Monday, July 2, 2007

Bend Bubble Bust Index v1.0: 94.9

Addendum July 9, 2007:

I'm waiting for stats on Q2 to come out before my next post, which usually comes out on Monday. I have updated my google spreadsheet w/ Doug Farmers data, which is here.
Some data of note: Months of inventory stands at 14.02 months, there were 545 new listings in June - second highest ever, and inventory sold was down 47.41% YoY, the largest decline in Dougs data set. It'll take a real Tammy Faye job to pretty up this pig, so I'll post as soon as Q2 comes out!

A few things this week. First Doug Farmer will soon be out with his data at Realty Times. The only good news in May was prices held firm, but volume imploded. Months of inventory was within 1% or so of it's all time high... in May! We should cycle between 5 and 8 on the months inventory, and May should be near the low end. For comparison, May 2006 had 814 active listings (Bend res), and 244 sales or 3.33 months inventory. May of this year had 1,511 actives, and only 121 sales, or 12.5 months inventory, or a 275% increase. Not good. In Sept 2005, we got as low as 1.23 months inventory!

I have also watched in stunned awe at the number of new listings & price "changes" (about 95+% are reductions) on BendBB. After awhile, it's like TV violence; you get so used to it, it doesn't seem like a big deal. But it IS a big deal, I guaran-damn-tee you that. Realtor.com put inventory at 2,594 for Bend at the end of the month. C.O.R. put Bend residential at 1,621, which should correspond very closely to what David Foster will report in a week or so. Homes with acreage were 288 vs 260 last month. Doesn't sound like much, but the average & median on acreage property is almost twice the price of homes in town. Acreage property is where I predict we'll see the worst beatings in prices over the next few years.

The Bulletin has been largely dead for a few weeks. But on Thursday, they put out a piece that really burns my ass, "Affordable condos downtown?". Apparently the City of Bend gave a Redmond developer, Housing Works, a sweetheart deal on the land next to the parking garage amounting to a half mill, for the sole & specific purpose of building affordable apartments. That's the sole reason they got a break on the price. In the boondoggle of the decade, they went to the City & basically said that instead of renting apartments at $435 to $590/mo., they are taking 1/4th of the units condo. Monthly cost? Probably about $1,800/mo., or more than a triple. Bend City Councilors would obviously be outraged at such a bait-and-switch ripoff, right? After all, they haven't even broken ground, and they're breaking the deal? Let's hear what scathing remarks Councilor Linda Johnson had for these unscrupulous scumbags:

“That’s one of the reasons that I’m really supportive of this project because there simply isn’t a supply of affordable condominiums,” Councilor Linda Johnson said at the urban renewal board’s meeting June 20. “The fact that it’s a change from the original concept doesn’t trouble me at all.”

A lot of people write comments along the lines of, ""Hey, you're making up this whole 'Boss Hog' concept, like there is this horribly incestuous relationship between Bend real estate and City decision makers, and no such thing really exists. I mean, Come On!". OK, next time you want validation, just re-read Johnsons little comment. We are coming perilously close to subsidizing LOW INCOME HOUSING. BEM noted that the city is considering low/no interest loans to "spark" the construction industry here. Right. There is NO old-boy network throwing kickbacks to RE? Right! It will not be long before the city is building & buying overpriced, shoddily built crap, for the purpose of renting it out at massive losses. Go to Cabrini Green in Chicago to see how that works out. Take the Dan Ryan South out of the City and you'll see mile upon mile of burnt out abandoned low-income highrises. This is what Bend can turn into when RE interests become inextricably intertwined with City policy makers. And we're well on our way.

OK, on to the meat of the act. After looking at that CNN-Money survey of the most over & under valued cities in the U.S., I got to thinking about some sort of way to rank the speculative nature of individual towns. It's fairly difficult, as the data is often incorrect and the time periods do not correspond. For instance, you might find Bends median home price or population for a specific time period, but not find it for another town. This makes it hard to come up with a reliable index for measuring just how overblown some markets are with respect to others. Plus the actual ratios of data, and how they're "compiled" has to be a pretty subjective exercise. Even the CNN-Money survey is itself, pretty damn subjective.

All those caveats aside, I still thought it would be a good idea, if only to get a rough feeling for where Bend stands in relation to other RE markets around the country. So I chose the following cities for comparison:

Bend, Wichita, Naples FL, Dayton, and Charlotte.

Bend and Naples are at the higher end of the speculative rainbow, while Wichita is less so. Dayton & Charlotte are just middle-of-the-road cities that I more or less pulled out of the air. First of all, the stats I'll be using:

2006 Population:
Bend: 75,290
Wichita: 354,900
Naples: ~26,250
Dayton OH: 162,844
Charlotte NC: 584,053

I found conflicting info regard Naples population, with Wikipedia stating it had about 21,000 people as of 2000, and several sources saying that it had grown 25% from 2000 to 2006, so the figure I use is extrapolated, but should be fairly accurate (I hope).

Next, the median home prices:
Bend: $351,978
Wichita: $99,100
Naples: $383,300
Dayton OH: $119,500
Charlotte NC: $153,000

Next, median family income:
Bend: $47,775
Wichita: $42,651
Naples: $72,300
Dayton OH: $41,550
Charlotte NC: $46,119

Next, Median Gross Rent:
Bend: $833
Wichita: $593
Naples: $940
Dayton OH: $585
Charlotte NC: $732

Next: total number of homes (and bare land) for sale, per Realtor.com:
Bend: 2,597 (962)
Wichita: 2,477 (303)
Naples: 12,402 (2,609)
Dayton OH: 5,816 (255)
Charlotte NC: 10,799 (551)

That is the raw data, in all it's flawed glory. Again, I had to estimate some of the numbers to "adjust" forward or backward a year, but I adjusted all the data points by the same amount when it was necessary.

Now comes more subjective thinking: Just what metrics should make up a "Bubble Index"? A few that come to mind are a lot of homes for sale given the population, very high mortgage to rent ratios, high amounts of local income going to mortgage payments, unusually high appreciation. Here's a list for some metro areas on HousingTracker.net: Percent of income required to make mortgage payment on median home, ratio of mortgage to rent payments, price to income, and price to rent. These sound reasonable, so I'll use these, and I'm also going to throw in a few of my own: Number of homes for sale per 1,000 people, average appreciation during the "bubble years", and also the percent of raw land for sale compared to homes. I won't weight that last one much, but it is my opinion that bubbles culminate in huge amounts of land going up for sale.

OK, so the mortgage payment on a median home @ 7%, 30 yr.:
Bend: $2,341.72
Wichita: $659.31
Naples: $2,550.10
Dayton OH: $795.04
Charlotte NC: $1,017.91

Here we get to the nitty gritty, and I'm going to "normalize" the end data in the following way: The highest data point will be normalized to 100, and the low to 0 by taking each data point, subtracting the low, and dividing by the range between the high data point and the low. This is just so that each measurement can be normalized in a way that makes sense with all the other disparate types of data. May sound complicated, but you'll see it's pretty simple (it all boils down to percentiles).

First, % of income required to make mortgage payments (Bubble Index weighting: 20%):
Bend: ($28,100/$47,775) - 58.8%
Wichita: ($7,911.72/$42,651) - 18.5%
Naples: ($30,601.20/$72,300) - 42.3%
Dayton OH: ($9,540.48/$41,550) - 23%
Charlotte NC: ($12214.92/$46,119) - 26.5%

According to percentiles, we have: Bend 100%, Naples 59%, Charlotte 20%, Dayton 11% Wichita 0%.

In this area Bend is a big loser, being less affordable than even Naples, which is saved by having an enormously affluent population, such as average per capita income for males over $100K, and more millionaires per capita than any city in the US.

Next, ratio of mortgage to rent payments (Bubble Index weighting: 20%)
Bend: ($2,341.72/$833) - 2.8
Wichita: ($659.31/$593) -1.1
Naples: ($2,550.10/$940) - 2.7
Dayton OH: ($795.04/$585) - 1.4
Charlotte NC: ($1,017.91/$732) - 1.4

Percentiles: Bend 100%, Naples 94%, Dayton 18%, Charlotte 18%, Wichita 0%.

Again, not surprising that Bend and Naples are very unaffordable when comparing buy vs rent.

Next, home prices to income (Bubble Index weighting: 20%)
Bend: ($351,978/$47,775) - 7.37
Wichita: ($99,100/$42,651) - 2.32
Naples: ($383,300/$72,300) - 5.3
Dayton OH: ($119,500/$41,550) - 2.9
Charlotte NC: ($153,000/$46,119) - 3.3

Percentiles: Bend 100%, Naples 59%, Charlotte 19%, Dayton 11%, Wichita 0%.

Again Bend ranks poorly when compared to area incomes.

Next, home prices to rent (Bubble Index weighting 15%)
Bend: ($351,978/$833) - 422.5 months
Wichita: ($99,100/$593) - 167.1 months
Naples: ($383,300/$940) - 407.8 months
Dayton OH: ($119,500/$585) - 204.3
Charlotte NC: ($153,000/$732) - 209.0 months

Percentiles: Bend 100%, Naples 94%, Charlotte 16%, Dayton 15%, Wichita 0%.

Again, no surprise to Bendites that renting is a screaming deal compared to buying.

Next, we'll look at number of homes for sale per 1,000 people (Bubble Index weighting 10%)
Bend: (2,597/75.29) - 34.5
Wichita (2,477/354.9) - 7
Naples: (12,402/26.25) - 472.5
Dayton OH: (5,816/162.844) - 35.7
Charlotte NC: (10,799/584.053) - 18.5

Percentiles: Naples 100%, Dayton 6%. Bend 6%, Charlotte 2%, Wichita 0%

The number of homes for sale in Naples is just incredible! Almost 1 house for sale for every 2 people!

Next, the average of the highest & lowest YoY price appreciation, measured by OFHEO - Q1 2004 thru Q4 2006 (Bubble Index weighting 10%)
Bend: (+6.47%, +36.39%) - +21.43%
Wichita: (+2.6%, +4.49%) - +3.55%
Naples: (+7.29%, +40.31%) - +23.8%
Dayton OH: (+1.17%, +4.41%) - +2.8%
Charlotte NC: (+2.15%, +8.86%) - +5.51%

Percentiles: Naples 100%, Bend 89%, Charlotte 13%, Wichita 4%, Dayton 0%.

Finally, we'll cap it off with the percentage of land for sale vs homes (Bubble Index weighting 5%)
Bend: (962/2,597) - 37%
Wichita: (303/2,477) - 12%
Naples: (2,609/12,402) - 21%
Dayton OH: (255/5816) - 4%
Charlotte NC: (551/10,799) - 5%

Percentiles: Bend 100%, Naples 52%, Wichita 24%, Charlotte 3%, Dayton 0%.

FINALLY! We boil it down to brass tacks and get our Bubble Index numbers for each of these 5 cities:

BEND: 94.9%
NAPLES: 79.1%
CHARLOTTE: 15.45%
DAYTON: 10.85%
WICHITA: 1.6%

If we then normalize these figures into percentiles, we get:

Bend: 100%
Naples: 83%
Charlotte: 15%
Dayton: 10%
Wichita: 0%

I think it can be said with little prejudice that Bend is not just expensive, it is almost certainly the most overpriced home market in the U.S. with respect to fundamentals. Naples has higher prices, but Naples natives are an incredibly affluent lot, with hot & cold running millionaires.

Some people will get their panties in a bunch over each & every little thing with respect to how items on this list were measured & constructed. That's OK, it's meant as an exercise, not hyper-sharpened pencil-point accuracy, something that is basically impossible anyway. My own belief if that Dayton & Charlotte are representative of the "average" U.S. city, and you can see they have score WELL BELOW Bend. They are far more affordable, experienced less appreciation, and have local incomes that will probably support local home prices. In fact, Charlotte appreciation is higher in recent quarters than it was during the "Bubble Years".

My prediction is that Bend will simply revert to "normal". The problem with that is "normal" is down about 40-50% from here. There is no possible way Bend prices can stay levitated so far beyond fundamentals. Just can't happen. For Bend to stay where it is, incomes would have to explode higher, more than double. Not going to happen...

Look at the ratios of mortgage to rent payments, or prices to income: We're twice what other cities are, or more. It takes almost 60% of income to make the principal & interest payment ONLY on a median home mortgage in Bend! There's NOTHING LEFT after that! No food, no toys, no fun. Bend is a town of people who should be having fun, and came here for fun, but they are mortgage slaves. And many will find when they've had enough, that when it comes time to sell, they will either face paying much of what they've earned working in Bend to get out of their house, or foreclosure.

If you are thinking of buying, think again: Bend is so far out of touch with reality, that it'd take an unparalleled implosion to even bring us with in eyeshot of normalcy. I don't think Bend is going down because I want it to, that's just a weird idea. I think it's going down because I don't see anyway it can stay up.

215 comments:

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Anonymous said...

Hopefully people will soon realize that Bend is broke. In the meantime let's all attend the pet-parade and dress up as City-Councilors and do dog & pony shows for Redmond Developers. Perhaps they'll take notice.

For too long the developers & builders have been running this town. Now the game is over, and we're at an inflection point. The City-Councilors have no idea what to do, except to do what they did yesterday. The developers and builders are all in debt to the hilt, but cannot walk away.

EVERY developer/builder in Bend will now be wining & dining the City Council about buying into their project. Some lucky builder/developer will get to cash out HIGH and WALK, most will lose their investments. The City which means US the taxpayer will get the bill.

The developer/builder is the confident to the City like Rasputin of Russia, they'll continue to tell the City that all is well, and the city people will be believe them. As we all know politicians tend to be very dumb, and very dependent upon people liking them, and the only people that give them the time of day are developers/builders.

At this point in the juncture ONLY shame & humiliation will put the City back on track.

Thus I suggest we have posters for the Pet Parade that say "City-Council Just say NO to bailing out Bend Developers & Builders". If its silly enough even the Source & Bulletin will pick it up.

Anonymous said...

The following get's RIGHT to the point of what is going on in BEND-LAND that mythical place where the rich go to spend their money.

It turns out that RE/MTG & construction are now having Wall-Street put together a new breed of CDO based NOT on SUBPRIME housing, but on MUNI-Bonds. These muni-bonds will be packaged, and sliced and sold as "TAX FREE CDO'S", and of course there is NO RISK.

Now we know what's going on in Bend, our City-Council will be selling MUNI's to no end, and getting tons of cash to bail-out our Developer/Builder. This new game will go until 'investors' discover that the community is bankrupt.

Given that MTG/CDO money is now gone, this is the SOURCE of money. Thus this is why we'll now see cozy deals, tons of new sewers, Juniper-Ridge, expect to see Bend put into MASSIVE DEBT. This is NOW where the EASY-MONEY is, and you know, its not "build and they'll come", its borrow and spend.


***

States, Localities May Sell Record Amount of Bonds: Joe Mysak

By Joe Mysak

June 29 (Bloomberg) -- States and municipalities are likely to sell more bonds this year than ever before.

That's right, welcome to another annual record, just two years after the market topped the $400 billion mark. In 2005, municipal bond issuers sold $408 billion in bonds, according to the Bond Buyer newspaper.

Issuers have sold more than $200 billion in bonds so far this year, and we're only at the halfway point. Keep in mind that the $200 billion mark was only broached in 1985, when tax reform sparked a rush to market, and that $200 billion used to be seen as a pretty good year.

Even allowing for a sluggish July and August, and that hasn't been a given in this market for years, don't be surprised if yearly volume tops $425 billion.

The reasons are many. Issuers are coming to realize that 4.60 percent, which is about what top-rated municipalities are paying to borrow money for 20 years, is still pretty cheap. That's well above the recent record low of 4.03 percent posted by the Bond Buyer 20-General Obligation Bond Index last December.

It's axiomatic in the market that higher interest rates choke off refinancing. And yet, in 1997, most issuers were paying interest rates that were higher still -- 5.50 percent plus to borrow money. Most municipal bonds are callable 10 years after they are sold.

Benefits Bonds

So the municipal market will still see a lot of refinancing. In a big year, this typically accounts for anywhere from a quarter to a third of bond issuance. In 1993, for example, refinancing comprised 51 percent of total sales.

Municipalities are also going to keep borrowing to pay for infrastructure construction and maintenance, the usual roads, bridges, sewers and airports.

And of course there's so-called other post-employment benefits, the term attached to the health-care coverage promised to public-sector retirees by states and municipalities, and just now being tallied up by those entities.

The total bill there has been estimated at anywhere between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. States and localities are unlikely to sell bonds to pay for the whole thing, because figuring OPEB liability, like pension costs, is an imprecise art. But they will sell bonds for a portion of it.

That may or may not be a good idea -- I'd prefer them to make their regular pension and benefit contributions -- but it will happen.

Question of Demand

There's going to be refinancing, and new-money bond sales to pay for the nation's fabric, and bond sales to shore up pensions and other liabilities. The big question is whether there is going to be continued demand for municipal bonds.

There hasn't been mention of a glut of municipal bonds in years. If anything, you almost have to wonder if supply will keep up with demand.

The other week I wrote about Branson, Missouri -- yes, the place the uncharitable would call the home of has-been music theater -- selling bonds to build an airport, basically on spec. Top yields on the bonds due in 2037 and subject to the alternative minimum tax was 6.20 percent.

That's not a lot of yield in exchange for a lot of risk. Then I saw the Chicago O'Hare International Airport's $108 million special-facility revenue bond sold to refinance a 1994 issue used to build some facilities for American Airlines.

The bonds, which are secured by the airline, are rated Caa1 by Moody's Investors Service, actual, bona fide, junk. The 43- page official statement contains nine pages of risk factors, mentioning the fierce competition in the industry, the price of fuel, reduced pricing power, labor costs that are higher than the competition, and bankruptcy. You get the point. The 5.50 percent bonds due in 2030 were priced to yield 5.64 percent.

Bundles of Bonds

Then there was this interesting little Bloomberg News story: ``More Tax-Exempt CDOs to Follow Merrill, UBS Deals, Moody's Says.'' The story said that bankers are working on at least eight new tax-exempt collateralized debt obligations, transactions which batch together hundreds of millions of dollars in securities and then are cut up and sold in pieces with different yields based on risk. I bet the people who put together things like this love the variety (and relative yield) represented by the American Airlines bonds.

You've heard about CDOs. They're sort of at the heart of the subprime meltdown. But these would be tax-exempt CDOs, built with municipal bonds. So what does that mean? One thing: more demand for municipal bonds, in addition to the mutual funds, and hedge funds, and individual investors who are clamoring for the things.

This is going to be a big, big year in Muniland.

Anonymous said...

This all reminds me of when Huey Long built the Tower-of-Bable in Baton Rouge, LA. Back during the depression.

Bend will continue to build, and keep construction busy and BUY all the condo's at the HIGH price to keep the condo-whore developers above water.

No problem just pass the cost to the taxpayer as long-term debt.

No problem, because in twenty years there will be a million tax payers in Bend.

No problem because urban densification will tenfold the taxbase in Bend.

No problem, because all that pumice needs to get covered with concrete to make central-oregon beautiful.

Bend Economy Man said...

Paul you are on-message.

One thing that's worth hitting again and again is that when we talk about a bubble burst, we're not talking about a fringe theory. We're talking about a statistical certainty.

