A financial product popular in countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom is just now making its debut in the United States, according to Greg Rielly, a certified mortgage planner and mortgage banker at Mortgage Advisory Group, in Everett. Acting as a sort of hybrid between a home equity line of credit and a checking account, this new loan product offers homeowners the potential to pay down rapidly a mortgage balance without any change in spending or saving habits.

Building material prices have changed dramatically during the past year.

Think they’re just going down due to a slumping home market? Think again.

High-end home market slows at greater rate than market as a whole. Trying to sell a high-end home in the current market often isn’t a luxurious experience. Sales of second homes and luxury homes have slowed at a greater rate than the market as a whole during the past 12 months. While sales trends are expected to level off in the near future, some say the current sales pace will be in place for the foreseeable future.

Custom-built house combines 19th-century architecture with motorcycle motif. Tom and Caroljean Thosath’s home is a mixture of Victorian style and hogs. Harley hogs, in this instance. Tom loves motorcycles. It’s no wonder he couldn’t find any house plans that melded the two. Fortunately, he is also a designer and builder.

“I originally wanted to build a rustic house with a lot of rough cedar in it, but my wife didn’t think that was a very good idea,” Thosath says. “So we compromised on the Victorian style, which I really like and was a lot of fun because it has so much detail.”

He and his wife bought a southern Spokane property in 1991 with visions of building their unique compromise of a home. They moved a garage onto the property and built a barn-style shop, which now holds his collection of Harleys dating from 1922 to 1994. They plunked a mobile home onto the land and then spent several years building the 3,000-square-foot house, finally moving into it in 2005.

The excess inventory of unsold homes, a side effect of the slumping market, is evident in newspaper ads, Web site banners, conditional selling clauses and promotional one-upmanship. Many homeowners and builders are forced to compete against one another by offering buyers’ incentives ranging from upgrades and rebates to lawn care and bridge loans, all to entice a potential purchaser with limited-time-only deals in exchange for offers.