first-time home buyers. So, all I can say is that I hope that the city looks at the plan, looks at what is necessary, and you know, makes the decision to help Eugene grow in the best way possible. I don't know. We'll just have to wait and see what's going to happen. The state of housing in Eugene probably feels really overwhelming if you are looking to move here. It is definitely different than many of the places like I just explained. So, if you are thinking of making a move to Eugene, give me a call. My phone number is here in the description box. You can also shoot me an email and I can explain it to you. Make sure that you feel comfortable. Make sure that you understand the nuances of the Eugene housing market and how it is really truly so vastly different than any other market I have personally experienced or even been to. Make sure that you, you know, feel comfortable in this. So, please, like I said, give me a call and I would love to help. If you found this video helpful, please make sure you check out my next video and I will see you in the next