The incredible outcome, nay, the impossible outcome, would be if prices somehow stay high in the face of mile upon mile and acre upon acre of unsold inventory and developable land, with lending guidelines that exclude a large proportion of prospective buyers and prices that exclude all first-time buyers.

Add to that the shutting-off of the out-of-state equity refugee conveyor belt and a general sentiment spreading throughout the country that one home is enough and residential real estate investment is played out, and who are we going to sell to? It would literally take a flotilla of idiotic millionaires to keep the local RE market afloat.


The fun part is that there are still some true believers out there who think that the Bend boom is only taking a brief breather and that the market will turn around any day. Bless you folks, because otherwise we bubbleheads would just be talking to ourselves! And, of course, anyone thinking of buying real estate in Bend. Apparently a hundred or so people are still buying houses every month and keeping the medians up, so there's work to do.

Anonymous said...


“The City has great dreams for
Juniper Ridge and respects Les Schwab as a regional partner. She understands that the Council
is being asked not only to vote for Bend, but to vote for the region. The vote is difficult for her
because Council has been held to secrecy and been asked by the employer to put relationships
with regional partners at risk. Council has only been given an hour to review the agreement and
to discuss it.” - Linda Johnson December 12, 2006

http://www.ci.bend.or.us/city_hall/meeting_minutes/docs/minutes12_12_06_City_Council_Special_Meeting.pdf


This isn't the first time 'linda' has voted with BOSS-HOG, but written a caveat to cover her ROYAl-FUCKING ASS.

The fact is, and has been said a dozen times, that Bend is is a city of dis-engaged fucking morons.

Bend deserves in every way the government they have.

How about it BEM & IHTBYB how about taking the above PDF apart and analyzing what is SAID versus what is DONE. The fact is OUR LOADED City-Council everytime there is a vote they cover their ASS with the people, but vote for the HOGS.

Anonymous said...

The fact is OUR hoss-hog LOADED City-Council everytime there is a vote they cover their ASS with the people, but vote for the HOGS.

Votes are what count. Our the City Council running for congress? They sure vote and talk as such.

Anonymous said...

Comparing Bend to Wichita is like comparing Lake Tahoe to Flint MI. You're not even in the same galaxy pal. Yes, Bend is overpriced...Newsflash! All of America is OVERPRICED. That's why we're having a national scale "price adjustment". If only Bend were unafordable why all the sub-prime meltdown nationally? I find it interesting that Bend is not suffering the subprime issue on the scale so many "affordable" places are facing right now. i.e. Flint and Denver metro areas.

Anonymous said...

Bend isn't going down. House prices will go down, but since renting is such a smokin' deal there is no real problem for anyone but people trying to sell or people who bought in the last two years subprime. Everyone else is fine. Prices will dip, and then things will return to normal in a few years.

Anonymous said...

BTW... renting in the Bay Area is also a "smokin' deal" compared to buying, but home prices aren't falling. There is a psychological component to owning I guess.

Anonymous said...


I find it interesting that Bend is not suffering the subprime issue on the scale so many "affordable" places are facing right now.


Define 'suffering'.

The MTG's don't reset until fall of this year, the average is 1of5 ( 20% late ) NOW, late this fall late-mtg will be +25% this is a statistical fact. Then in another year they get booted.

Rent's right now in PDX are starting to sky-rocket.

The difference between cali & bend is people want to move to Oregon. The problem is its the same people, .e.g. people over their heads. When they move to Oregon, they'll bring the their same set of problems they have in cali, e.g. spending more than you make.

A lot of people seem to think you can come to Bend, and enjoy the cheap-rent, start a new life, and get a job. The people here no that if you work here, you don't have time to play, and that is if you can find a job. There is a reason that rent has ALWAYS been cheap in Bend.

Anonymous said...

Rents aren't skyrocketing in Portland.
They're running specials.

Anonymous said...


Rents aren't skyrocketing in Portland.
They're running specials.

It's very hard to rent a house in PDX right now, tons of Cali's are moving up this summer, and they ALL want houses.

People are now asking $1500/mo for a 2bd in PDX, where it was $1k/mo last summer, thats a BIG increase.

Most people have gotten out of renting, and sold their $100k homes for $400k to calis, inner apt's have been converted to condo's.

Yes, you can rent SHIT apt's in Tualatin and Beaverton, but NOBODY wants to live their. Everybody wants inner SE, where you can walk to eat and drink.

Yes, APT's are ALWAYS running specials, and so are condo's. NOBODY wants this SHIT.

Anonymous said...


There is no real problem for anyone but people trying to sell or people who bought in the last two years subprime.


That is the MAJORITY of all sales 2002->2006 that drove up prices 100%, and now they'll go back down 50%.

The difference is this time there will be no money to buy the bargains, because 'easy-money' is OVER.

Anonymous said...

Let's see. So if a 200K house (2002 price) went up to 400K (2007 price), then you expect it to go back down to 200K as if the last 5 years hadn't happened at all?

I don't think so. Now, it might go down to 300K, which is 50% of the price gain.

I'd say an extreme drop would bring it to 255K, which is about the same price as if it appreciated about 5% per year over 5 years.

Anonymous said...


Smokin Deals here is SF, PDX, & Bend
SanFran avg for 2 bedroom $2400/mo, PDX $1500/mo, Bend $1k/mo

Note, for SF there really are no 2br homes for rent, mostly just apt's.

I think more important is cost, SF would be over $800k, pdx is about $350k ( if your lucky ), and of course bend ( $250k ) for purchase.

Bend is most affordable, great place to move an raise a family.


** SF
Jul- 2 $2295 / 2br - Victorian 2BR Conveniently Located in Pacific Heights (pacific heights)

Jul- 2 $2495 / 2br - Charming 2BR Apartment in Fair Oaks, Noe Valley (noe valley)

Jul- 2 $2395 / 2br - Newly Remodeled Sunny 2BR Top Floor Unit (USF / panhandle) img

Jul- 2 $2600 / 2br - Cozy Condo in Near Downtown Mountain View (mountain view) pic

** PDX

Jun-28 $1595 / 2br - HAWTHORNE HOUSE FOR RENT (4333 SE Madison)

** Bend

Jul- 1 $850 / 2br - Between Downtown and Old Mill (Westside) pic

Jun-29 $1095 / 2br - Spacious house in West Bend!! (316 NW Delaware, Bend)

Anonymous said...

Below is from 'craigs', search for bend/200k-300k, note that average is $250k, and you can get a lot of home, close-in. Smokin-Deals the FACT is prices HAVE GONE DOWN, if you want to SELL
Jul- 2 $299900 Acreage with Awesome View/Great Home/Huge Shop/Room For Horses (Bend,or) pic

Jul- 2 $295500 Brand New home close to Old Mill and community park (650 Roosevelt)



Jul- 2 $279000 Gorgeous 2.7 acre m/l with 3 Mountain Views in Bend (Bend) pic

Jul- 1 $257000 End of cul-de-sac location (NE Bend) pic

Jul- 1 $235000 Perfect starter, rental or vacation home (NE Bend)

Jul- 1 $269900 Great Home in Great Neighborhood (SE Bend) pic

Anonymous said...


So if a 200K house (2002 price) went up to 400K (2007 price), then you expect it to go back down to 200K as if the last 5 years hadn't happened at all?


A home that sold NEW in 1999 sold for $120k, those homes had an ASK in Summer of 2006 of $450k, today they can be had for $260k. These homes had an ASK in 2002 of $180k.

They'll most like go down farther, but the point is they're already almost down 50% today.

We have already discussed the MEDIAN doesn't tell much, what matters is what people are asking. It's probably best to use craigs, because these folks are desperate to sell, and you typically don't see the RE commission built-in the ASK.

The prices have already gone down 50%, the real BUST-BUST will occur in the next 1-2 years when the reset occurs, and then the following foreclosure, then the houses will go back to the $180-120k window.

The 2005-2006 gain is ALREADY completely gone, like it NEVER happened. Note that the whole subprime gig was created as a reaction to 911, thus you need to go back to 2001. From there forward was sub-prime 5/1, and they'll all be resetting in the next six-months, and then the foreclosures will hit the roof next year. Then the prices will really collapse.

Anonymous said...


The 2005-2006 gain is ALREADY completely gone, like it NEVER happened. Note that the whole subprime gig was created as a reaction to 911, thus you need to go back to 2001. From there forward was sub-prime ARM 5/1, and they'll all be resetting in the next six-months, and then the foreclosures will hit the roof next year.


Post 911 easy-money, is was created the bubble of post 2001. That money is no longer availble, thus there will be nobody stepping in to purchase the homes while they fall in price back to the pre 2001 price levels. The last POST of this blog clearly demonstrated the price window of $180k->$120k.

Today the rental value of a $350k 'median' bend home is $1k/mo, which is a least value of $120k, so ALREADY in bend rental pricing reflects the true value.

In my neighborhood I'm very familar with price history going back 30+ years. A few post 1999 $120k homes sold in 2005/2006 for $450k, and those that didn't are still for sale. Those that could lower price to below $300k have sold.

Those that bought post 2001 for zero down cannot sell, and simply must wait for foreclosure.

Today in Bend 2007 June, if you have 20% down, and shop for around $250k, you can buy just about any where you want. Note that two years years ago almost everyone was asking almost $500k, and now those that bought pre 2001, are very glad to get $250k. Those that bought post 2001 with zero-down, must either wait a generation for price appreciation, or wait for foreclosure.

Anonymous said...


Those that bought post 2001 with zero-down, must either wait a generation for price appreciation


A generation bullshit.

**

The problem here is easy-money. With the CDO collapse, sub-prime and easy-money will take at least a generation for amnesia to set in.

There will be NO easy-money for a long-long time.

Anonymous said...


Will the building boom end?


No, builders will continue to build, the city has already approved 3,000 sq-ft lots. They can bring in 'kit-homes' from China.

There will be many sub $200k home in Bend next year, the building boom will continue.

The Bend economic is based on RE, always has, and always will. The psychological need of 'owning your own home', is well established. Given that they cannot sell condos, they'll build dense little manufactured homes next to each other in Bend, just like they do in Redmond today.

Anonymous said...

"The 2005-2006 gain is ALREADY completely gone"

No it isn't.

No houses in the neighborhood I bought in late 2004 that are currently on sale are anywhere near the 2004 level yet.

Anonymous said...


No houses in the neighborhood I bought in late 2004 that are currently on sale are anywhere near the 2004 level yet.


By Definition, that just means that everyone in your hood, bought zero-down, ARM-5/1, ... It means 1-2 years and all your hood will be foreclosure.

Please provide a zip, and +-Area of you hood, and I'll do a quick search for a fire-sale, I'll bet they exist and you don't know....

Anonymous said...

Tonight is Deschutes Happy hour night. Cheap pints and $5 boogers.


No houses in the neighborhood I bought in late 2004 that are currently on sale are anywhere near the 2004 level yet.


That is a baited statement. The majority of homes bought in 2004 were subprime, zero-down, ARM, and thus cannot be sold for less than purchase price. This statement simply means that you live in what will be in 1-2 years a foreclosure ghetto.

Anonymous said...

The majority of homes bought in 2004 were subprime, zero-down, ARM, and thus cannot be sold for less than purchase price.

That is an unsubstantiated claim, and I would bet that it is false. At least this part is false: "and thus cannot be sold for less than purchase price."

Anonymous said...

I'm not going to tell you where I live, but they are still asking more than 100K more than I paid ON EVERY MODEL STILL AVAILABLE and there aren't that many. Not only that, a slightly larger model than mine recently sold for 150K more than I paid in 2004.

Anonymous said...


I'm not going to tell you where I live, but they are still asking more than 100K more than I paid ON EVERY MODEL STILL AVAILABLE and there aren't that many. Not only that, a slightly larger model than mine recently sold for 150K more than I paid in 2004.


Not even going to give us XC streets, they're ASKING 100K more than "I paid", but nothing is selling and nobody is buying, ... If I tell you where its at I have to kill you, ...

Anonymous said...


"and thus cannot be sold for less than purchase price."


If you "paid" $500k zero-down, and today its worth $400k, you cannot SELL, that which you don't own.

You can ONLY sell if your over-water, your can NOT sell if your under water. Most zero-down homes are under water.

When the resets come, as the homes were all bought on ARM-5/1, then they have to re-appraise, that's when they cannot refinance because the comp's that have sold are down -50%.

If you Mr. Delusion, had a cross-street, then we could verify with DIAL & craigs that which is going on historically in his/her hood.

Anonymous said...


No houses in the neighborhood I bought in late 2004 that are currently on sale are anywhere near the 2004 level yet. I cannot tell you where the neighborhood is, because it doesn't exist.


I have some Bend Real Estate to sell you.

Anonymous said...


If you "paid" $500k zero-down, and today its worth $400k, you cannot SELL, that which you don't own.

Yes, but you can ASK anything.


Yes, you can ask for anything, but what you will most likely get is a foreclosure.

Anonymous said...

In the meantime let's all attend the pet-parade and dress up as City-Councilors and do dog & pony shows for Redmond Developers.

*

I want to dress up as a lapdog, sort of like tony blair. Does anyone have any ideas?

Anonymous said...


If you "paid" $500k zero-down, and today its worth $400k, you cannot SELL, that which you don't own.


That is not true, all you have to do is put in $100k of your own cash at closing and you can sell your $500k house for $400k. :)

Anonymous said...

Only an idiot posts their address on a public blog. I have no reason to lie for I don't sell or invest in real estate and I'm not trying to sell my house.

Anonymous said...

You're just trying to make yourself feel better for buying an overpriced house. I'll bet you have a funky loan too. Let me guess, an arm or a neg am. When it comes time to refinance your house because your loan is going toxic, you had better hope it appraises for enough. I know several people who bought new homes and went to refi into a 30 year fixed and couldn't because their house didn't appraise for enough. Keep telling yourself how everythings ok.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

I keep checking Doug Farmer, but he's not there yet. I wonder if we're seeing the first Summer without the VAST artificial support of monster CA appreciation, low rates, zero barriers to loans, and of course the largest RE bubble of all-time.

When all that is stripped away, it makes you wonder What is the sustainable RE core for Bend? I think that some of these weird RE ideas will fade away is a foregone conclusion. But what's the underlying core volume? We haven't been at that level in years.

And I know these statistical posts are not everyones favorite, and I go a little overboard in trying to make the figures as clear as possible, but if you really look at where Bend stands in relation to other towns, it is just so out in the stratosphere, it's not even funny.

In terms of affordability, we are just off the charts, with a larger proportion of income going to mortgage payments than any city I could find. There's no town even close. This is one of the most unaffordable places on Earth! And the PRIME industry is getting cut in half.

I will be looking with much interest for Doug Farmers data. David Foster comes out soon after, and C.O.R. will publish the Q2 PDF. I still think volumes will go up some and prices down a bit. I don't really think there'll be a catastrophic implosion, there are still too many true believers. And people just don't want to give up on Summer gettin' it sold for 'em.

But it'll just take a few very desperate marginal sellers to bring down the market. And BendBB's quasi-daily posts on price reductions & new listings... I mean, man they are huge & frequent!

Maybe the accompanying Bulletin piece to Q2 stats will unleash the floodgates... maybe? I think there's got to be a sea-change of that type to make everyone in this town, especially the very clueless that think All Is Well, that things are Not Well, and if they want to sell, they will have to take a Big Cut.

Unless June is a total disaster, Q2 will not be down, but Q3 WILL. The Bulletin will be able to point to near-zero % change price comparisons, but volume is going to get killed. I think when people see that they will not be able to borrow on their house to Pay For Their House, many will finally be FORCED to sell. This town is addicted to appreciation, and people have been counting on their mortgage broker as much as they have their employer to put food on the table.

It's NOT a question of IF it's going down, just WHEN and HOW FAR.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Hmmm.. regarding homes where they are asking $150K more than they were in 2004: That's probably still well possible to sell MUCH of what was bought here in 2004 for a profit. 2004 was miles away in terms of appreciation. The median in Feb 2004 was $185,255! We doubled from there.

I think what has really changed is volume. The RE market in Bend has suddenly gone illiquid. And illiquid markets "can't be trusted". May for instance, was just so weird even Realtors were confused; price up & volumes way down. Illiquid markets have a way of being wrong in comparison to the time surrounding them. They also have a way of coinciding with falling prices. Stocks almost always take HUGE plunges over liquidity problems. In fact illiquidity is usually The Result of some unusual event, which then culminates in a price implosion.

I'm telling you, people will start getting spooked by the idea that they can't sell their house, At All. That after markdown after markdown, No One Calls.

Anonymous said...


I'm telling you, people will start getting spooked by the idea that they can't sell their house, At All. That after markdown after markdown, No One Calls.


We hear a lot of ficticious bitches talk about how ASK prices are high, but the fact is if you didn't or couldn't low-ball your offer back in winter of 2006 your fucked, and if you couldn't sell back in dec-feb your fucked now.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps someone can help, because I just had one too many pints at Deschutes, it was a good eve, all the metro-sexuals were there, bendbb had a fairy-ring going all night in the guys head.

I just read a few days ago that 3/4 of all people think they're house is worth what they paid, and 1/2 think its worth more, but denial is a major part of bubble-bursts, which is why contrarian thought is so persuasive, .i.e. most of the people are wrong most of the time.

Anonymous said...


Only an idiot posts their address on a public blog. I have no reason to lie for I don't sell or invest in real estate and I'm not trying to sell my house.


We're not asking you to lie, just to lay still while we crawl through your window.

Anonymous said...


When it comes time to refinance your house because your loan is going toxic, you had better hope it appraises for enough.


50% of all appraisals nation-wide are not appraising, which means the buyer has to kick in more cash to close.

Easy-Money is gone, easy stated-income loans are gone, zero-down is gone, ... ergo all the BUYERS are GONE.

Anonymous said...


I want to dress up as a lapdog, sort of like tony blair. Does anyone have any ideas?


BendBB's gimp-suit comes to mind, but you had better wash it, if you borrow it.

Anonymous said...


Maybe the accompanying Bulletin piece to Q2 stats will unleash the floodgates... maybe?


This is golf season, which is why there are so many metro-sexual men. Has anyone ever seen a babe near a golf-course.

I almost puked tonight at Deschutes all I heard was golf talk.

The kind of people that Bend now has, the kind of people that our marketing geniuse's have brought in, they're not going to tell the truth about the fact that they got financially hosed. This is the kind of town that will just keep smiling.

What do you expect with 50.1%++ cali's??

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

A good article on MSN today:

The repo man is getting busy


"The shorthand is that for years we've lived beyond our means, reflected in record debt levels, and now comes the paying phase," said Christian Weller, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank in Washington, D.C. "Car loans have expanded as fast as mortgages, and in terms of the categories of what people borrow for, it is the second-largest.

"It fits the overall picture that all the economic-distress measures are trending upward."

Repossession agents in areas hit by foreclosures say they've been picking up vehicles both from people struggling to keep their homes and from those now left without work: construction workers, pavers, landscapers and real-estate agents.

"It is actually stunning the number of cars we're taking from people who are supporting the local real-estate market," said J. Patrick Altes, the president of Falcon International, a recovery agency with offices throughout Florida. "It's almost the type of thing where we see it and you wonder if anyone else sees it. . . . It's like they turned off the spigot."

