Tuesday, April 10, 2007

The WEIRDEST THING EVER!

CentralOregonrealtors.com is out with their quarterly PDF data sheet on the Central Oregon property stats. Some points of interest:

Bend residential volume, while down 18%, is a drop in the bucket compared to near 50% volume drops in Redmond, Sisters, and LaPine!

Prices though, are little changed throughout the area, for the most part.
(Mark my words though, this will NOT be true in the 2nd and 3rd quarter.)

Except for LaPine where averages and medians are up an astounding 74% and 71% respectively! This has led to a stat that almost boggles my mind, and is possibly the strangest thing that HAS EVER happened in the Central Oregon property market:

Redmond costs LESS than LaPine

OK, just calm down Bucky. Quiet your screams of "LIAR!", "CHARLATAN!"

I kid you not. Redmond's average home was $275,168 and LaPines was ~ wait for it~ $287,648!

"Hey now, that could be some sort of outlying data point. You can skew the averages with one big sale!", you say.

Redmonds median was $255,950 and LaPines was $264,000!

I understand that LaPine is incorporating, and "Yeah, and Yahoo!", and all, but LaPine is also 40 miles from Bend, separated by a stretch of highway I lovingly call "The Death Zone". I mean it seems more people die on this stretch of road than do climbing Everest.

OK, LaPine is STILL LAPINE. If you've been here for a year, you know what that means. OK, LaPine is not so much a town as it is a band of shotgun-toting maniacs meant to Californians OUT of Bend. OK, they're more just a loosely-joined band of vigilantes. OK, their Bend's answer to the freaking Minutemen. OK, it's LaPine! LaPine having expensive homes is like the freakin City of Joy having expensive homes.

IT'S

LA

PINE!!!


Redmond costs less than LaPine. If I said a year ago that would happen, I would have been probably lost every visitor to this blog. Redmond COSTS LESS than LaPine. I still can't believe those words can be truthfully stated.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

oh man, I almost peed myself! that is hilarious

Anonymous said...

What's next? Bend?

Anonymous said...

In all likelihood Redmond has a greater inventory on hand, depressing the mean price.

LaPine may be 'm old hometown, but Bend is best!

Jake said...

As somebody who drives the Death Zone daily on my way to Sunriver, is on the payroll of folks who sell stuff in LaPine, and grew up in an area where I could've gone to either LaPine or Bend schools, this made me laugh my ass off.

Anonymous said...

Paul, I have some supporting evidence for you.

It has to do with the ratio between Realtor.com's reporting of "Bend" and "Bend Area." Shows how much the area just outside of Bend has grown in inventory compared to Bend proper.

Last year, when we hit 2065 houses for sale in Bend, there were 2775 for sale in "Bend Area."

Today we're at 2067 houses for sale in Bend and 2938 in "Bend Area."

So this year, compared to last year, has a larger percentage of houses in inventory in the area surrounding Bend.

Anonymous said...

Note that the statement "Redmond costs less than LaPine" isn't strictly true. What's true is "What's selling in LaPine is more expensive than what's selling in Redmond." That's different. I don't think existing homes in LaPine are worth more than existing homes in Redmond. If LaPine has just one big new subdiv (and I think it does) and the median house is in that subdiv, puzzle solved.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

"What's selling in LaPine is more expensive than what's selling in Redmond."

That's what I thought, but the MEDIANS are lower in Redmond. Averages would merit just a little scrutiny about the novelty, but MEDIANS? Medians are really hard to "fake".

Although I have to agree: The standard unit of stock of residential homes in Redmond being less than LaPine just seems impossible.

Still, you have to admit, seeing Redmond prices lower than LaPine for an ENTIRE QUARTER is something outlandish. I would have laid 1,000:1 odds on such a thing happening in my lifetime. Unbelievable.

Anonymous said...

All you need for a high median in LaPine is for the middle house to be in one of the rapidly growing new subdivisions.

But yeah, it's queer as Freddie Mercury.

