Eschker, the department’s chair, said plans call for completing the zoning study by the spring of next year. He and his students are now in the midst of data gathering.
The data and analysis will be posted on HSU’s Real Estate Economics web site (http://www.humboldt.edu/~indexhum/realestate/index.htm), which originates, disseminates and analyzes key housing data. The focus is residential housing and issues of affordability, financing and sustainable prices.
“We present the history of those data and think about what the future might hold, although we steer clear of projections per se,” Eschker said in an interview. “One thing we produce is a price-to-rent ratio, which is an important indicator of what’s happening in the local housing market.”
A price-to-rent ratio is the median price of a house in a given month, divided by the average rents in Humboldt County.
Until about 2002, the ratio had been stable, but then it suddenly doubled in a period of two or three years. “That indicates this incredible run-up in prices we’ve experienced and raises the issue of price sustainability,” Eschker said.
The conundrum is that, for the most part, rental rates have not kept pace with ballooning housing prices. As Eschker put it, “We don’t have any evidence that rents have really gone up by any factor at all, except little spurts in Arcata.” Further examination will be required to solve the puzzle.
Eschker developed the Real Estate Economics web site to provide helpful data to consumers, redwood real estate agents, the local business community and economic development organizations. The site is both data and analysis-driven, with the main focus on private residential real estate. The data fill a particular gap. “We’re distant and rural and remote and our housing data weren’t picked up a lot,” Eschker noted. “We originate our own data, we add different data sources from elsewhere and we pool them. We do some analysis of the local real estate market, and we provide information and links to other web sites that will be useful to anyone who follows real estate in the region.”
The site aside, Eschker can provide almost 20 years of rental data as well as all the other relevant information he has collected.
Anticipating the turmoil in the sub-prime mortgage market, Eschker began compiling foreclosure data about a year and a half ago. He has also tabulated how many houses have been listed in Arcata and Eureka in the past 18 months.
He gathers mortgage rate data from Umpqua Bank.
“Humboldt Real Estate Economics is a unique, single site service,” Eschker said. “It is a branch of HSU’s Humboldt Economic Index, which tracks developments in the local economy based on six key measures.”
In addition to Umpqua, Index sponsors are California State and Federal Employees Credit Union #20, Coast Central Credit Union, Redwood Capital Bank and Redwood Region Economic Development Commission
Dr. Eschker can be reached at 707/826-3216 or ee3@humboldt.edu.
Photo by HSU Department of Graphic Services
Humboldt State News and Information 707/826-5105 psm7001@humboldt.edu