Anonymous said...

Interesting amateur discussion. BTW, without "Cali's" or folks from anywhere other than Eugene this entire state is a zero with the edges rubbed off. Native Oregano's are about as rare and productive as Yeti, hisself. C'mon blokes, give this a rest.

Anonymous said...

without "Cali's" or folks from anywhere other than Eugene this entire state is a zero with the edges rubbed off. Native Oregano's are about as rare and productive as Yeti,

I completely agree, without cali's there would be no ...

1.) Thuggery cop force
2.) water park in redmond
3.) franklin-crossing,
4.) nw crossing, ..
5.) pronghorn,
6.) broken-top goof club

Virtually every production thing know to man an animial would be absent from orygun if not for cali's and NY money { investors }.

Every sacred, everything we hold dear. If not for cali's we would be back to 'poverty with a view', but now we have lost our view, our job, ... but we have all the beautiful people in their SUV's to look at.

Anonymous said...


The repo man is getting busy


Nobody, and I mean nobody in this forum should ever bitch that they cannot find a good $7+/hr job in this town. All these SUV's, you just know they're going to get repo'd.

Pawn shops, and REPO jobs will be the fastest growing biz in Central-Oregon.

One question - where in the hell are the cars going to be sent? Nobody wants a used SUV. The price is completely gone. Oh wait, they can be shipped to the middle east and asia.

Anonymous said...


Native Oregano's are about as rare and productive as Yeti


Productivity -

1.) Native Forestry gone by the 1950's post WWII liquidation by NY bankers.
2.) NW fishery Gone by 70's

Post 70's Orygun saw a decline, and 83 recession killed most jobs, after 86 cheap land brought them in.

Originally people came to Oregon to log, farm, fish, and hunt for gold.

The logs are gone, the farms are being converted to tracts and goof-courses, the fish are gone, and the gold was hardly ever found except out near baker.

Even the injuns had a hard time making it in the pacific NW. Not exactly role models for the 'productive'.

Now of course the best people that money can buy run Oregon, and its a beautiful 'productive' place.

A place where any retarded white hair-lip with a cali license plate on his SUV can get rich.

Anonymous said...

Someone above made a comment about the market becoming illiquid - a good point. My Oregon Business mag has stats in its back section for May - Central Or. dollar value of transactions -30% from last year - Willamette Valley +12% (?). Building permits down 15% statewide for SFR, 70% for multifamily (looks like an outlier)

Anonymous said...

The "injuns" were doing just fine, thank you very much, until the Europeans brought them disease and alcohol, and stole their land.

Anonymous said...

The real contagion will be in the U.S. economy as resets and defaults hit hard in the already overextended housing markets of Las Vegas, Chicago and the rows of empty multi-story condos in Miami and Bend, Oregon.

What, for example, happens to the value of a house when the neighbour's has been repossessed after a default on a subprime loan?

This fall 1/2 of all MTG's from 2001+ reset, and most will not able to refi or pay the new MTG.

One in Five { 20% } are late now, expect almost 1/2 to be late by winter of 2007. During 2008 the courts will finally start evicting people. Yard work will cease in the spring of 2008.

We still have another year folks for the real fun.

Anonymous said...

Someone today talked about 'amateurs', so let me tell everyone here about 'amateurs'.

One of the models of the whole sub-prime deal was that foreclosure would occur, but that house's would continue to rise.

I'll repeat this, a lot of CDO bonds that were sold of 'BBB' and lower assume that the housing would continue to appreciate, and that subprime borrowers would be over their head and turn the home back to the bank, and the BOND-FUND ( true owners ) would get the difference.

What happened, and very little is discussed, is that to date its NOT the little trash guy that's giving homes back to the bank its been the RICH. It's been the 'AA' mcMansion beautiful-people seeing that the game is over, they're letting the house go back to the bank. All the models assumed that this would not happen.

The 'smartest' folks in the biz setup the easy-money game, and CDO's, and the model completely failed. This is exactly like LTCM where you had two nobel-economists, again the smartest people that money could buy and everyone in the game lost their ass.

It didn't take brains to FLIP, every idiot in Bend was flipping 2004-2006 at least it seemed. Most realtors I have ever known are idiots, and certainly the only requirement for being a MTG person is/was being fresh out of school.

Intelligence, and amateur versus pro has nothing to do with anything. It's all about denial. The party is over, and those that spent more than they earned are screwed, and those that didn't will survive.

Anonymous said...


The "injuns" were doing just fine, thank you very much, until the Europeans brought them disease and alcohol, and stole their land.


Notes about how PNW injuns lived written by Juan-De-Fuca's ( 1500's ) crew made it quite clear they were covered with dirt, lived in long-houses, and were not very attractive people. They were said to be so ugly that the crew was reluctant to rape them.

The cali's with their SUV's and superior productivity has made everyone beautiful.

p.s. we really need to define "productivity"

Anonymous said...

``No lender wants to own real estate, but at the same time you can't just unload these properties because you would send home prices into a freefall,''

Anonymous said...

``Dumping foreclosed properties back out on the market in a desperate manner actually worsens the situation because all your other borrowers, the ones who are paying their mortgages on time, are going to see their equity disappear as the fire-sale prices drag down everyone's values,''

Anonymous said...

Hmmm.. regarding homes where they are asking $150K more than they were in 2004: That's probably still well possible to sell MUCH of what was bought here in 2004 for a profit. 2004 was miles away in terms of appreciation. The median in Feb 2004 was $185,255! We doubled from there.

At least somebody did the research instead of just spewing more denial and unsubstantiated bullcrap. We really need an ignore button for bendbust's posts. Houses were still pretty cheap in 2004. And no, I did not buy subprime or any other "funky" arrangement. 30 yr fixed, 5.75%. As far as I can tell, most of my neighbors are doing fine too.

Anonymous said...

Houses were still pretty cheap in 2004.

*

Why are there so many empty houses in Bend?

Why are there lock boxes everywhere?

Anonymous said...

I did not buy subprime or any other "funky" arrangement. 30 yr fixed, 5.75%. As far as I can tell, most of my neighbors are doing fine too.

*

88% of all MTG's sold in Oregon post 2004 were nothing-down, ARM, Interest-Only, ... Somebody bought 20% down + fixed, but very-very few.

You'll NOT know how your neighbors are doing until NEXT summer, that is when the effective of the reset kicks in.

Anonymous said...

I love denial day, everday of the week its different here.

Today is denial day, everything is fine.

The problem I have seen post 2004 is just like the stock market in 1929, shoe-shine boys were giving advice.

Post 2004 I saw secretarys @ Ameri-Trade Title discuss their investment homes. Up at NWXC it seemed like everyone had more than one home, as you could only make 30%/yr forever, because RE only went up, ...

Today all this never happened.

I think what really failed on the great subprime boon-doggle is everyone made money, nobody assumed that with stated-income loans that lawnboys would take out second home loans as an investment.

This is why you can rent a $350k (ASK) home in Bend for $1k/mo, because the inventory of SPEC is astronomical. The shit will hit the fan, as folks can only bleed for so long.

The resets are coming, and the foreclosures will follow. The RE industry has done a real good job of keeping ASK's high, and minimizing the glut of for-sale signs.

The problem is the builders keep adding to the inventory faster than it can be sold.

Anonymous said...


We really need an ignore button for bendbust's posts.


We already have that, its called "bendbb" ( Bend Economy Bulletin Board ).

There is no bend-bust.

Only adolescent pre-puberty RE humor.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

From Marketwatch:

Pending home sales fall 3.5% in May

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The U.S. housing market weakened further in May, as contract signings on sales of previously owned homes fell 3.5% to the lowest level since September 2001, the National Association of Realtors reported Tuesday.
Pending sales are down 13.3% compared with a year earlier and are down 23% from the peak in early 2005.
"This is horrendous," wrote Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics. "These numbers give the lie to the idea that any sort of recovery, or even stabilization, is underway in the housing market. In fact, it continues to deteriorate, rapidly."
The report shows home sales aren't nearly as strong as the weekly data on mortgage applications implies. "We had originally thought that the pick-up in mortgage purchase applications was a sign that the decline in home re-sales might be tapering off, but this morning's report indicates that the number of actual transactions in the pipeline is still dwindling," wrote Lou Crandall, chief economist for Wrightson ICAP.

The pending-homes-sales index is considered a reliable leading indicator of existing-home sales, which fell to 5.99 million annualized in May, down 10.3% compared with a year earlier. Inventories of unsold homes rose to a 15-year high in May.


Once you talk to someone w/o a overwhelming bias to lie about RE (NAR), you see that things are in awful shape nationwide. And sales have fallen to Sept 2001 levels, a time of particular "unpleasantness" for housing... and more.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

BTW, without "Cali's" or folks from anywhere other than Eugene this entire state is a zero with the edges rubbed off. Native Oregano's are about as rare and productive as Yeti, hisself.

Lemme guess... you're from Eugene?

I have echoed this sentiment in a different form, several times. In a battle between Cali's & Native OR's though, I still pick the latter. So, you Cali's may well be a potential source of economic prosperity... but where is it?

It's more a problem that there is little "creative destruction" or "innovation" here. Talking to long-time natives about upping their productivity via technology, is akin to talking to a rock. Past Bulletin article even illustrate the extreme measures that old timer business owners will go to to avoid being plowed under. There was a truck company owner who was simply going to shut down, and I have personally been engaged in several gigs where implementing some sort of high-tech solution was inconceivable, and shutting down was going to come first.

Incredible. This is one primary reason I think a crash here is inevitable... chronically low productivity and no impetus to change.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Found this under "Rad Dyer" at RealtyTimes.com:

Average residential home sales through the 2nd Quarter of 2006 were $399,543 compared to $197,682 in 2000. In the rural areas near Bend average home prices through the 2nd Quarter of 2006 were $726,592.

From Davids May Summary, Bend Avg Residential was $426,655 and acreage was $677,912.

A possible first hint that Bend residential took a price beating in June. To bring it to below $400K from $426K in one month... if this is a cumulative number (may not be...), then June was bad. It probably is NOT cumulative, so June may be down 5% or so. Strangely, acreage looks up. I don't think that'll last...

Anonymous said...


Sept 2001 levels, a time of particular "unpleasantness" for housing...


Exactly, as a small business owner, this is the slowest I have seen business since 911.

The subprime easy-money low-interest by Greenspan was created to get out us out of the 2001 (911) recession.

Now what can they do? We need high interest rates to attract foreign investment.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Dyers wording keeps making me think he is talking cumulative YTD Avg's below $400K, which would be disastrous. For June to single-handedly drag us from $426 to $399 Avg's would have required:

1) A horrendous price reduction, and 2) Huge volume

I guess we'll see...

Anonymous said...

A Home Owners Fable

Once Upon a Time in a place called Bend, Oregon there was a mythical development.

A place where everyone bought with 20% down, and fixed rate loans.

A place where nobody ever lost money ever no matter when they bought or when they sold.

A place where there was never any inventory, as all homes always sold be word of mouth to this exclusive neighborhood.

Everyone has beautiful children, a nice car, big garage, and a boat. There are no dogs of course, because this mythical neighborhood is NWXC clean and sanitized.


During the night gnomes post story's on the web of this place, but it never shows up on the inventory reports.

Anonymous said...


Talking to long-time natives about upping their productivity via technology, is akin to talking to a rock.


Ever since the Oregon Lottery, the promise, the GREAT-WHITE-PROMISE has been high-tech.

Look at Bend you have Lonsdale Scientific, and MicroSemi ( last week APT ), these 'high-tech' places are low-paid long hour sweat shops.

Technology, to Bend hello where were you during the WEBSITE scam of pre-dot-com crash. Every TV shop and laundry spent a $10k+ for a website.

The people of Oregon have long been fleeced in the name of high-tech.

High-Tech in Oregon basically means 'expert', which means a guy that is from out of town with a k-mart suit that wants to sleep with your daughter.

Most folks in Oregon are from Missiouri, show-us, show-us what high-tech brings??

Bend Economy Man said...

In a battle between Cali's & Native OR's though, I still pick the latter.

I agree... in a downturn. Although I don't know, I've pointed out before that the people who really got rich off this boom aren't newcomers but people who've had big intergenerational landholdings like the Wards, the Coatses, the Millers, Bill Smith and so on, who if they're not native ORs are pritnear close to it.

But about a downturn, are folks from the Bay Area ready to cut wood to heat their homes or go hunting as a serious source of food? That's what people did in the '80s. Schools closed during part of hunting season, because it wasn't recreation, baby, it was survival. There was a long damn time when Central Oregon was significantly poorer than the state, and the state was significantly poorer than the nation as a whole (according to The Bulletin, statistically this is still the case), and we were pretty OK with that. I don't know that people from CA are ready to deal with the "baseline economy" in C.O. if/when we revert to the norm.

Then again, maybe if we'd had more out-of-the-box-thinking California-bred folks around, they would've thought of a scheme to start selling local real estate to other folks down south and maybe spurred a big building boom in a historically impoverished area... oh, wait.

Anonymous said...

Then again, maybe if we'd had more out-of-the-box-thinking California-bred folks around, they would've thought of a scheme

They have, according to Duncans blog the most common downtown biz now is the sales of exotic vacations.

Let's understand this, rich people come to Oregon during summer to golf, and then walk around downtown Bend where they are sold time-shares at exotic locations other than Bend. If they're paying the rent on the commercial space it must be working.

Anonymous said...

A Home Owners Fable ( Continued )

A place where there were no RV's to be seen.

A place where everyone kept their SUV in the garage.

A place where the streets are always clean, there are no pine needles, sap, or pine pollen. ( Because all those nasty trees were removed when the sub-div was built )

A place where the water comes on at an appointed time to water the lawn in the desert.

A place where even the garbage men arrive at Nazi like time schedule.

Simply paradise,

Nobody ever lost money, real estate always appreciates month-to-month, always has, always will.

For an old time Bend person, it could-would be hell.

Anonymous said...


Cali's & Native OR's though, I still pick the latter.


I think its best to compare the effective result.

The old-timers you mention that are now 'rich', in their time Bend was Bend.

The cali's brought strip-malls, fast-food, traffic-jams, all the things they love, or claim to not love when they move to Bend. Then the first thing they do is clamor for more malls, and to cover more of Bend with asphalt and concrete.

The old-timers even the rich familys were principally concerned with the land, fishing, hunting, ...

The cali's are mainly interested in shopping.

Just go down and look what they have done to cali in the past forty years, everything is gone, yet everywhere you go, everywhere you look its the same. It's maddening sameness.

Back in the 70's there was a sign on FWY-I5 at the cali/orygun border that said "visit, but don't stay". Paid for by the State of Oregon.

They knew then the essential truth.

Anonymous said...

This blog is full of disinformation, wild speculation, and idiots spouting off complete crap. The quality of posts here has declined greatly. I'm done reading it.

Anonymous said...

"This blog is full of disinformation, wild speculation, and idiots spouting off complete crap. The quality of posts here has declined greatly. I'm done reading it. "

Actually, I think the quality has improved greatly. I'll tell three friends.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

This blog is full of disinformation, wild speculation, and idiots spouting off complete crap. The quality of posts here has declined greatly. I'm done reading it.

Then stop posting so much.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

This blog is full of disinformation, wild speculation, and idiots spouting off complete crap. The quality of posts here has declined greatly. I'm done reading it.

FINE! You can post the following. ONCE.

It's always a great time to buy real estate in Bend Oregon! And remember: RE sales go better when you're gouged for 6%!

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

This blog is full of disinformation, wild speculation, and idiots spouting off complete crap. The quality of posts here has declined greatly.

I fully agree. And repetitive too. I think ALL know that condos are the wave of the future. Condos, and waterparks. And Frodo. And destination resorts 40 miles from a gas station. And Ashwood OR with 5,000 homes, up from 30. And Mercato. And gelato. And Spago. And Spaghettios. And Blimp-to-condo conversions. And 396 days of sunshine a year. And Big Hair. And fake boobs. And talking on the cell phone while driving a Abrahams tank SUV to pick up one kid from soccer and one from Tai Kwon DOH, all the while shrieking that people are killing the environment And Fung Shei. And tofu. And wasting 14 gallons of gas to go clear across town to Wild Oats to buy organic. And voting Kerry-Edwards for the third time. And Trader Joe's. And wondering why people compare the aliens on "Independence Day" to Californians. And starting yet another stupid mother-fucking idiotic business downtown that no one needs. And rudeness. And Me First, and Fuck You. And stupidity.

Go back. NOW!

Anonymous said...

The quality of posts here has declined greatly.

So why don't you help raise the level of the debate to higher level?

What an odd thought?

People like to bitch about this site, but they keep coming back. If you have a rational perspective on the 'bend-bubble' please tell us what you think...

Anonymous said...


A place where the streets are always clean, there are no pine needles, sap, or pine pollen. ( Because all those nasty trees were removed when the sub-div was built )


Praise the lord. This is probably they most obnoxious part of Bend those damn sticky trees, and them damn needles, and that yellow shit that gets everywhere.

Anonymous said...

I think one thing that is missed in this declining demand market with respect to foreclosure is zero-down { or less than 20% down }.

Let's take a hypothetical $450k 2005 purchase, zero-down. The PMI cover's the loss so the house goes to a Sheriff-Sale, but get's picked up near $450k, because of INSURANCE.

I wrote a few weeks ago about PMI, and everyone had a conniption. Fact is the people who write PMI policy’s are getting hosed, and the premiums are going to sky-rocket.

Like I have said for months, if a house has equity, then they can drop the price to $250k, and it will sell.

If they have a zero-down loan, then when the reset happens, and they cannot REFI, because the house will not appraise. Then the house will go to foreclosure ( Sheriff Sale ). Because a zero-down home has PMI there is a built-in cushion to prevent the home from falling. Once the insurance is paid, and the insurer is stuck with the house, which is really worth $250k in today’s market then they sell it for $250k.

This is all going to take a long time to play out, especially with these zero-down, arm, interest-only homes bought during 2002->2006. Given that most homes had less than 20% down, that means that MOST have PMI, which means that some insurance company is going to have to pay out the full value to protect the investor.

I hope the above explains why houses have not fell that quickly, this game is going to take a long time to play out. Also the insurance company’s are dragging their ass hoping for a recovery as they don’t pay claims unless they have to.

Note that the insurance biz is about collecting premiums and denying claims. PMI is going to sky-rocket to cover all the loss.

Anonymous said...


“That’s one of the reasons that I’m really supportive of this project because there simply isn’t a supply of affordable condominiums,” Councilor Linda Johnson


Praise the lord. A everyone gets a Condo whether they want one or not. Now this is what I call out-of-da-box California thinking.

Here we are out in the desert. So what do the electables do? They use muni-bonds ( CDO ) so finance Condo's for all. You cannot get more out of the box than this.

That said I think long term this cali thinking is going to put us all in a box.

Anonymous said...


“That’s one of the reasons that I’m really supportive of this project because there simply isn’t a supply of affordable condominiums,” Councilor Linda Johnson


There is a Condo shortage and Mrs. Johnson knows it. This kind of long term out-of-the-box thinking is what makes Bend different than say Southern California.

Anonymous said...