Anonymous said...

And before anyone accuses me of gay-bashing, I thought Freddie Mercury was a great rock'n'roll singer--one of the best. No disrespect meant. Man, you gotta watch what you say online.

Check out this wonderful video. Man, we miss ya Freddie!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxbFLYa0_bw

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Man, you gotta watch what you say online.

Believe me, I know what you mean.

All you need for a high median in LaPine is for the middle house to be in one of the rapidly growing new subdivisions.

First, that's hard to do. There's so much low-end stuff in LaPine. And "rapidly growing new subdivisions"? That's just a phrase I don't associate with LaPine.

"Rapidly growing gang of blood-thirsty maniacs"... see, that's LaPine.

Anonymous said...

Looking at Realtor.com now, 2/3 of the single family homes for sale in La Pine are over $250,000.

Lots of them look new.

Anonymous said...

There were only 14 LaPine houses sold. Is it so hard to believe that the houses in the middle of that were in the new subdivs? Easy for me to believe.

Anonymous said...

Seems I remember reading a piece interviewing the LaPine Watermaster in the Oregonian about ten years ago. His job is to see that water meters are installed and transferred to new owners, etc.

He noted that a lot of Californians moved to LaPine, stayed about a year, then left. When asked why, many said they had no idea the winters were so cold.

If that still holds, there may be some deals in LaPine in, oh, a year or so :)

Flicka said...

LA-PINES: "LA as in Los Angeles" PINES, ..

Here are some thoughts

1.) At least in LA-PINES you get a five acre lot for your $250k with your manufactured home, in Redmond you get a 50by50 lot, big DIFF.

2.) Drugs at Summit High in Bend are out of control, I have many friends that got kids there, they tell me that LA-Pines kids are now driving the death hwy to score drugs @ summit, why? Latch-key parents, ... money you can get any kind of drug @ summit, but hardly nothing at LA-PINES, Summit and the entire BEND-School Dist is in many parent minds a reason for private school if they could afford it,

Ok, there is more, but this is enough,

1.) In LApines you get a little place to drive your riding lawn-mower,
2.) Home-school, this is the future, NW-Crossing is going become a large meth lab next to summit high, this is what all the kids are saying,

Now do you folks really want to know why parents are voting LAPINES with their feet?

Anonymous said...

This makes no sense. You prefer your kids to drive all the way to Summit (along a highway known for deadly accidents) to score their drugs rather than to just walk there?

Anonymous said...

OK. Explain. Meth labs in NW Crossing? People don't buy $600,000 houses to run meth labs. They buy cheap-ass houses for that.

Are you saying that high school kids are going to hide a meth lab in these puny, expensive houses and their parents won't notice?

Anonymous said...

-

ABOUT METH LABS IN HOUSES. Huge problem in places with lots of empty subdivisions now is that people are buying suburban houses and growing marijuana in them. Meth labs tend to stink, so maybe not such a big problem.

But why would drug manufacturers/growers/dealers set up shop in housing developments? Because it's become so damn easy to buy a house. $600K? No problem except a big mortgage payment, which a well-organized drug operation can easily cover. No money down, stated income, neighbors are all new and don't know each other, people moving in and out, lots of absentee-owned homes and transient renters in the neighborhood who don't care as much... it could happen in Northwest Crossing.

Stereotypically the drug people do their thing on some barbed-wire-surrounded acreage, but nowadays it's much easier and cheaper to buy a house, and fewer questions are asked.

Anonymous said...

It just seems like it would be as easy to get going in one of the cheaper subdivs, like those on the east side or in the southwest.

Anonymous said...

Ahhhhhh, but wouldn't it just be appropriate for this to happen on the coveted west side of Bend and you know NW crossings has to be the epicenter for "this couldn't happen in our beautiful mixed use neighborhood." Well I guess we can add one more business to the very diverse mixed use idea. Now we have coffee shops (because there aren't enough of those in Bend, RE offices and the local meth bake shops, whahoo it is a true mixed use community.