A recent Realtor.com study that examined median price and square footage of new homes found a decrease in both for the Eugene-Springfield metro area.
The published study examined the top 100 markets, but further data show median price for newly built homes dropped 1% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2025, while the median square footage was down 3.8%.
That outpaces the national average as well as the only Pacific Northwest city that saw a decrease, Portland, where new home prices were down 0.5% and square footage down 1.2%.
“We think that there are a lot of people who would buy a home but can’t because they just can’t find something they can afford," said Realtor.com Senior Economist Joel Berner. “And so the only way to get rid of this gap, this supply gap is to build, build, build.”
Berner said a major obstacle to increasing the number of affordable new homes further nationally is zoning rules.
“That’s really a big issue where some of the rules around what can and can’t be built, where it can be built, and on how much land it can be built and with how many parking spots it can be built get really restrictive,” he said.
Berner said another way to alleviate costs and entice builders into building more affordable homes would be to decrease the cost and length of time of new construction permits.
In 2019, Oregon became the first state to limit single-family zoning with HB 2001, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. That bill forces municipalities to accept more than one dwelling on lots, with restrictions varying based on the population of the municipality.
In 2021, the state also mandated that municipalities affected by HB 2001 allow single-family residential lots to be split into duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes in places where such structures are legal. And a 2022 bill began the process of rolling back parking minimums.
A bill introduced in the current legislative session would make more changes to allow for denser housing and expand middle housing requirements to unincorporated urban areas. That bill was approved by the House Committee on Housing and Homelessness on April 9, and is awaiting further action in the Joint Ways and Means Committee April 16.