You've heard about CDOs. They're sort of at the heart of the subprime meltdown. But CDO-MUNI'S are tax-exempt CDOs, built with municipal bonds. So what does that mean?

It simply means more easy money for Bend. It means that Mrs. Breeze will not lose her life savings.

It means that Bend will grow and grow. Most of these muni's can be passed on to 2037 by then our City Council will be at the Federal level and long out of this little desert town.

The window is open. Borrow and Spend is what Bend, Oregon is all about.

The 2001->2006 days are not over. The window is wide open for MUNI-DEBT. We can still keep growing Oregon for another five years like its 2004 forever.

Are you with me, or against me?

Anonymous said...

This blog is full of disinformation,

{ yes }

wild speculation,

{ yes }

and idiots spouting off complete crap.

{ yes }

The quality of posts here has declined greatly.

{ Can you be more specific on this point?? }

Anonymous said...


The Rock has been lifted and/or the Emperor reall has no clothes.


The CDO thing being on everyone's lips is not too surprising, as this whole CDO markdown thing is Big Bad News (BBN), although this few-hundred-billion-dollar subprime mortgage stinker is just emblematic of the whole derivatives stinker, a similar convoluted global spider web of a leveraged-to-the-hilt financial mess that is so big (audience shouts out, "How big, Mogambo?") that it is estimated to be in the $450 trillion range, which is roughly nine (pause) times (pause) global (pause) G (pause) D (pause) freaking P!!

Nine times bigger than the sum total of the complete, total annual Gross Domestic Product output of the entire freaking globe!!!

So this CDO meltdown thing is truly (bravely disregarding the risk of repeating myself), B (pause) B (pause) N, without exclamation points, as I am just too drained by it all.

For an example of what I mean, MoneyWeek.com refers us to "Monday view: Credit Crunch will 'Shred Investment Portfolios to Ribbons'" by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at Telegraph.co.uk.

The "ribbons" thing was from Albert Edward of Dresdner Kleinwort, whose quote was, "This is the big one: all investment portfolios will be shredded to ribbons."

Mr. Evans-Pritchard actually opens his piece with a delightfully apropos description of the stinking, slimy economic mess that the Congress, the Federal Reserve and the Supreme Court have gotten us into by waxing lyrical with, "The near collapse of two Bear Stearns hedge funds has lifted the rock on our 21st century mutant capitalism, exposing the bugs beneath to a rare shock of naked light." Ahhh! Perfectly phrased!

The specifics, stripped of the disgusting-yet-highly-appropriate grubbiness, he relates by saying, "When creditors led by Merrill Lynch forced a fire-sale of assets, they inadvertently revealed that up to $2 trillion of debt linked to the crumbling US sub-prime and 'Alt A' property market was falsely priced on books." Oops! Hahaha!

Anonymous said...

* Vacant Pools Leave Neighbors Swimming In Mosquitoes (USA Today, July 2nd): "A glut of vacant, unsold homes with swimming pools is contributing to a glut of mosquitoes in the West. An untended pool means stagnant water, a breeding ground for mosquitoes to lay eggs that can produce thousands of mosquitoes in a couple of weeks… Luis Navarro, a mosquito-control officer in Maricopa County, says mortgage foreclosures have brought him more business this year… David Brown, manager of the Sacramento and Yolo County, Calif., mosquito-control office, says growing concern over the mosquito-borne West Nile virus is prompting expanded efforts to identify problem pools."

* Neglected Real Estate Listings Create Eyesores (Rutland Herald, July 1st): "With the glut of empty houses — both for sale and foreclosed — unkempt properties can be widely found… Ultimately, that mess decreases everyone's property value… National Association of Homebuilders: 1.4 million new housing units are sitting vacant, an all-time high. National Association of Realtors: Nationwide, 3.75 million existing homes were for sale at the end of March… In Sacramento, Calif., thousands of unsold and empty houses are becoming breeding grounds for mosquitoes because of uncared-for swimming pools, garden ponds and yards flooded by broken sprinklers."

Anonymous said...


one-fifth (19.4 percent) of borrowers who entered subprime loans over the past two years may enter foreclosure soon


Subprime time: Falling housing market exposes problems

Home ownership is the cornerstone of the American dream.

But subprime lending has put that dream in jeopardy for millions of Americans.

The first quarter of 2007 saw mortgage delinquency rates hit an all-time high, according to data compiled by Equifax and analyzed by Moody’s Economy.com. Default rates on mortgages rose to 2.87 percent, the worst levels since the 2001 recession.

The Center for Responsible Lending projects that one-fifth (19.4 percent) of borrowers who entered subprime loans over the past two years may enter foreclosure soon, causing 2.2 million consumers to lose their homes and resulting in a loss of up to $164 billion in wealth.

Randall Woodruff, bankruptcy trustee for Madison County, serves on a panel of bankruptcy trustees for the southern district of Indiana. He said subprime lending has been a main culprit in the massive foreclosure rate sweeping Anderson and other Central Indiana communities.

“If you are in foreclosure, there aren’t many ways to get out of that problem other than to file for bankruptcy,” said Woodruff, who sees every bankruptcy filed in Madison County. “Whether it’s subprime lending, my gut instinct is that it certainly is one of the problems. The fact that we have so many folks buying homes that they really can’t afford and obtaining mortgages that are going to adjust is clearly one of the main causes of bankruptcies.”

Anonymous said...

19.4 percent =
Subprime borrowers over the past two years expected to enter foreclosure

2.2 million =
Number of consumers expected to lose their homes

$164 billion =
Loss of wealth for consumers

— Source: The Wall Street Journal,

Anonymous said...

Old Mill Pricing

ASK ...
3 Bdrm Single Family House

offered at $495,000
Year Built 2005
Sq Footage 2,154
Bedrooms 3
Bathrooms 2 full, 1 partial
Floors 2
Parking 2 Car garage
Lot Size 6,970 sqft
HOA/Maint $0 per month

Craig-List Rental Value ...
$1k/mo, $12k/yr

Actual lease value ten times $12k = $120k actual investment value.

Owner expectation over-value = 4X.

Anonymous said...

A Little Note on Rental Property's and Property Management.

Yesterday and me bike I saw the most sad thing, a little Rental House gone without love for a little too long and poor screening ( tenant analysis ).

The home is at 9th & Portland, and the Westside. It has a BIG sign that say's "Deschutes Property Management", this little house is trashed, garbage everywhere. This house is a poster-child of what a renter can do for an owner.

With the 1,000's of empty Bend homes, many owners ( holders of debt note's ) attempt to rent in order to make payment. I highly suggest ALL that consider renting to do a walk/bike/drive-by this poster child.

Anonymous said...


Evert pretty much pulled the same trick; "let us build what we want, or we might build what you don't want."

Same guy. Same trick.


I think your missing the point, if is wasn't Evert it would be some other developer/builder. Its the City-Council that enables them. They're trying to grow there way towards federal elected offices. There is an expedited gold-rush attitude in City Hall to make Bend into a world-class city, and those that run it into world-class politicians.

Folks like Evert are enabled by City-Hall.

There will always be people who will cut the last tree to make a buck. This is WHY we have government, to make sure the last tree doesn't get cut.

This is why we have environment laws to make sure the river doesn't get paved. The law is supposed to be NO paving, building, not even a stick in the ground within 1,000ft of the river, but the City-Hall gives variances to anyone that gives them a nickel.

Money is the blood of politics.

Sadly, the problem here is dis-engagement. Most people that have come to Bend in recent years to make a fast buck on housing, or retire. They'll just assume this is how its always been in Bend. They don't realize that which originally made Bend special was we left the river alone.

Long ago the political power group of Bend was the environmental folk, the hikers, the fishermen. Generally what happens is this class of folk spend their youth playing, then one day middle age wake up poor. Then they look at guys like Evert who is rich, and think if I do what he does I'll get rich. This is how the process is always played.

People with good intentions come to office, and hold office and after twenty years they realize that they're not rich, that they're making others rich, so they start playing the game.

Winston Churchill said it ... "If your not liberal when young, you don't have a heart; If your not a kleptocrat when old, you dont' have a nickel".

So now here we are 2007 City-Hall is ran by old hippy's trying to get rich, the only people who feed the campaigns is developers, and builders, and construction firms. The people of Bend are dis-engaged obsessed with Oprah&Paris.

Fewer people like your self even bother to fish in town. Soon people will not even remember why they came to Bend.
Soon it will be so expensive to live here the folks that came to retire will have to leave. This is what happens when the ability to pass Muni-Bonds is out of control, and developers,builders,... control the purse.

Anonymous said...


Winston Churchill said it ... "If your not liberal when young, you don't have a heart; If your not a kleptocrat when old, you dont' have a nickel".


Actually what he said was ...

"If your not liberal when young, you don't have a heart; If your not a conservative when old, you dont' have a brain".

But Churchill was a fascist so he knew what he meant, liberal meant libery, it met freedom. Conservatism meant gendarmes, prison, and hang-men. Its normal when folks get old to despise and imprison their fellow men. It's normal for children to be bambists and to love all.

I heard a good one yesterday about the return of the "Know Nothings", these are the people who support DUBYA. Certainly my dis-engaged in Bend, are the Know-Nothings at the Federal level.

The Know-Nothings believe that the reason they're not brain-surgeons is that the Mexicans have taken their job.

The dis-engaged of Bend believe the reason they're not rich is that there are still a few fish in the Deschutes River.

With ALL These God-DAMN FUCKING golf courses, on both sides of the paved fucking river its surprising there is one fucking fish still alive in the river full of lawn care product.

Anonymous said...

The good news with the impending RE depression is that stop will stop development, but often in bad times even MORE stupid "eco-biz" will be allowed.

This whole notion of eco-biz, that in the name of green-environmental its OK, to destroy nature is ALL a condo-whore wet dream.

How long before someone in Bend has the balls to call "Eco-Bis" for what it is ... Just more Rape & Pillage of the environment.

There is a good saying in the RE-BIZ, it goes like this "Always name your project after that what you have destroyed", ...

Thus "Deschutes-River-Woods", becomes a paved-tract without a river. This is PURE cali thinking and productivity in action.

Anonymous said...

Don't worry about the River.

The Drake Park has some of the best craw-fish in the west.

Soon when the depression hits the people will lynch anyone building or paving near the river in order to protect the food stock.

Anonymous said...

Apparently, Brad Evert's like a cancer cell that can't quit growing wherever it lands.

You'd think, having made his money and being a long-time resident, he'd be satisfied with just ruining where he works.

But a greedy bastard stays a greedy bastard, so he's going to ruin where he lives, as well.

He's like some kind of toxic sewage that seeps out of his pores wherever he is.

MissTrade said...

Pick up the Bend Livings, new Business PUblication called Bend Business Review, great cover article on the Juniper Ridge Debacle. Should be required reading for all the anti boss hog types still out there. ITs clear concise and written by a former mayor of Bend. I would say a qualified objective viewpoint overall. Quite scary the bs that's gone on behind the scenes with the entire Juniper Ridge fiasco and I would call it fiasco.

MissTrade said...

http://bendbusinessreview.com/

you can't read it online but you can get it with your Bend Living this publication by the way. Great article. Should be posted here if you can find online version .. . .

Anonymous said...


Quite scary the bs that's gone on behind the scenes with the entire Juniper Ridge fiasco and I would call it fiasco.


Nothing happened behind the scenes. I have been posting ALL the stuff that happened in the back rooms for months and months, and everyone has ignored it. Why NOW pray tell, why NOW? Why Now are we asking tough questions about deals done in executive session ( public barred ), that were secret ( public barred from documents ), .. why ???

Personally I think what is happening is the shit is coming out, because more people are getting their news from these pathetic blogs, and the folks that control old media are trying to put their own spin on things before its too late.

Anonymous said...


Evert's like a cancer cell that can't quit growing wherever it lands.


Evert is a cancer cell, but he is NOT the cause of the cancer.

The toxic-waste that has caused the cancer is selective law enforcement by the GOVERNMENT we the people have elected.

For too long folks like Evert have gotten away with secret-documents and secret meetings ( executive sessions where only Evert and council are present ). This is how OUR city-council has been doing business.

They should have NEVER gotten away with this but the Bulletin, Source, and ALL the other two-bit rags let them get away because EVERYONE was making MONEY. Now that Everyone is LOSING money the blame game begins.

Evert may be a cyst or a cell, but the BEND GOVERNMENT itself is the toxic-waste that enables ALL the cancer-cells in the CITY.

Our so-called 'status-quo' FUCKING media keeps everyone in the dark, and completely ignores what has been going on for years. Now that this town is heading towards bankruptcy and economic collapse folks have decided to put their own spin on shit to cover their ASS.

Anonymous said...


{ Who's behind Juniper Ridge and why you need to know }



Note what they do here the meetings are not 'secret', nor 'executive', they're closed, there is NO such thing in Oregon-Government as 'closed' ALL meetings of public matter MUST be open, otherwise executive session is declared.

Lastly, BULLSHIT one generous GIFT, the CITY has been selling BEND-LAND for nickels on the dollar over over town for years to their favorite's.

Why tell us this shit now? Why didn't we need to know this six months ago? When the secret deal was signed back in December 2006? Why does even IHTBYB & BEM refuse to even discuss this? Why is everyone such a pathetic coward?

***

JUNIPER RIDGE, BEND OREGON
Who's behind Juniper Ridge and why you need to know

By Allan Bruckner

How Bend's largest land development project led to public outcry of bait-and-switch tactics that even insiders say are misguided


Is Juniper Ridge Bend’s golden goose or an expensive failure unfolding in slow motion? In either case, Juniper Ridge is Bend’s largest capital development ever undertaken, with implications for all Bend residents.

The juniper-laden 1,500-acre plot--more than five times as big as The Old Mill District--on the northeast side of Bend has become a metaphor for what Bend could be: a university, a research campus, a new economic direction for a town that only 25 years ago was struggling to survive.

After closed meetings between the City Council, Bend’s economic development director John Russell and the developer, Juniper Ridge Partners, led by Ray Kuratek, this optimistic vision of Bend’s future has become illusory, at best. Instead of becoming the golden goose, Juniper Ridge could become Bend’s largest public financial bailout because of a flawed process and, what industry experts describe as, an overly generous gift to one developer from the City of Bend.

Anonymous said...


Juniper Ridge Partners, led by Ray Kuratek, this optimistic vision of Bend’s future has become Bend’s largest public financial bailout because of a flawed process and, what industry experts describe as, an overly generous gift to one developer from the City of Bend.


Kratek is NO different than Evert, they're just getting their projects rubber-stamped. This is how business is done in Bend - "Secret Deals". Cheap land that cost nickels on the dollar, and the public gets the bill for the infrastucture and the developer gets rich.

The plan for the $7M infrastructure for Juniper-Ridge is-was to put it on the water bill, and have our water bill go up ten-fold.

Why in the hell do you all think the 'rich-developers' have been coming to Bend?

The word has long been out that "anything is possible in Bend". Evert & Kratek have the best lawyers money can buy, and a lackey government that is quite ready and able to please.


Don't worry Councilor Linda-Johnson is quite covered, in the public notice of the secret meeting she has a mea-culpa that in effect says that "in Duress".


That's what is most evil about all this, is that the mayor and council not only do secret meetings, and give away public assets to their favorites, but then write caveats to the effect that their vote was coerced.

Anonymous said...


Ok, here's the Truth, you know that I have been telling you all for months that just having 'bend' on your CDO-BOND was the kiss of the death. There was a secret meeting last friday with Councilor Hummel & Bend Mayor Friedman. Where they were told "Your Fucked".

There is NO outside money now, you think we had to give away the family-jewels to make Ray Kuratek, happy, now we'll have to have our water bill go up 100 times, as the cost of CDO-BOND's for a toxic-waste investment has NOW skyrocketed.

Somebody RECALL Friedman & Hummel ASAP and KILL THIS PROJECT.


Investors interested in Juniper
New company in talks with Bend to finance deal after initial backers pulled out
By Christine Metz / The Bulletin
Published: September 07. 2006 5:00AM PST

A new company has expressed interest in financing Juniper Ridge, less than a week after Stockbridge Capital Partners LLC backed out of the deal.

Pacific Coast Capital Partners LLC, a company that provides capital for real estate projects throughout the West, has written a letter to the city of Bend confirming that it is interested in being a potential investor. The letter also states that the company would be interested in investing under the same terms the city laid out for Stockbridge Capital.

Those terms had the investors putting in $30 million to cover infrastructure costs. When Juniper Ridge turns profitable, the investors would receive a 20 percent internal rate of return on the money they contributed.

Pacific Coast has requested that it have 45 days to assess Juniper Ridge as an investment potential.

Juniper Ridge is 1,500 acres of undeveloped land in the north end of Bend that the city envisions to someday hold a university, employment center, homes and light industrial uses.

Three weeks ago, the Bend City Council approved an agreement between the master development team, which is led by Bend resident Ray Kuratek, on how to build Juniper Ridge and split the proceeds from the development. The agreement is a firm handshake that will help further guide negotiations on a more detailed and contractual agreement.

At Wednesday night's City Council meeting, councilors agreed to approve a portion of the agreement that was pulled at the last meeting. The section of the agreement tied the city to the developer for an entire year or six months after the city expanded its urban growth boundary, even if negotiations fell apart.

The part of the agreement also obligated the city to reimburse the developer for as much as 75 percent of the costs for the master plan. The city capped the amount it would pay to the developer at $2.5 million.

However, the council also voted Wednesday night to have 30 days to rescind its vote on that section of the agreement, allowing for enough time to complete a background check on the master developers.

The City Council also agreed to authorize staff and the master developers to begin the master planning process, which will create a plan on how building will occur at Juniper Ridge. Also at the meeting, the council acknowledged that Pacific Crest was interested in taking Stockbridge Capital's place as the investor.

Pacific Coast is a commercial debt lender that has offices in Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Sacramento, Calif. According to the letter it sent to the city, the company provides real estate owners, developers and investors with a broad range of funding options.

The company has invested more than $3.6 billion in properties throughout the Western United States. The company has about a $1 billion in funds that are dedicated to "smart growth development opportunities," the letter states. On Aug. 30, Kuratek, who leads Juniper Ridge Partner, the master development team, said that Stockbridge Capital was no longer willing to put $30 million into the project. However, at that time Kuratek said they were also talking to other investors. Kuratek said the company, which invests money from pension funds into real estate projects, was no longer comfortable partnering with the city.

Stockbridge Capital backed out of the deal because of the low rate of return the city offered on the money the investors were willing to put into the project, Kuratek said. He also pointed to the amount of time it has taken the city to negotiate the deal and the recent criticism the project has received as reasons for the investors walking away from the project.

According to a staff report written for councilors, Mayor Bill Friedman and councilors Jim Clinton and John Hummel met with Juniper Ridge Partners and principals from Pacific Crest Capital Partners on Friday.

"In the opinion of the staff and the councilors, the experience and financial capabilities of Pacific Coast appear well suited to Juniper Ridge," the staff report reads.

Councilors also are still waiting for a background check to be completed on Kuratek and his partner, Jeff Holzman. Jill Bruce, a Portland-based attorney the city has hired to work on Juniper Ridge, said on Tuesday the check would take more time than originally expected. The City Council was told at its last meeting it would take around a week to get the information.

