What size (square footage range) of home is selling best in Eugene, OR's SANTA CLARA neighborhood (RMLS area)

Data-wise, what could be better than knowing the median home selling price for SANTA CLARA or any other Eugene, OR neighborhood (RMLS data area)?

The median home sales price (see my last blog entry) is a great measure of central tendency -- a way to know what a whole class of data is doing.

But there is just no substitute for knowing what size of home is really selling better than others.

Accordingly, below is a compilation of homes closed in May, 2009 in SANTA CLARA (North of Belt Line Road), grouped according to the range of the square footage of the home.

You can see how many homes sold in each size range during the month...and how many homes within that size range were for sale (i.e. active listings) on June 16.

(This data excludes homes that were reported as manufactured or tandem (one-half of a duplex).

That is, only single family residences are show on the chart below.)

So: in SANTA CLARA: WHAT''s HOT? And WHAT's NOT?

What's hot: Homes between 1200 and 1399 square feet.

Most of these have three bedrooms, two baths and a family room -- the basic American standard.

These are the favorite choice of buyers using the $8000 refundable federal tax credit.

For these homes, the available inventory (shown in green above) is right in there -- equal to the very low "months of available inventory" experienced in the recent boom years.

What's not: Homes well above the minimum (3 & 2 home) in both square footage and price.

There remains a very high supply of homes in these ranges -- in terms of number of "months of available inventory" (shown in yellow above).

The first time home buyer credit (though available to anyone who has not owned a home in the last three years) has little impact in this range.

The difficulty of finding financing at affordable interest rates in the old "jumbo" loan category has also been a major factor.

(This chart derived from data published by Portland RMLS by Jim Hale, Principal Broker, ACTIONAGENTS.NET)