A rare speculation.

Byline: Randi Bjornstad The Register-Guard

A brand-new house goes on the market this weekend in the neighborhood near Eugene's Laurelwood Golf Course, and that's unusual enough in a built-up area of mostly older homes.

But this house, at 2747 Central Blvd., has yet another distinction: It appears to be the only house in the vicinity in more than 25 years to be built "on speculation," instead of commissioned by a future owner-occupant.

Gena Hutton, a local artist with a Web design business - Me and Her Designs - that she shares with her daughter-in-law, also has a passion for renovating and selling houses. Two years ago, when she decided to buy the supersize lot with an older home already on the other half of the property, Hutton had no idea she was bucking a longtime trend.

It had been about 25 years since she had last indulged her fetish for real estate makeovers before turning to an art career, and she had no intention of giving it another go.

But when Arthur Donaghey, a friend and construction project manager, mentioned the property on Central, Hutton felt the stirrings of home-building excitement.

"I'd had another whole life by that time, and it was scary to think of jumping back in again," she said. "But I looked at it and thought, `Yeah, this looks rather large. I think with a really talented team, we could do this.' '

It was Jennifer McIntosh, customer service supervisor with Western Title & Escrow of Lane County, who realized just how uncommon Hutton and Donaghey's new Craftsman-style bungalow is in the east Eugene real estate market.

"Arthur (Donaghey) came in and was looking for comparable sales to set the price for the house they were building," McIntosh said. "I started looking, and I realized that there really weren't any - there hadn't been many new houses sold in that area for a long time."

Maybe because of her background in real estate - McIntosh worked as a saleswoman and broker for 17 years - her curiosity got the better of her.

Using a sophisticated computer program to analyze an area that ran from Fairmount Boulevard on the north nearly to 30th Avenue on the south, and west to east from Agate Street almost to Hendricks Park, McIntosh identified 412 single-family homes, of which only 20 had been built since 1980.

"But none of those had been sold within a year of being built, which means they were built for their original occupants," she said. "This one seems to be the only one built to be sold to someone else."

Even so, Hutton says she built 2747 Central as carefully as if she would be living there herself.

"It was really, really, really important to me that there would be no shortcuts taken in building this house," she said. "I wanted it to be of the highest quality construction."

The house is an "all-local endeavor," Donaghey said, from the work of architect Neil Warren and builder Steve Ives to framer Arne Crumley and master carpenter Bill Campbell, and everything in between.

Even the financing was handled by Eugene-based Summit Bank, Donaghey said.

Workers have bustled around the airy two-story, three-plus bedroom house all week - finishing hardwood floors, planting landscaping and completing the slab stone steps to the front porch - in preparation for an open house on Sunday.

"The front porch was one of the things this house absolutely had to have," Hutton said. "I designed the steps myself, with low risers and wide treads, because I want people to feel comfortable sitting on them. And the other day when I was sitting on the steps, people were driving by and waving or walking by with their dogs and stopping to say hello. It was just the way I imagined living here should be." The asking price will be $639,500, Hutton said.