Bruce's law firm has gone to about five different states and a number of different entities gathering three binders full of documents.

"When you are looking at a developer with his experience and age, he is out there doing stuff a long time. There is a ton of material," Bruce said.

According to the staff report, the first phase of the investigation is finished and "no major issues have been discovered," the report reads.

Anonymous said...


Investors interested in Juniper
New company in talks with Bend to finance deal after initial backers pulled out
By Christine Metz / The Bulletin
Published: September 07. 2006 5:00AM PST


A new company has expressed interest in financing Juniper Ridge, less than a week after Stockbridge Capital Partners LLC backed out of the deal.

Pacific Coast Capital Partners LLC, a company that provides capital for real estate projects throughout the West, has written a letter to the city of Bend confirming that it is interested in being a potential investor. The letter also states that the company would be interested in investing under the same terms the city laid out for Stockbridge Capital.

Those terms had the investors putting in $30 million to cover infrastructure costs. When Juniper Ridge turns profitable, the investors would receive a 20 percent internal rate of return on the money they contributed.

Pacific Coast has requested that it have 45 days to assess Juniper Ridge as an investment potential.

Juniper Ridge is 1,500 acres of undeveloped land in the north end of Bend that the city envisions to someday hold a university, employment center, homes and light industrial uses.

Three weeks ago, the Bend City Council approved an agreement between the master development team, which is led by Bend resident Ray Kuratek, on how to build Juniper Ridge and split the proceeds from the development. The agreement is a firm handshake that will help further guide negotiations on a more detailed and contractual agreement.

At Wednesday night's City Council meeting, councilors agreed to approve a portion of the agreement that was pulled at the last meeting. The section of the agreement tied the city to the developer for an entire year or six months after the city expanded its urban growth boundary, even if negotiations fell apart.

The part of the agreement also obligated the city to reimburse the developer for as much as 75 percent of the costs for the master plan. The city capped the amount it would pay to the developer at $2.5 million.

However, the council also voted Wednesday night to have 30 days to rescind its vote on that section of the agreement, allowing for enough time to complete a background check on the master developers.

The City Council also agreed to authorize staff and the master developers to begin the master planning process, which will create a plan on how building will occur at Juniper Ridge. Also at the meeting, the council acknowledged that Pacific Crest was interested in taking Stockbridge Capital's place as the investor.

Pacific Coast is a commercial debt lender that has offices in Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Sacramento, Calif. According to the letter it sent to the city, the company provides real estate owners, developers and investors with a broad range of funding options.

The company has invested more than $3.6 billion in properties throughout the Western United States. The company has about a $1 billion in funds that are dedicated to "smart growth development opportunities," the letter states. On Aug. 30, Kuratek, who leads Juniper Ridge Partner, the master development team, said that Stockbridge Capital was no longer willing to put $30 million into the project. However, at that time Kuratek said they were also talking to other investors. Kuratek said the company, which invests money from pension funds into real estate projects, was no longer comfortable partnering with the city.

Stockbridge Capital backed out of the deal because of the low rate of return the city offered on the money the investors were willing to put into the project, Kuratek said. He also pointed to the amount of time it has taken the city to negotiate the deal and the recent criticism the project has received as reasons for the investors walking away from the project.

According to a staff report written for councilors, Mayor Bill Friedman and councilors Jim Clinton and John Hummel met with Juniper Ridge Partners and principals from Pacific Crest Capital Partners on Friday.

"In the opinion of the staff and the councilors, the experience and financial capabilities of Pacific Coast appear well suited to Juniper Ridge," the staff report reads.

Councilors also are still waiting for a background check to be completed on Kuratek and his partner, Jeff Holzman. Jill Bruce, a Portland-based attorney the city has hired to work on Juniper Ridge, said on Tuesday the check would take more time than originally expected. The City Council was told at its last meeting it would take around a week to get the information.

Bruce's law firm has gone to about five different states and a number of different entities gathering three binders full of documents.

"When you are looking at a developer with his experience and age, he is out there doing stuff a long time. There is a ton of material," Bruce said.

According to the staff report, the first phase of the investigation is finished and "no major issues have been discovered," the report reads.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Doug Farmers data is out for June.

June 07

Listings Sold: 165
% of Inventory Sold: 7.69%
Listings Expired: 84
Avg Square Footage: 1989
Avg Days on the Mkt: 157
Avg Sale Price: $ 418,017.
Median Sales Price: $ 345,000.
Active Listings June 30: 2314


For some perspective:

May 07

Listings Sold: 146
% of Inventory Sold: 7.35%
Listings Expired: 74
Avg Square Footage: 2078
Avg Days on the Mkt: 161
Avg Sale Price: $ 484,633.
Median Sales Price: $ 379,500.
Active Listings May 31: 2145

Jun 06

Listings Sold: 267
Avg Square Footage: 2031
Avg Days on the Mkt: 120
Avg Sale Price: $ 491,218.
Active Listings June 30th: 1485


This is sort of what I thought would be the norm: falling prices, and moderate increases in volume. May was just an aberrant data point it seems.

Months of inventory stands at 14 months, down slightly from 14.69 last month. THAT IS HIGH. Last June it was at 6 months, and it was nearing the all-time high set in Aug. But Unkle Flipper was alive & well, and there were 267 sales last June. We're down about 40% volume-wise.

For more perspective, we did $131MM in June 2006, we're now at $69MM, almost cut in half!

And Doug's data is of, "entire Residential property type including all residential sub types for Bend." That $345K median has some high priced property in there. I've got to wonder how bad residential-only prices were?

In summary: I think this is the Beginning of the End, proper. We had a break from the ridiculous highs of last Summer, and it seemed we just tread water since. Everybody, and I mean everybody, was waiting for Spring/Summer 2007. And while prices didn't seem to collapse, volume sure as hell dried up, that's the sort of market that is actually worse for 6%-ers, who promptly began crying in their beer.

We're going to see things go bad from here, price & volume-wise. That's what a return to normalcy will entail, going back towards $200K medians and flipper-less volume probably means half the sales RE types are used to. So it's going to be a total disaster. But at the end, when the survivors have eaten the bloated corpses of the dead, we'll be back to normal.

On the upside, we'll all be able to watch the ill-conceived condo-mania fueled implosion of a lifetime! In 5 years when the Plaza is full of low-income renters, we'll be able to walk by the front doors, and reminisce with the meth dealers & crack whores about how much pie-in-the-sky bullshit was shoveled down our throats in an attempt to sell them, before the city just bailed out one of their own.

Anonymous said...


Last friday's secret meeting "Frustrating" for City Council - We're coerced to do secret deal with no time to analyze, but don't worry next time someone passes us a secret deal, we'll read it, ... maybe, ... maybe not, ah hell, we never saw a deal we didn't like, ... for that matter we don't read legalese anyhaw,...


Bend officials get first look at Les Schwab headquarters
By Peter Sachs / The Bulletin
Published: June 30. 2007 5:00AM PST

Les Schwab Tire Centers’ future headquarters at Juniper Ridge may be ensconced in glass with buttresses that angle outward as they rise, giving the buildings a slanted appearance.

Drawings released Friday by the city of Bend show the buildings, on the northeast corner of a future two-lane roundabout at Cooley Road and 18th Street, located very close to the curb, with parking lots behind and largely out of sight of passing drivers.

“As the first building to go up, I think it will do justice to the company and to the Juniper Ridge project,” Councilor Jim Clinton said in reaction to the drawings. He added that the buildings as designed would be “an impressive, high-class project.”

Designers working on the headquarters, slated to break ground later this fall, will present their work to the Bend City Council at a work session Monday evening.

Les Schwab’s headquarters will be the first building in the city’s 1,500-acre Juniper Ridge development, which will eventually contain a university, hundreds of homes and a research and development park. So far, Les Schwab is the only company to have announced plans to locate in Juniper Ridge.

When Les Schwab announced in December that it would become Juniper Ridge’s first business, city councilors reacted with frustration over what they called a closed-door process that left them with only a few hours to decide whether to approve it.

“The upset was about the lack of process,” Councilor Linda Johnson said Friday, and not about the company. “I think we’ve learned things that we can improve on next time.”

Monday’s meeting will essentially be the council’s first look at the Les Schwab project itself since December’s meeting. The presentation is largely to fill the council in on how the headquarters is progressing. The approval of all of the details and building plans will be made by the city’s planning and building divisions, not City Council.

Portland-based GBD Architects is working on the design of the new headquarters. An architect working on the project did not return a message seeking comment Friday. GDB has designed a multitude of commercial and residential projects across the Portland area, as well as a handful of projects in other parts of the Northwest, according to information on its Web site.

Les Schwab spokeswoman Jodie Hueske said the price tag for the building is still up in the air, adding that “we’re still in the evaluation phase.”

She said the company is “excited” about the design and is pushing forward with a fall groundbreaking, but declined to comment on any other details of the new headquarters.

Though land use plans have been submitted to the city already, the company has not yet applied for building permits and the design could still be modified.

“I don’t have a sense for exactly what stage they are at,” said Jerry Mitchell, the city’s Juniper Ridge development manager.

The concept for the building is strikingly different from Les Schwab’s modest and low-profile current headquarters in Prineville. Also missing is the trademark red-and-white paint scheme at many Les Schwab retail locations.

The headquarters is three to four stories high, with roofs sloping slightly away from the street. Though Clinton approved of the overall design in the renderings, he was concerned about how energy-efficient they would be.

“I would be worried about a large expanse of west-facing glass, which would be pretty bad news in the summer,” Clinton said. “I know people like to get views of the mountains, but you pay a humongous price in terms of the air conditioning.”

Johnson was also interested in learning more about how energy efficient the buildings will be.

“It’s what is behind the faade that will really make the difference, in terms of sustainability, for example,” Johnson said.

Looking at the renderings for the first time Friday, Mayor Bruce Abernethy was also receptive to the designs.

“It needed to fit in with where we wanted to go, what we wanted Juniper Ridge to look like, and this certainly is consistent with that,” he said

Anonymous said...


Mayor Bruce Abernethy was also receptive to the designs.

“It needed to fit in with where we wanted to go, what we wanted Juniper Ridge to look like, and this certainly is consistent with that,” he said


Well said land next to free a $7M infrastructure deal paid by City-of-Bend with a ten-fold water bill increase. A 'receptive fit' only a mother could love.

Anonymous said...


Johnson was also interested in learning more about how energy efficient the buildings will be.


That's ok, we're subsidized their energy bill and will be passing the difference to the Bend citizenry. Juniper-Ridge gets special rates, Bend-City get special increases as in an incentive.

Nobody need worry about LesSchwab spending THEIR money on energy.

Anonymous said...


“I would be worried about a large expanse of west-facing glass” Clinton said.

Johnson was also interested in learning more about how energy efficient the buildings will be.


Our city council has spent more time last friday looking at pretty pictures than they have to date looking at legal documents.

No worry about obligating Bend to Tens of Millions of dollars of debt, never heard a worry, but that glass, someone do something about that glass.

Are these folks assholes or what?

Anonymous said...


When Les Schwab announced in December that it would become Juniper Ridge’s first business, city councilors reacted with frustration over what they called a closed-door process that left them with only a few hours to decide whether to approve it.


Has they given us more time, then we might have had to read it, and then we would have looked like fools.

It's so frustrating when people want a 'closed-door' process with no time to decide, but then if it had been open, and the contract open, then the nasty press would have been involved, and that would have made the process even MORE frustrating.

Anonymous said...


Somebody RECALL Friedman & Hummel ASAP and KILL THIS PROJECT.


Oh, wait we did, ... Why are things still exactly the same??

Why are we still marching ahead on any of this ???

Anonymous said...


In 5 years when the Plaza is full of low-income renters, we'll be able to walk by the front doors, and reminisce with the meth dealers & crack whores


Clinton who? Johnson who? Abernethy who?

Hey want to rent my condo by the hour?

Anonymous said...


“It’s what is behind the faade that will really make the difference, in terms of sustainability, for example,” Johnson said.


Read the above carefully .. What in the hell is a 'faade', probably they meant facade, but even then what the hell does it have to do with sustainability? That word cannot be in their vocabulary, as everything they do is Bend is temporal.

Is Johnson a out of his league loser or what?

Anonymous said...


Is Johnson a out of his league loser or what?


He is, I used to like larry before the sex change to linda, now he's pathetic.

Anonymous said...


“I don’t have a sense for exactly what stage they are at,” said Jerry Mitchell, the city’s Juniper Ridge development manager.


What according to the Bend 2030 plan, we're still at stage-one.

WRT to Juniper-Ridge, now with the CDO-BOND collapse, there is NO way in hell any investment firm in this world will ever finance this deal.

For this deal to go forward NOW, it would have to be a 100% city finance CDO-MUNI-BOND, and this is what I have been saying for months.

Too many crack-whores NEED this deal to go through, it now will be put on the backs of the people.

Somebody PLEASE kill this WHOLE Juniper-Ridge Project.

Anonymous said...


Juniper Ridge could become Bend’s largest public financial bailout because of a flawed process and, what industry experts describe as, an overly generous gift to one developer from the City of Bend.


I have NEVER seen anybody in this town admit that JP is-was a flawed process, and that it needed to be bailed-out.

Given that the land hasn't been broken, kill it now, and let those that paid for the plan's eat their own shit.

Who in the HELL? Are these experts? Are they talking about the bloggers?

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

He added that the buildings as designed would be “an impressive, high-class project.”

Translation: This is going to be a proper Bordello, not a nasty-ass, stanky puke-stained fuckin' whorehouse!

“I would be worried about a large expanse of west-facing glass, which would be pretty bad news in the summer,” Clinton said. “I know people like to get views of the mountains, but you pay a humongous price in terms of the air conditioning.”

Humungous? Perhaps instead of paying the A/C bill for Les Schwab, there should be some sort of Basic English class taught at the yet-to-be-built Juniper Ridge University.

Why in hell are these shanks worried about Les Schwab's A/C bill? Can they stop being left-wing eco-Nazi's for 5 seconds, and try NOT RUNNING THIS CITY INTO THE GROUND?

Bend Economy Man said...

“I would be worried about a large expanse of west-facing glass” Clinton said.

It just shows how monumentally unqualified our city council members are. When it's a huge, stinky, throbbing bad deal being shoved down their throats by Les Schwab's lawyers, they tremble, approve it within the arbitrary bluffy one-hour deadline, and then it takes weeks to get the full story out and all the city councilors are afraid to go on record with anything negative about the deal. This is because, hey, the Bend City Council knows zero about business. Or government.

But when Les Schwab's architects show up with their plans for the building and it's got too much west-facing glass and its compost pile isn't big enough, well, now the city councilors feel like they can comment on that intelligently and confidently.

Can we get a few take-no-shit New Yorkers on the city council to replace these nancies we've got now?

West-facing glass. Nice priorities.

Anonymous said...


Why in hell are these shanks worried about Les Schwab's A/C bill? Can they stop being left-wing eco-Nazi's for 5 seconds


The rhetorical question here is the Nazi question, Where were the Germans?

Where were the Bend-Volks during the eco-holocaust? Why did NO people speak-up??

This is simply bizarre, the entire Jupiper-Ridge is a fiasco, and these people are talking about the glass. They're talking as if their next job is to sell affordable energy at swap-meets and flea-marts. I know that Bend has the Government they deserve, but someone please recall these bastards.

Anonymous said...

There was a UBS executive's this week visiting the PNW, the sole reason was their CONDO holdings.

The word is pull the plug, most concern was the Condo market in Portland. They didn't even seem phased with Bend.

The basic issue is that NOBODY, and I mean NOBODY is going to be financing condos now in the PNW ( Pacific NorthWest ), the figure I heard was a ten year supply. All building is going to come to a screeching halt.

Sell too many Condo's. The exact quote I heard is that "The PNW Conodo market is exactly like the 1999 dot-com stock market".

Bend is fucked, what this means is that the City MUST now step in a issue city CDO-MUNI-BONDS in order to complete and build the condo's that they think they MUST build. The City MUST NOT get into the Condo business, as its only a mechanism to turn good money bad.

{ UBS had been handling billions in equity deals with condos, and the game is now over, UBS a swiss banking firm that specializes in managing money for the richest people in the world - they also said the COD-MTG-BOND collapse wouldn't effect them as they have less than 3% of such holdings. }

Anonymous said...

Bend is not that bad......even as property is weak...

At least you do not have to live near so many niggers, spics, kikes and gooks, like in Portland.

Portland has become a haven for all the sperm burping faggots from Frisco and beyond.

Lots of fuck clubs for guys who want to ball a 15 year old boy....

This kind of comment is okay on this blog just like last week when you crazy renters were babbling about nazi's chasing jews in the streets....

right?

Anyway...fuck bend it is a shit hole who cares about the real estate......

Anonymous said...


This kind of comment is okay on this blog just like last week when you were babbling about nazi's chasing jews in the streets....


Nazi-Days is a sanctioned Bend celebration. It sounds like you need a short history.

Nazi-Days was created post WWII in Bend, Oregon in order to attract "good german" investors to Bend, most of these 'good germans' fled to Argentina ... The city of Bend knowing that Germans love sunshine, and were always looking for exotic vacations were explicitly marketed 'nazi-days'. The original concept was to get germans to visit, and then sell them Bend-Condos.

Many ol-timers in Bend believe that Nazi-Days is one of the primary reasons that Bend Building Boom exploded post 1980's.

Bend even has a motto - "March and they will come, and borrow, and spend". During the 90's as many greedy developers started over-selling condos to Germans, there was a shortage of Germans. Thats when the Mayor added the "running of the jews" to the annual event. The Jews were not harmed of course and went along with the gag, they did have to be bussed in from Portland.

The bloggers don't babble or make this stuff up, we just report the news.

Today now that the bubble has imploded Bend has a new slogan.

"Come to Bend, where every retarded White Man is king"

Anonymous said...


When it's a huge, stinky, throbbing bad deal being shoved down their throats by Les Schwab's lawyers, they tremble, approve it within the arbitrary bluffy one-hour deadline, and then it takes weeks to get the full story out and all the city councilors are afraid to go on record with anything negative about the deal. This is because, hey, the Bend City Council knows zero about business. Or government.

But when Les Schwab's architects show up with their plans for the building and it's got too much west-facing glass and its compost pile isn't big enough, well, now the city councilors feel like they can comment on that intelligently and confidently.


1.) I think it took the main-stream media six months to get the story out.

2.) Show me some compost, and I'll have an opinion.

3.) Windows, everyone loves windows.

The simple fact here is that its clear that the City Council doesn't know how to read. That the only thing they understand is pretty pictures.

Now that there are pictures, can we even imagine how bad that Les Schwab will fleece the City of Bend???

The Big Problem now is that nobody is going to put up the investment in Juniper-Ridge, and thus given that somebody spent at least 1/2 a Million bucks on ALL these plans. The project MUST continue. I personally would like to see that everyone's nickel invested so far be lost, and they eat their own shit.

Sadly, what will happen is that given the urgency and critical requirement that we must build the compost pile so they will come, ... That they City of Bend will issue a MUNI-BOND-CDO that will front the $50M so that nobody has to use their own money. Banks, investors, and WALL-STREET are very tight right now, nobody wants to put money into the MOST over-valued town in the USA.

At this point the ONLY way this project can go forward is for the City-of-Bend to provide the financing. As I have written in the last few months, CDO-BOND's are dead, the big houses that were providing condo money to Bend have said NO-MORE, and same for projects like Juniper-Ridge.

That said right now MUNI-CDO-BONDS are very easy to write, because while there are too many unsaleable homes, the citys still have credit.

Thus the good credit of Bend will be used to finance the Juniper-Ridge and project.

At best there are only a few million dollars invested so far in this project by the developers who probably took out collateral loans for the architectural drawings, and application permit study fee's, ... Thus these people have a critical desire to continue.

There really is NO reason for the city people of Bend to want this project, and certainly NO reason for the City to go Bankrupt trying to make it happen.

Les Schwab should ante their OWN MONEY, and so should the Juniper-Ridge developers. If the banks will NOT loan them money, then they should take the loss.

We the People of Bend should NOT let this kind of shit continue, free-land and/or nickel on the dollar prices, and incentives that just put the city in debt. Ten-Fold water bill increases so that Juniper-Ridge developers don't have to pay for infrastructure in their own project.

Then there is the fact that everything is still secret, that everything signed to date has always been secret and done in executive session.

This shit must stop.

Everyone on the City-Council should be recalled, that said there really aren't any business minded people in Bend that would take the job.

Which is why the REAL fucking problem here is that OREGON OPEN MEETING LAW MUST be enforced. There MUST be a class-action lawsuit against the city for violation open-meeting laws, and signing secret doc's, then and only then can common two bit political amateurs be controlled, and then perhaps the press can work, if the doc's and meetings are public.

Anonymous said...


Then there is the fact that everything is still secret, that everything signed to date has always been secret and done in executive session.

This shit must stop.

Everyone on the City-Council should be recalled, that said there really aren't any business minded people in Bend that would take the job.

Which is why the REAL fucking problem here is that OREGON OPEN MEETING LAW MUST be enforced. There MUST be a class-action lawsuit against the city for violation open-meeting laws, and signing secret doc's, then and only then can common two bit political amateurs be controlled, and then perhaps the press can work, if the doc's and meetings are public.

Anonymous said...


Les Schwab's lawyers, ... arbitrary one-hour deadline, and then it takes weeks to get the full story out ...

1.) I think it took the main-stream media six months to get the story out.


The ONLY reason the story is now out, is that there are NOW pictures, and the dog & pony show will begin.

There will be lots of story's in the coming weeks of why the City of Bend MUST rescue this project.

There will be story of stingy bankers. There will be sad story's about all time and money the City of Bend politicians have spent on this project.

Then there is the world-class schools, and lost jobs. We must have this project. This is our water-park, remember we're competing with Redmond, Oregon.

Anonymous said...


Can we get a few take-no-shit New Yorkers on the city council to replace these nancies we've got now?


Nobody of such class would ever step foot in a two bit ghost town like Bend.

This is why Bend will never be Aspen. Bend has no class, and never has.

The elected folk of Bend best represent its citizens.

The citizenry of Bend are all two-bit hustler/losers that came up from cali, because they couldn't make an honest buck down there.

Why would a sophisticated NY type even want to visit this town? To golf? The water-park?

Let's get real, and deal with hand that god has dealt us.

Anonymous said...


Let's get real, and deal with hand that god has dealt us.


How??

Enforce the State of Oregon Uniform Open Meeting Laws.

Enforce laws that say ALL public meetings must be open.

Minimize the use of executive session.

Publish meeting schedules weeks in advance of meetings.

Make available ALL documents signed by the city immediately available on the internet.

The above will force our city council to resign, as the game will be over, and they'll no longer have fun.

The is a reason for State law, there is a reason that there is a Uniform Code for City Business in the State of Oregon. Problem is everyone was making money and looked the other way. That was the past. Now we MUST cut our losses, and watch exactly what is done.

Otherwise this City will be bankrupt, if hasn't already been bankrupted. How do we know it isn't with all these secret signing statement's and "letters of understand", and "memorandum of understanding" that are secret.

We can no longer tolerate business being done this way.

Anonymous said...

nothing like all bend bust all the time.

Anonymous said...

nothing like all bend bust all the time.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>;{

There are only three persona's here,...

1.) Duncan-bem,ihtbyb,bem,
2.) BendBust-bilbo,bust,pedro,bendy
3.) Bendbb-timmytwat,fairyRing,rdc,

That's about 3**3 or 27 persona's what do you expect? From a city of 72,000 with about three with an IQ of more than two digits.

Anonymous said...


nothing like all bend bust all the time.


Fuckin aye, nan like ya, like the bend-bust is like too much, like ya, like the City isn't following State Law, like who is dude? This is the fucking post dot-com dude, like law is for fucking brick&mortar people.

Bend is about fuckin' exceptionalism, like Aspen, like lesSchwab AMPhitheatre, like the best rock&roll dude of all time, like get with the times, and make some money.

Anonymous said...


Let's get real, and deal with hand that god has dealt us.


There are only three choices, well maybe four,...

a.) Buy a NWXC home,
b.) Buy a deschutes canyon condo, from a hondo-condo-canyon whore,
c.) Move
d.) Suicide

Anonymous said...

Homework assignment. Read This, read this carefully.

Note this wasn't written two-weeks ago as proposed by IHTBYB & BEM, this was written SIX-MONTHS ago, and the mainstream media has just reported. Note also that BEM&IHTBYB have ignored this all along.

The talk about how great it is to be anonymous, but the fact is they are very-very afraid, afraid of what?


Bend City Council Special Meeting Page 1 of 3
December 12, 2006
Bend City Council Special Meeting
December 12, 2006

1. Roll Call

A special meeting of the Bend City Council was called to order at 9:00 A.M. in the City Council
Chambers at Bend City Hall, 710 NW Wall. Present upon roll call by City Recorder Patty Stell
were Bend City Councilors Dave Malkin, Linda Johnson, Bruce Abernethy, John Hummel, Chris
Telfer, and Mayor Bill Friedman. Councilor Jim Clinton joined the meeting during Executive
Session.

2. Mayor Friedman called a recess to Executive Session at 9:00 A.M. pursuant to ORS
192.660 (2) (e).

3. The special meeting reconvened at 9:59 A.M.

4. Sale of Real Property

Economic Development Director John Russell explained the public hearing to consider a land
sale for the first 20 acres of Juniper Ridge. The agreement is for the immediate purchase of 12
acres with an option for an additional eight acres over the next 12 years. The company would be
building a 120 square foot building for 320 employees. The land would be for Les Schwab
corporate headquarters relocating from Prineville. The company approached the City in May
anonymously. This would be for the corporate headquarters and the remainder of the Prineville
operations would remain in Prineville. The Company was considering Bend or leaving the state.

a. Hold a public hearing to receive comment on the proposed sale of real
property

Mayor Friedman opened the public hearing at 10: 01 A.M. Hearing no comments, the public
hearing was closed.

b. Consider a motion to sell real property

Councilor Telfer moved to approve the purchase and sale agreement with SWW LLC. Councilor
Malkin seconded the motion.

Discussion:

Councilor Johnson advised that this is a difficult vote for her. The City has great dreams for
Juniper Ridge and respects Les Schwab as a regional partner. She understands that the Council
is being asked not only to vote for Bend, but to vote for the region. The vote is difficult for her
because Council has been held to secrecy and been asked by the employer to put relationships
with regional partners at risk. Council has only been given an hour to review the agreement and
to discuss it. There is not a direct tie to the principles that Council established for Juniper Ridge.
It might be a great agreement, but Council has not been given an opportunity to talk about it and
Bend City Council Special Meeting Page 2 of 3
December 12, 2006
ask the questions that are needed to make the best choice for the City and for the region.
Councilor Johnson will vote no, not because of the content of the agreement, but because of the
process and the position that the Council has been put in to take a vote which puts at risk the
Council’s relationships with the region.

Councilor Hummel believes this is the toughest vote he has ever had to make. The fact that Les
Schwab is such an important employer to Prineville and to Crook County is what initially struck
him. He worked in Prineville when he first lived in Central Oregon. Les Schwab saved the
community when mills were shutting down. Councilor Hummel respects Les Schwab for staying
in the Prineville community for all these years when it didn’t make financial sense for them to
stay. He saw the kids who worked at Les Schwab who could stay in Prineville and raise a family
because of the living wage jobs. They were proud to work for Les Schwab. If Les Schwab will
leave Central Oregon if Bend City Council does not approve the contract, then all the employees
will lose. He understands this is the corporate office and not the operations. Les Schwab has a
right to do whatever it wants and it has given more than anyone to the community of Prineville.
Councilor Hummel had been leaning toward a vote of yes because he felt it would save jobs in
the region. Then, Councilor Clinton raised the issue of the details of the agreement. The details
of the agreement did not come close to working. Councilor Hummel believes the details are bad.
It is unfortunate that Les Schwab insisted on these deal breaking terms.

Councilor Clinton believes that Les Schwab is the kind of company Bend would welcome in
Juniper Ridge. It embodies good paying jobs, community spirit, and a contributing nature that he
would love to have at Juniper Ridge. However, the details of the contract have put the Council
in a box. It is an unfortunate way of proceeding that looks like bullying. The contract is not in
the best interest of the City or of Juniper Ridge and is not fiscally prudent for the community,
Juniper Ridge, or the City. The contract includes precedent setting incentives. Council made an
attractive offer for the land, better than to the master developer. Land was offered at a
discounted price with the condition that no further incentives would be offered. The contract has
other incentives and allows that this company be treated differently than any other company
would be treated. He believes the contract is remarkably and unacceptably bad.

Councilor Malkin will vote yes because it is very important that Les Schwab stay in Central
Oregon. He is concerned that Les Schwab not leave the state. Additionally, he believes that Les
Schwab will be an incredibly good business to start off the City’s operation at Juniper Ridge.
The company will bring 350 jobs to Bend. It is one of the leading employers in Central Oregon.
It is the strongest regional business in the west, and he is pleased that Bend can retain them in
Central Oregon.

Mayor Friedman hears a huge amount of affection for Les Schwab and excitement about the
company locating in Juniper Ridge. He also hears distress about the agreement itself. In terms
of secrecy and restriction, it is not consistent with his image of Les Schwab. He will vote yes
with the hope to see the real Les Schwab emerge. He hopes the company’s principals will fit
with the Council’s principles established for Juniper Ridge. If it turns out that this hope is not
realized, then he believes he will have made a mistake.

Bend City Council Special Meeting Page 3 of 3
December 12, 2006
Upon roll call vote the motion to approve the purchase and sales agreement passed, 4/3.
Councilors Abernethy, Telfer, Malkin and Mayor Friedman supported the motion. Councilors
Clinton, Johnson and Hummel were opposed.

Mayor Friedman explained that the City Manager is authorized to execute the agreement with
Les Schwab. Council would appreciate the opportunity to understand where Les Schwab intends
to go with this agreement.

5. Adjourn

Councilor Johnson moved to adjourn. Councilor Malkin seconded the motion which passed
unanimously, 7/0.

The meeting adjourned at 10:14 A.M.

Respectfully submitted,



Patricia Stell
City Recorder

/km

Anonymous said...

IHTBYB & BEM are both MBA's on the Juniper Ridge payroll

They'll condemn the city for being to to liberal, and make fun of the over-valued condos.

They'll even torment a few of the liberal City Council.

That said, they will do whatever is necessary to protect their employer, Les Schwab.

Anonymous said...

"There is not a direct tie to the principles that Council established for Juniper Ridge.

It might be a great agreement, but Council has not been given an opportunity to talk about it ...
ask the questions that are needed to make the best choice for the City and for the region."

The above from December 2006, is obviously how Les-Schwab does business. If the agreement is in opposition to the principles, then perhaps that it is why it is secret. Then again, how would anyone know? All we know is that the councilors themselves think it violates the principles.

Anonymous said...

Councilor Johnson advised that this is a difficult vote for her. The City has great dreams for
Juniper Ridge and respects Les Schwab as a regional partner. She understands that the Council
is being asked not only to vote for Bend, but to vote for the region.

The vote is difficult for her
because Council has been held to secrecy and been asked by the employer to put relationships
with regional partners at risk.


Council has only been given an hour to review the agreement and
to discuss it. There is not a direct tie to the principles that Council established for Juniper Ridge.

Anonymous said...


“The upset was about the lack of process,” Councilor Linda Johnson said Friday, and not about the company. “I think we’ve learned things that we can improve on next time."


1.) Fix the process, fire the City Attorney, and get someone with BALLS in the meetings to enforce the laws, and enforce City-Council to follow the law. An attorney is supposed to be present to tell politicians if they're being good/bad and/or crossing the line. It is clear that the Bend City Attorney is like everyone else, on the Les Schwab payroll.

2.) Les Schwab is dead. Note even here Johnson refers to LS as "The Company", you would think we're talking about a the CIA. This is just a podunk tire marketing outfit. Why is everyone in this town petrified is LS-the-company?

Anonymous said...

Read the following from August 24, 2006 where the bend chamber of commerce demands the process be open, and noted that if it wasn't all hell would be unleashed, ... and guess what happened, everything was done in secret, and now everything has gone to shit,...

*

Last week's survey question was, "What should the Bend Chamber do as the city moves forward on Juniper Ridge?" We received a number of good responses. Here are some:
"If this thing is not final ... I think this whole thing should be put to a public vote. The usual thing with the Council is that they hold hearings and despite public input to the contrary, they proceed with their original plans. The only way to stop them is with a public vote that they cannot ignore. My thanks to the Chamber Board and Mike Schmidt for standing up to them. I'm sorry they did not listen to you."
"The Bend Chamber was not interjected early enough in the Memorandum of Understanding between the city and the master developer. The only binding section is fraught with the issue of noncompetitiveness, which has been a lesson relearned time and time again throughout federal and state governments' dealings with industry. A popular comedian has coined the expression, bYou can't fix stupid.' Let's hope the Chamber can help the city before it's too late."
"Stay on them. The only thing that will keep the city councilors accountable is to know that the business community and the public are looking at all the processes and decisions that are being made. It is apparent to me that the Chamber had a large effect on the city's decision to restrict the obligation to the developer in the MOU that was agreed to Wednesday night."

Anonymous said...


The usual thing with the Council is that they hold hearings and despite public input to the contrary, they proceed with their original plans. The only way to stop them is with a public vote that they cannot ignore. My thanks to the Chamber Board and Mike Schmidt for standing up to them. I'm sorry they did not listen to you."


We're all sorry that nobody listened to anybody. Ya, real sorry.

So many crocodile tears in Bend you could drown.

Anonymous said...

The is a reason for State law, there is a reason that there is a Uniform Code for City Business in the State of Oregon. Problem is everyone was making money and looked the other way. That was the past. Now we MUST cut our losses, and watch exactly what is done.

Anonymous said...

bend historical society...or anyone...

can you explain very simply what the issue is with les Schwab and Juniper Ride and city council and the secret meetings?

it sounds fascinating, but not being there I don't understand what is going on and it is hard to from the comments.

Thanks for the Nazi Days lesson.

thanks,

Dirt Bag Mortgage Broker

Anonymous said...

It's hard to understand what is happening because a certain rambling individual has hijacked the blog and can't coherently explain what the hell he's talking about.

Anonymous said...


I don't understand what is going on and it is hard to from the comments.


It's ok, nobody does. It's all a myth, a bad dream. There is no such thing as Les Schwab or Juniper Ridge.

In a few years if you mention to anyone in Condo-Canyon about,... any of these subject the reply will be ... Do you want to rent my condo by the hour?

Anonymous said...


The usual thing with the Council is that they hold hearings and despite public input to the contrary, they proceed with their original plans. The only way to stop them is with a public vote that they cannot ignore. My thanks to the Chamber Board and Mike Schmidt for standing up to them. I'm sorry they did not listen to you."


It's not that they didn't listen, its that they didn't understand what you said.

In a City consumed with Oprah, Paris, and Flipping, its very difficult to discuss substance.

Anonymous said...


The only thing that will keep the city councilors accountable is to know that the business community and the public are looking at all the processes and decisions that are being made.


What would be the point, even the council doesn't read this stuff or understand it, and the public? Why bother them? They wouldn't understand.

The current system is working just fine. The city gets county land for one dollar, and sell's it to insiders. There simply isn't enough graft to go around.

Thus if you don't understand the system, then you don't deserve a share of the graft.

Anonymous said...

What about those bitches IHTBYB & BEM? Are they really on the Les Schwab payroll?

Anonymous said...


When money and credit are free and easy you should worry.


Why bother? The stock market looks healthy. The problem in the housing market is "contained" in the subprime sector. And M3 is growing at 13% per annum - the fastest rate in 30 years. With all that new money coming into the system, how can prices do anything other than float higher?

But the risk of loss is always at its highest on the precise moment that most people judge it of least concern. Most likely, there will be no crash tomorrow…nor the day after. But there are some things you are better off preparing for, even though they may not happen for a while.

When money and credit are free and easy, people become free and easy with them. They begin spending more than they should…and investing recklessly. Eventually, there is a shock…a tipping point…a moment of desperate reality, in which people feel the ground give way beneath their feet. They look down and panic.

What kind of a shock? It could be almost anything. Sometimes it is a war…sometimes a bankruptcy…sometimes a market shock - such as a sudden increase in the price of oil…or the collapse of a stock market. Then investors, as if they shared a single mind, begin to worry not about the return ON their money; they are concerned about the return OF their money.

What could cause a shock today? Any number of things.

1) The Chinese stock market is getting hit hard. Its CSI 300 Index is down 17% in the last three weeks. Brokerage account openings have dropped by two-thirds. Could global hot money…and local cold cash…turn bearish on Chinese shares? Could Chinese officials say something particularly stupid? Could the market fall another 20%…50%? Could this trigger a worldwide equity sell-off? Yes to all those questions.

2) The dollar is in trouble. On Wednesday, it hit its lowest level against the pound (GBP) in 26-years. It is now near its lowest level ever against the euro (EUR). Trillions worth of dollars now sit in foreign vaults - while reserve managers openly talk of diversifying away from greenbacks. Foreigners don't have to abandon the dollar en masse to knock it down…all they have to do is to let up on their purchases of dollar-denominated assets - such as U.S. Treasuries. Could it happen? Could the shock cause a crash in major financial markets? Why…yes…again.

3) All paper currencies are dangerous. The dollar is not the only paper currency in the world whose supply is growing rapidly. Practically every central bank is printing up its own money in vast quantities - trying to keep up with the U.S. brand. This is why the world has so much "liquidity." It's why so many assets are rising in price so steeply. But could investors suddenly become fearful of so much monetary inflation? Could consumer prices shoot up…as asset prices already have? Could the world's people want to get rid of their paper currencies in favor of other stores of value - notably gold, as The Wall Street Journal warns in an article entitled "Money Meltdown"? And could this lead to a worldwide crash? Yes…yes…yes.

4) A Milan-based bank, Italease, has just seen its derivative portfolio blow up. So has Bear Stearns (NYSE:BSC). Large lenders are getting skittish of complex debt instruments…just as more deals than ever before come to market. So far this year $1 trillion in deals have been done in the North America - a rate of deal-making nearly 50% higher than the year before. What happens if the wheeler-dealers don't find the credit they're looking for? What would investors think if even one of these mega-deals blew up badly?

Reports Bloomberg: "The world's biggest bondholders have had their fill of leveraged buyouts…

"TIAA-CREF, which oversees $414 billion in retirement funds for teachers and college professors, is boycotting some debt offerings used to finance LBOs. Fidelity International, a unit of the world's largest mutual fund company, and Lehman Brothers Asset Management LLC, the money-management arm of the third- biggest bond underwriter, say they're avoiding debt from buyouts.

"You cannot do fundamental analysis and believe that those are creditworthy companies," says an analyst.

"More securities than ever have the lowest rankings, with CCC ratings assigned to 26.5 percent of the new debt, according to New York-based Fitch Ratings. That compares with 15 percent in 2006 for debt that Fitch says has a 'high default risk.'

"Traders demand 3 percentage points in extra interest to own U.S. junk bonds rather than government debt, compared with a record low of 2.41 percentage points on June 5, Merrill Lynch & Co. index data show. That's the fastest increase in spreads since April 2005, just before General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. lost their investment-grade credit ratings."

Meanwhile, the Bank of England raised its key interest rate on Thursday by twenty-five basis points to 5.75 percent - another six-year high. This is the fifth time this year. The ECB's Trichet held steady this month but hints that rates will go up in the future. Elsewhere, banks are likely to hike rates too. And watch out if the Chinese decide to do some serious tightening.

Could there be even bigger blow ups waiting to happen? And could they cause a stampede for the exits? Anthony Bolton, Britain's most successful fund manager, worries about it. So does the Bank of International Settlements. And so do central bankers in Madrid, London and who knows where else. And if the pros stop lending so freely, mightn't it trigger a credit crunch…and a crash? Why, yes…now that you mention it.

5) The great millstone of housing debt continues to grind America's middle and lower classes.

The LA TIMES: "Slow job growth and declining home prices are causing financial problems for more Americans, who are falling behind on consumer debt, including home equity loans, at the highest rate since 2001, the American Bankers Assn. said Tuesday.

"Credit counselors said consumers were paying the price for reckless attitudes about debt fostered by years of easy credit, particularly in the mortgage market.

"'It's a monster we all created,' said Todd Emerson, president of Springboard, a nonprofit consumer credit management organization in Riverside."

Let's see, Chinese companies depend on consumer buying from America…which depends on U.S. consumer spending…which depends on consumer credit…which depends on mortgage lending…which depends on a secondary market in mortgage backed securities…which depends on rising housing prices! But housing prices aren't rising; they're falling.

Could housing prices go lower? Could lower housing prices cause consumers to stop spending so much? It seems so. The sale of light motor vehicles in the United States dropped 3.4% month-to-month in June to a seasonally adjusted rate of 15.6 million units, according to Northern Trust's Paul Kasriel. A number of retailers have lowered sales guidance as buyers tighten their belts.

Could an attack of consumer thrift one day swarm over financial markets like Japanese bombers over Pearl Harbor? Your guess is as good as ours, dear reader.

Will there be a crash on Wall Street today? Will the Chinese economic bubble find its pin? Probably not quite yet. But we will keep our eyes open anyway…and keep our ear to the ground for you, dear reader.

Anonymous said...

The only thing worse than a drive-by blogger. Is blog hi-jacking.

If I had something to say, then I probably wouldn't be consumed by bendbust. I have found this all very troubling.

The internet is supposed to a safe place to cruise. I find these blog road hogs to be an annoyance to my personal safety and peace of mind.

Anonymous said...

I don't understand what is going on and I have a hard on from the comments.

Anonymous said...

Bend should be more like Pawnee City, Nebraska, a REDNECK TOWN where men can CRAWL HOME without the cops bothering them.

***

“Rednecks love quality, too.” That may not equal “King of Beers” as a slogan for a beer company, but it works just fine for SchillingBridge Winery & MicroBrewery.
The company from Pawnee City, Neb., has introduced Git-R-Done beer, in homage to the town’s favorite son: Larry The Cable Guy (aka Daniel Lawrence Whitney).

Mike Schilling, owner of SchillingBridge, says Git-R-Done will appeal to the sophisticated microbrew drinker and fans of Larry The Cable Guy.

Schilling says the special brew is a light beer with “more flavor and body” than your run-of-the-mill domestic beer.

Anonymous said...

Juniper Ridge a cozy relationship with junk bonds, CDO's, Muni's, and the worlds largest bank.

What is most interesting about our 'master developer' and the annoited 'consultant' is that Bay Meadows ( cali ) is really a front for StockBridge, which is really a front for UBS one of the biggest junk bond financiers in the world.

Originally the City MOU and Bay Meadows deal was secret, but in fall of last year Bend Chamber of Commerce forced the MOU to be public. Within two weeks Stockbridge killed the $30M finance for Juniper Ridge. Again Stockbridge & Bay Meadows are all the same people. All ran by UBS the #1 junk-bond writer in the world. The largest Swiss bank in the world.

UBS now considers Oregon a bad investment, especially Oregon Condo's.

*

Ray Kuratek

* Development Specialist for Bay Meadows Land Company
* Joined PaineWebber Real Estate Group in 1997
* Assists with asset management and development
* Focused on project entitlement and political strategy
* Over 30 years experience in commercial and residential development
* B.S. in Finance and M.B.A. in Finance from University of Connecticut

Kristin H. Gardner

* Vice President of Bay Meadows Land Company
* Vice President of Stockbridge Capital Partners, LLC responsible for Stockbridge Real Estate Fund’s portfolio management including ongoing financial projections and analysis
* Helped arrange and structure spin-off of Stockbridge Real Estate Fund from UBS in April 2003


Charlene Kiley

* Vice President and Controller of Bay Meadows Land Company
* Vice President and Controller of Stockbridge Capital Partners, LLC

Anonymous said...

An MBA from CT, been in Bend about ten years between cali and bend. Focused on incentives and entitlement. IHTBYB is a busy man.

Ray Kuratek

* Development Specialist for Bay Meadows Land Company
* Joined PaineWebber Real Estate Group in 1997
* Assists with asset management and development
* Focused on project entitlement and political strategy
* Over 30 years experience in commercial and residential development
* B.S. in Finance and M.B.A. in Finance from University of Connecticut

Anonymous said...

Ray Kuratek UBS-Warburg/Paine Webber/Stockbridge (Bay Meadows owner)

*

I love this town. UBS is the biggest junk bond writer in the world. One of the leading writers of sub-prime mortgage.

UBS has their man in Bend Oregon running the show, but in August 2006, after promising to finance Juniper-Ridge they pullout ( 'stockbridge' they being themselves ). Our very own Special Consultant to the project is a UBS executive.

UBS besides subprime CDO's also specializes in MUNI-CDO's, this is how Juniper-Ridge will be financed.

It's clear that Ray Kuratek was only chosen by the City of Bend for his UBS connections.

What is most interesting is that he promised to get the funding and his own Stockbridge ( a UBS holding company ) backs out of the deal.


The master developer chosen by City of Bend is a Ray Kuratek, who owns Bay Meadows. Who is also owned by Stockbridge, who is owned by UBS.

UBS is the largest under-writer in the world of junk-bond CDO's, which is the largest provider in the world of funds to sub-prime mortgage, which caused the bend bubble.

It's all a very strange strange world.

Anonymous said...

Ray Kuratek UBS-Warburg/Paine Webber/Stockbridge (Bay Meadows owner)

*

It is said if you want to understand ( I know this is important to you all, to understand ). You must FOLLOW the MONEY.

I did a little research in Bay Area of every major construction project that Ray Kuratek was involved, in every instance the largest campaign contributor for the BOND measure before the public had the following names ... UBS,Warburg, Paine Webber, Stockbridge ...

It's fairly clear that where-ever Ray goes he has his parents load the political love machine with grease for the project.

It's also clear that the reason he's now in Bend is their was too much light on the projects with all this 'voting' by the public, and public doc's.

He came to Oregon where business could be done in secret. Where it's possible to intimidate a two bit city council. Where the citizens are completely dis-engaged.

Lastly, what is most fascinating is that these are the same people who engineered the subprime mortgage easy-money program that created the bend-bubble.

Buy low, sell high. Buy again, when it hits bottom. The city of Bend paid one-dollar for Juniper ridge from Deschutes County. Ray Kuratek didn't make Les Schwab pay much more.

The good people of San Mateo drove Ray Kuratek out of San Mateo, because of the way he did business. That is destroy cultural landmarks and replace them with malls. Perhaps cali's know something that we don't???

Ray Kuratek said...

George Orwell once said,

"Two legs bad, Four legs good."

The people of Bend now say,

"Condo bad, Juniper Ridge good."

Subprime easy money and CDO junk-bond mortgage will bring put Bend real estate in the tank for a few years. Then buy low, sell high all over again.

UBS is the largest bank in the world and the primary under-writer of MTG-CDO's. Banks had gotten completely out of the home-mtg business, and wall-street financed by UBS had taken over. Today UBS will no longer finance condo's in Oregon. Expert their price/value to completely collapse.

Anonymous said...

Why would UBS over-fund Bend, Oregon?

Why would they cause the bubble?

Why did UBS pull out of the their promise to fund Juniper Ridge last August after the Bend Chamber of Commerce forced the UBS/City-of-Bend MOU to become public?

Why did UBS finance all the condo mania in Oregon only to pull the plug this month?

I think its rather clear that the folks that run the largest bank in the world, a company who manages a SWISS bank for the richest investors in the world isn't that smart.

Last friday I met with a UBS executive in PDX, who told me they there would be no more condo investment's in Oregon. I asked Bend, Oregon, and the only comment was "over-valued". I really don't think they'll invest anymore money.

Then I asked the most important question. How will this CDO collapse effect UBS? Note to matter, only 3% of our money is in subprime CDO's. OF course that is still a lot of money, this is the biggest bank in the world.

Why doe IHTBYB bash condo's, and stupid flippers, but always refuse to discuss the CDO-MTG business, and incentives to developers?

It's clear there is conflicting UBS interests in Bend where the same people are cheerleaders for the bust, but financeer's for the bubble.

A lot of bad investments have been made. To date UBS seems to be voting with their feet. I say this because they pulled the Juniper Ridge investment of $30M last august, and now they're no longer funding any condo's in Oregon.


In summary, sometimes the smartest bankers in the world, really aren't that smart, or perhaps there is still more to happen, where the big boys will end the end be the smartest guys in the room?

Anonymous said...

>>3.) Bendbb-timmytwat,fairyRing,rdc,

Dammit I'm not BendBB or rdc. BendNN is from California and I'm from the MidWest. I HATE California. Stop making up paranoid crap about person A being person B.

Having said that, I agree with what you say about Juniper Ridge. That situation is ridiculous. It should sit in limbo until the good times come back--and that'll be quite a while.

Problem in this town is that Realtors and Construction have been on top for too long. They have to realize that without a real University here and real jobs here, they're up against a wall.

The time to bring in tech companies was when housing was cheap. If Sony can't bring in people, why would Oracle, HP, or Microsoft come here? It's really too late, if you ask me. You need to get your town going with jobs before you crank up the housing prices.

--TimT

Anonymous said...

If Sony can't bring in people, why would Oracle, HP, or Microsoft come here? - TT

********

Dearest TT,

I can tell you that Oracle, MS, HP, ... Would never move an OP here.

1.) There is NO airport, folks @ oracle have to travel all over the world daily, exec's top-down to second tier have to meet weekly with larry ellison. Do you have any idea in the world how hard it is to get to SanJose/SFO from Bend?

2.) Essentially high tech has always been a myth in Bend. There are two players here, Lonsdale-Scientific, and MicroSemi (APT), both sweat-shops, with low-pay. You simply cannot compete here. This is why APT forces its people to work 12hour days, 7 days a week. It' always been this way in Bend.

3.) I know lots of exec's you speak of that have golf-lots @sun-river, they love Bend, but you know what? They all come here to play? Over 20+ years when I ask, "Why don't you get Bill Gates to open a little R&D here" the response has always been.. "I want to play when I'm here NOT work".

#1 is most critical because managers don't really care about most things, but when you have to fly to pdx, and then transfer to san-jose, or ... perhaps in ten years there might be direct flights from redmond to SF, LA, SEA, but they would have to be hourly, as the exec's I know are always late, and like to jump on the next seat.

That works in PDX, because they come & go every hour from BAY-AHREA.

Larry Ellison is notorious for meetings, with a two hour notice, its basically impossible to do biz from Bend for these people.

They would never in a 1,000 years have HQ here, so what I'm referring to is the little R&D shops, hell MS & Oracle both have them in PDX with 100+ people. It works here, because larry can look at management in the eye same day.

Even if larry opened a small R&D shop here for 100 SW engineer's, he would still have to have a manager here that would have to fly down once a twice a week, and they don't want to do it, because it takes 6-12 hours each way from Bend, with same day travel you get about one hour, which isn't enough time to rent a car.

Leave Bend 5am drive to redmond, lv 6am arrive SFO noon, lv 1pm arrive back at redmond midnight, home by 1am, ... FUN

It cannot be done same-day, and thus nobody of any importance will ever setup shop in Bend.


It's nothing from PDX, leave at 6am, meet at HQ 10am to 2pm, and be back in PDX by 6pm, no problemo.

Hourly flights to BAY-AHREA OR Settle from Bend-Oregon are NOT going to happen in OUR lifetime .

At this point Bend has no east-west FWY, and NO No-So fwy, there is really no way to get out in the winter. What would be the point?

Lastly, and this is really important, flying in and out of Redmond in the winter is scary shit. It's one thing for rich high-tech folk to play here during golf season, but commuting from Redmond in those little 12 seater puddle jumper's is scary shit, its a one time thing, and they say never again. There is a once or twice a day flight or so to SFO area from RDM in a small 30 seat jet, but again, it has to be hourly to really work.

High tech folks are always in late meetings, and the traffic getting to SFO makes them always late, and they want to come home, and NOT stay in a hotel.
A lot very rich high-tech folks know all about Bend, and have property here, but they want to play here, and they don't want to see it get fucked up like whats happened in the BAY-AHREA. ( sounds like diahrea )

p.s. thanks for the clarification that TT is NOT connected to that evil bitch bendbb.

Anonymous said...


Ray Kuratek UBS-Warburg/Paine Webber/Stockbridge (Bay Meadows owner) - Bend Master Developer - Juniper Ridge - Bend MASTER Consultant Juniper Ridge.

You must FOLLOW the MONEY.


Ok, homework time. Somebody find the link to campaign contributions to our Johnson, Friedman, Abernethy, Clinton, ... It appears that old Kuratek has been doing the same stuff every where he goes. It's always the same MO, .e.g. UBS, Warburg, Paine-Webber, Stockbridge,
are the biggest campaign contributors in every case all over USA when these little projects are forced to a public vote.

I know there has NEVER been a public vote in here, and the status-quo don't believe in the law, or popular representation. Our politicians wouldn't be risking their necks for nothing, we need to follow the money.

We know it was NO accident that OUR city council has handed ol Ray Kuratek the keys to the city bank. There must be a whole bunch of contributions to our politicians going back to 2002 from .. UBS,Warburg,Paine-Webber,Stockbridge

This is how they do business every where they go, they got ran out of San Mateo, because the people got to vote, Oregon has a long history of secret-shit. Which is how PDX does business, and in Bend the its the same developers there now, that have been playing in PDX for 20+ years.

So somebody help with this shit and lets find the online campaign sheets for "UBS,Warburg,Paine-Webber,Stockbridge" to what politicians, and see who exactly owns who in this little two-horse town.

Lastly, and I think this is quite interesting is that when Ray Kuratek setup the deal, he made it look like Stockbridge was some kind of third party, when in fact all this stuff is him.

The part I like best is that he never knew the secret company was Les Schwab, pleeeeeeze give me a break.

Anonymous said...

The story starts and ends with Ray Kuratek. A person associated with UBS the largest bank in the world. A bank that specializes in managing money out of switzerland for the richest people in the world. A bank that created the junk CDO-MTG-BOND that created the bend-bubble, and that caused 2+ million Americans to lose their homes. The bank was going to finance Juniper Ridge and then backed out when the MOU exposing them came out in August, the MOU was made public, because the old guard that run's Bend at Bend-Chamber of Commerce forced the document to be made public.

This is a great war here, the old guard, and the biggest richest bank in the world manipulating a little desert town. A lot of condo money flowed through UBS to build the condo-mania boom that Oregon has seen. Since 2006 UBS has been pulling the plug ASAP.

As this story begins and ends, UBS has been involved all along, all in slow motion we watch everything un-wind.

Given that the two-bit whores that run the Source, Bulletin, and Oregonian - will never let the story see the light of day, its important for historical reasons that we document the story.

The next step in the slow-motion puzzle is go back and study all post 911, pre-bubble campaign contributions, before Wall-Street got into the home finance business and made Bend, Oregon the MOST over-priced and over-valued real estate in the USA. The bubble peaked in the Fall of 2006, and ever since UBS has been trying to pull the plug ASAP.

Your home work assignment good reader, to help find any and ALL campaign contributions to any Oregon politician going back to 911, contributions from ... UBS, Warburg, Paine Webber, Stockbridge as the pattern all over the USA is that these companys have been paying the political. It's all been the same pattern get cheap land, and develop, and make a buck for the investors, the richest people in the world. Folks wonder why and/or how the rich always get richer?

Anonymous said...


When the city decided to select Juniper Ridge Partners as the master developer in October 2005, Kuratek told the city he would line up investors to bring $30 million into the project. Kuratek said the investors would be Stockbridge. - Investors back out of Juniper Ridge deal
By Christine Metz / The Bulletin
Published: August 31. 2006 5:00AM


The is so fishy.

1.) When Kuratek got the keys to the city treasury back in October 2005, did he ever tell anyone in Bend that he was Stockbridge? In this Bulletin story it makes things appear that its a third party?

2.) Juniper Ridge Partners is a front for UBS, who later decides not to invest THEIR money in JR.

3.) The whole reason that Kuratek got to be the Master-Consultant, and MASTER-DEVELOPER is that he promised he would take care of all the money problems. Now he's the man, but there is no money? This is now July, almost a year later. Where's the Beef?

4.) Why didn't the city of bend, just make UBS the bank itself the Master-Developer? Why doesn't City-of-Bend just let UBS have an explicit first right of refusal on ALL MUNI-DEBT?

Anonymous said...

Just a couple weeks ago, the local head of Sony said in the Bend Bulletin that it's hell to get from Redmond to Japan.

There's no international airport here. Not only that, but we aren't even on the I-5 corridor. So I agree it's a terrible bet to try to get tech to move here. Sony was a fluke because it's a bought-out local company started by the guy who got rich off the old Infocom game Zork.

For a while, Sony could get people here because it was cheap to live here. That overwhelmed the downside of it being a captive employer (meaning that if you didn't like the job, you had to move back to the Bay Area or Seattle). Now, Sony hires can't even afford to buy houses when they come here.

Juniper Ridge will not work. Eugene wasn't even able to get the high-priced tenants it wanted in the Riverfront Research Park, and that was right next to the University.

There are plenty of home-office techies here, but a lot of them moved in when you could buy a nice house for $150,000. Does it make sense to buy a house at $450,000 in Bend if you can work anywhere? For a few mountain biker techies, sure. For the typical nerdy bookworm techie, no way.

Bend is going to run into a genuine, painful, long-lasting slump.

--TT

Anonymous said...

The slump is definitely on the way. I Spoke with a builder a few days ago, and he mentioned that he is getting pretty nervous. He has been in Bend since the late 70's, so he has seen rough times before. Interestingly, he also said that he talked to a realtor friend who also has been here for many years, and she related that things are worse than they were in the early 80's. My perception is that because we have a much larger population here, and things are a little more diversified now than back then, it is a little less apparent that things are not good. Many people are still floating on their equity from Cali and other places. However, I think soon it will become painfully obvious that things are melting down here. When you take away a significant portion of the good paying jobs here, ie. construction, real estate, mortgage brokers etc. theres no way that we are going to have a "soft landing".

Anonymous said...


Eugene wasn't even able to get the high-priced tenants it wanted in the Riverfront Research Park, and that was right next to the University.


It didn't work for OGI in Hillsboro, either right next to Intel.

The fact is and I say this as a scientist is that Oregon, always has, and always will be a back-water southern plantation.

The number one reason that scientists from good schools don't want to come to Oregon, Portland let alone no where is that their is no sharing of the mind.

I think little minds like to think that Cambridge, MIT, Stanford, is just a matter of a building and money.

No cigar, there is much more to culture and intellectual stimulation than poverty with a view.

Been here for forty years, I came from Cal-Tech, and I haven't seen one iota of change in Oregon in terms of all the high-tech pipe dreams. At least UofW pulled it off, sort of, but not orygun.

I look at Aspen and the Aspen Institute where you have the best scientists in the world do summer/winter camp, and same for Santa-Fe New Mexico, with the santa-fe institute.

The difference is that in NM, and CO there were billionaires willing to sponsor these places. ( Bill Joy of SUN sponsored Aspen, just one of the many rich high tech guys )

Look at Orygun, the only sponsor I have seen to date is the Oregon Lottery.

I think if you jump to UofW you can name some real rich folks that have helped Seattle.

The SAD fact, and as always this is where I'm going to piss everyone off, is that there hasn't ever been ever a real high-tech rich guy in Oregon to become a patron, and again this goes back to the fact are schools are SHIT.

I wrote a long blog back a few months ago on bendbubble.blogspot.com, called "Oregon Edoocation, ...." It's all been said before, Millions of lotto money were dumped into OGI during the last twenty years and NOT shit came out... WHY? because the folks with the purse hired PSU grads to teach, .... The fact is the folks from Stanford will not even work here, because there are no seminars and other cultural/intellectual STIM in the eve...


If & When there are rich patrons we'll have our Bend Institute, and ALL the money and political double talk by cheap condo-whores will not bring, even if they build.

Now that Bend has become a cheap little tourist town that sells time-shares at OTHER exotic locations the odd's of great minds wanting to build an Institute here are slim to zero.

Anonymous said...

For the typical nerdy bookworm techie, no way.

****

Agreed, how many miles is Frys from Bend, that little computer shop on Franklin, is horribly over-priced and they don't even know what Fry's is,

Sure you can buy on the internet, but Bend is a very hard place to work high-tech at home,...

Anonymous said...

Where doe's this Bend as paradise shit come from?

If you could live anywhere? Why Bend.

I think its been said here many times, the only people who think Bend is special, is people who have never traveled.

Anonymous said...


Somebody find the link to campaign contributions to our Johnson, Friedman, Abernethy, Clinton, ... It appears that old Kuratek has been doing the same stuff every where he goes. It's always the same MO, .e.g. UBS, Warburg, Paine-Webber, Stockbridge,
are the biggest campaign contributors in every case all over USA when these little projects are forced to a public vote.


The information doesn't exist. Campaign contributions are not considered public in Oregon.

Anonymous said...

Hedge funds are closing down or reporting losses because of subprime losses.

Zurich-based UBS AG shuttered a hedge fund unit that saddled the biggest money manager for wealthy investors with 150 million Swiss francs ($122 million) of first- quarter losses. They fired their CEO last week.

collateralized debt obligations, which have packaged thousands of bonds and derivatives into new securities, will lose $125 billion.

Anonymous said...

I would rather debate the cause of the bend-bubble-bust than education.

This damn education debate is just like the "how can we make Bend a first class education destination".

Like was said earlier, the only people who think Bend is great is people who haven't traveled.

The ONLY people who think a great education is just a nice-view, building, and money are people that have never been to a good school.

Here is what makes a school great ..

Princeton, Standford, ... CalTech
1.) Seminars, every hour by the greatest minds in the world, on all subjects
2.) A collection of diversified knowledge by people who wrote the book in their field within arms reach.
3.) An outstanding library within arms reach.

I could go on, but Oregon doesn't have 1,2,3. #3 might be thought easy but it takes decades to build a library, #1 requires the presence of great minds, and Oregon has never had this and never will. Leaders in a field rarely even travel to Oregon let alone want to live here, because they want to be around other #2 people.

I think the recurring problem here is that people think if you build a building in the desert, and call it a UNIV great shit will happen, it takes a lot of effort and a great recruiter to build a Stanford-Univ, unlimited money, networking, ....

In all cases in Oregon that I have witnessed, its always a job works for other Oregonians from UofO,OSU, &PSU all loser schools,... Fact is top shelf prof's don't even want to be in the same room as they losers.

It's all just like the debate about how beautiful Bend is, ...

"come to Bend where every retarded white man is a king", "come to bend, where the average can be elected to public office", come to Bend where the average person thinks THEIR child with an IQ over 100 is exceptionally intelligent, ...

The place is a joke, can you imagine if actual people in Stanford, or Princeton actually read these blogs how hard they would laugh at US proposing to create a great educational institution in Oregon, a place where two bit con-artists can rob the city blind and call it Juniper-Ridge, and get a note that say's you can walk with $2.5M even it doesn't get built??

Come on, this place is culturally and intellectually primitive.

Anonymous said...

I think the recurring problem here is that people think if you build a building in the desert, and call it a UNIV great shit will happen

*

Great SHIT does happen,

1.) A contractor gets rich
2.) A politician gets back slapped,
3.) A builder gets rich
4.) A developer gets rich,

Isn't this great shit?

Anonymous said...

There are better schools in Ohio than Oregon by far (CWRU, for example) and you don't see Ohio turning into a magic place. Ohio still has a far better economy than Oregon, though. Doeesn't Oregon just have one Fortune 500 company?

You really need the whole package for tech. Raleigh/Durham managed. Boston managed. Silicon Valley managed.

I like the Frys comment. Bend should stop subsidizing stupid condo ideas and PAY Frys to come here now.

--TT

Anonymous said...

You really need the whole package for tech. Raleigh/Durham managed. Boston managed. Silicon Valley managed.

*

TT, this really goes in circles,

Ral/Dur has GREAT schools, and old established EDUC, Boston has HahVARD,.. SV has stanford,berkely,

Oregon has shit.

Enough said,

Portland is a nice little city with roses, its too bad that with the exception of OHSU there was NEVER any serious attraction of TOP PROF's,... OHSU isn't even that great, but its the BEST we have, and thats only the MED school, and of MED schools, its NOT that great,

But back to Tech, we don't have a great school, these great schools that you mention in Raliegh, Boston, and SV they're all almost 100 years old, and for instance Stanford had a PATRON, Railroad money from the 1800's, It takes a LOT of money and GREAT men, and a hundred years ... To make a great school,

Oregon once had logging, oregon once had fishing, the logging was all done by NY interests, and thats where the money went, the fishing didn't make the kind of money to make a great school.

When you say Oregon has fortune-500 industry, you must be talking about INTEL, but remember thats just a couple fabs here for cheap power and cheap water, or perhaps your talking nike, but knight is a tenny guy, and the shoes are made in asia, its a marketing company. Knight is NOT an intellectual.

Almost ALL great schools were started 100's of years ago by tycoons, and they ran the school like a business, and got the best people.

Oregon education has been a social welfare racket since the turn of the century, and thus has always been ran by political patronage, thus you get what you paid for.

Remember Oregon is a new State it really didn't exist before the late 1800's, it went socialism from the very start, the few early rich boys were loggers and spent their money on condo-whores and chewing spud.

Then the 1900's come and the Catholic Church ran education until 1920, and then the State took over,


FYI there is a great Fortune 500 of the time name entrepreneur post WWII Howard-Vollum, who started TEKtronix, and in the day he gave MILLIONS to his alma-mater, the beloved REED, but its a liberal arts college, and doesn't have any interest in teaching its kids how to get rich. Reed is a commie college, and always has, I love Reed its my favorite in the State.

Reed certainly made Howard Vollum into the man he was, Steve Jobs of Apple went to Reed, so did Dr. Demento,... Millions and Millions have gone to Reed but it remains undergraduate, liberal, and is very picky. That said it graduates MORE physics major's than any other private college in the country per annum.


Like LesSchwab as soon as Vollum died the new boys ran the company into the ground.


A great school requires,..


1.) A tycoon, these days that be a billionaire
2.) 100 years to mature
3.) A diligent trustee that manages, like the Harvard endowment.

You do 1,2,3 and then you might have something, trouble with Oregon, is that the State was a natural resource state and everything was stolen a long time ago.

I really wish we could get back to the financing of Juniper Ridge, its much for interesting.

Anonymous said...

Jobs of Apple went to Reed, so did Dr. Demento,... Millions and Millions have gone to Reed but it remains undergraduate,

*

By this statement I mean MONEY $$ money from Vollum and Jobs,

Sadly they made the decision not to become a TOP grad school, had they SE PDX might today be the site of a new GOOGLE,

REED simply doesn't teach its kids to be entrepreneurs it teaches them to do well at another out of state graduate school,

Anonymous said...


a place where two bit con-artists can rob the city blind and call it Juniper-Ridge, and get a note that say's you can walk with $2.5M even it doesn't get built??


Where is this place? I want to sign up

Anonymous said...


Oregon education has been a social welfare racket since the turn of the century, and thus has always been ran by political patronage, thus you get what you paid for.


I don't understand? What is a patronage?

Anonymous said...


I really wish we could get back to the financing of Juniper Ridge, its much for interesting.


This is the kind of boon-doggle that will keep Bend in the ghost town state forever.

We have to get past this shit, and we have force the politicians in Deschutes County to open up everything. Even the old boys at the Chamber of Commerce are mad as hell how the Swiss Bankers have brought in their people, done secret deals, looted the city, and not a peep even from the pathetic source.

The Oregonian of course is owned by KKR the largest junk bond firm in the USA thus its in their interest not to piss off USB as USB is the biggest junk-bond writer in the world.

This is all a big happy fucking family. It's quite interesting why the fucking Bulletin doesn't even care about the old timer's??

It's like these UBS guys come from cali in KMART suits, and talk about getting millions to build a world-class-university out in the badlands ( Juniper ridge ). The city buys it hook, line, and sinker. The two bit con-artist USB card-carrying hustler gets a secret MOU that says, that even if the deal doesn't get built he gets to walk with $2.5M.

Who in the hell thinks this stuff up? I don't this town is so fucking stupid, to add insult to injury they think they're fucking Aspen.

The city signs the secret fucking MOU last summer, and in August 2006, the Bend Chamber of Commerce forces it to be released, and the city says, it learned NO more secrets, then in December 2006, they do it again, and sign another stupid fucking deal with LesSchwab.

I can guarantee all of you the termss say "In the event the Les Schwab campus doesn't get built, LS gets millions of Bend money, and LS gets all land in JR for free", and you know what the dumb fucks running Bend signed it.

What's really fucking stupid, it this shit keeps happening over and over, and old linda johnson keeps saying "We learned our lesson", what fucking lesson did she learn?

I bet the lesson was NEVER to let a document go public, because once the summer deal MOU went public, ol UBS killed their $30M promise, now thats what she fucking means by "Learned our lesson", problem is that doesn't fix the problem of secrecy and running Bend into the fucking economic toilet.

Its NOT the politicians that need to go, its the fact that EVERYTHING they do must be public, every time they spend over a $100 bucks PUBLIC, everytime they J.HANCOCK PUBLIC. ...

Anonymous said...

The ONE Fortune 500 company headquartered in Oregon is Nike. There are 50 statees and if everything were equal there would be 10 Fortune 500 companies headquartered here. Obviously, things are not equal and we're lucky to have even that one we have. But the fact that we have only one in the whole state is a good reminder of how poor a state this is for business. Let's face it. Businesses DON'T WANT TO COME HERE.

The idea of coming here is silly. You want to set up a modern company, you do it in the South, which has genuine growth, infrastructure, access no major airports and highways, cheap fuel, etc. You go to Tennessee or the Carolinas. Educated workers and cheap houssing and business-friendly gov't.

--TT

Anonymous said...

Sorry for the typos. Lazy.

Anonymous said...

Sorry for the typos. Lazy.
*

Sheeeeeeeeeeet, the about they pay me to type this sheeeeeeeeet you think I would take the time to edit, spell, and verify, nada, not going to happen, ;)

Anonymous said...


There are 50 state's and if everything were equal there would be 10 Fortune 500 companies headquartered here.

*

Ahh grasshopper, there is the great myth, all things are NOT equal, 98% of most humans live in destitution, even in the USA most people lead pathetic miserable lives, and never get ahead,

Why shouldn't states be the same way? I moved here forty years ago for the opposite conclusion, I looked around and said, its going to get really fucked everywhere, where can I live that the whole human-race will just pass by??

You know that Vermont hasn't changed much either, ... Vermont and Orygun are very similar. Keep it this way FUCK those that want to californicate Orygun, I say fuck them, keep their daughters, and send them back to cali broke.

Oregon is very much like Vermont, grab an average American and they'll don't know where Oregon fucking is-is, travel and you tell someone in EU that your from Oregon, and 9 times of 10 they think its in Canada,

Like I said Nike is just a fucking tenny company, and knight isn't that bright of a man to create a great college in Oregon, he's too busy with Laika, and hollywood ego shit, ...

I love Oregon just the way it is, its just too funny to see all this talk about world-class High-Tech in Oregon. Comparing Bend with Aspen. ... I really think these dumb bitches have never even been to Aspen when they talk that way.

This is like comparing a hair-lip Idahoan in Sand-Point with Albert Einstein.


There used to be word for ALL this dumb fucking talk about turning Bend into Dis or Dat, it was called "turning a sow's ear into a silk purse."


Dumb fucking condo whores say just give me a few million Bend taxpayer dollars and I'll turn this sow's ear of a desert town into Aspen.

Fucking liars from cali say just give me a few million and I'll build you the greatest University in the World out in the Badlands East of Bend. Note this guy Ray Kuratek is a Fucking bean-counter from Connecticut. Sheeeet he's got the whole city by the balls.

This is ALL too fucking funny.

In summary Bend, Oregon is a sow's ear, always has, always will. Anybody who talks otherwise is simply trying to take you for a chump and rob you legally.

Anonymous said...


What's really fucking stupid, it this shit keeps happening over and over, and old linda johnson keeps saying "We learned our lesson", what fucking lesson did she learn?


She learned that if you got caught that nothing would result, that nobody cares, that the city apathetic.

That this City deserves to be looted, if there is anything and/or any credit left.

Remember folks someday all these bill's have to be paid.

Anonymous said...

Bend should stop subsidizing stupid condo ideas and PAY Frys to come here now.

*

Build a Fry's and they'll come.

Build a Trader-Joes and even more will come.

Hell we even have a Harbor Freight now, but its a joke, not much selection, and they don't have any of the specials found in the valley.

A Fry's in Bend would probably be they single best thing to help people who tele-commute.

We're Aspen, we're beautiful people we can all sell each other Real-Estate, Mortgages, and make money forever.

Anonymous said...

Note that I DIDN'T say all states were alike. We've got one real highway, and its main purpose is for people to get from Seattle to California.

So we're basically agreeing.

And yeah, if we got a Frys I'd be afraid it would be a half-assed Frys. Just like our Barnes & Noble is a half-assed B&N lacking the CD & Movie part of the store. And look how skinny the tech section in B&N is compared to the B&N and Borders in bigger cities. I complained to managers at B&N about the lack of Barrons, Financial Times, IBD, etc., and the lack of the CD and movie section. They get all indiganant about how great their store is, so I must have bitched in an irritating way.

But if we got a real Frys it would be great. The Bend techies could actually meet each other (given the intense socialization classes that I believe are given to NW Crossing residents).

--TT

Anonymous said...

ow go tell Bend 2030 and City Council and Realtors and Builders that this town needs a Frys. They'll think it's a burger joint or something. They aren't even interested enough to find out what this town REALLY needs. They think it needs more lame Western furniture stores with big antler furniture.

--TT

Anonymous said...

On the trail to WHO funds our Bend, Oregon Political whores, I came across this little piece of the puzzle. Nothing new here, but it makes you think just how big this dick that our little city is going to have to swallow. Note, these folks don't follow the law, get got pay a $100M fine like it was NOTHING.

****

UBS, Switzerland's largest bank, had transferred $4 billion to $5 billion to four other countries that were under sanctions: Libya, Iran, Cuba and the former Yugoslavia. Over an eight-year period, UBS employees had quietly shipped the money to those countries from a vault at the Zurich airport, undetected by Fed auditors who made regular visits to the site. EARLY last month, the Federal Reserve Board fined UBS $100 million for the currency violations. It was the second-largest penalty ever levied by America's central bank, surpassed only by a $200 million fine imposed on the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, or B.C.C.I., in 1991 for violating American banking laws. The B.C.C.I. case was part of a global investigation of fraud and money laundering. UBS's transgressions don't appear to be in the same league as those at B.C.C.I. Several people briefed on the transfers said most of the UBS transactions involved currency exchanges for the Cuban tourism industry; such transactions anger Washington but do not evoke security fears in most of the world. A handful of lower-level UBS employees are said to have doctored trading records that misled their employers and American officials. All of them have been fired or have left the bank. UBS has not been charged with any crimes in the matter. A former Fed official and others involved in the investigation say the hefty fine reflects the Fed's displeasure at having been misled by UBS employees for so many years. Members of Congress have accused the Fed of being asleep at the regulatory switch, an added incentive for a marquee-size fine at a time when regulators of all stripes have come under fire for overlooking abuses and excesses on Wall Street. Yet UBS's trades with Libya, Iran and Yugoslavia, and the investigation into how hundreds of millions of dollars circumvented sanctions and regulatory barriers on their way to Baghdad, are hardly trivial affairs..." (Lockboxes, Iraqi Loot and a Trail to the Fed, By Timothy L. O'Brien, New York Times, June 6, 2004).

Anonymous said...

B&N is not a real bookstore. It doesn't exist in Bend.

Want to go to a bookstore in Bend? Drive to Powells in PDX.

Want to get computer HW in Bend, drive to Frys in Willson-VILE

Want fresh fish in Bend? Drive to Pacific-Seafood in PDX.

Need I go on ??

Anonymous said...


They aren't even interested enough to find out what this town REALLY needs.



There is only one biz in Bend that does well, and that is super-burrito across from duncan's card-shop.

All other biz'es in Bend are apparently un-needed.

Anonymous said...

>>Need I go on ??

Unfortunately, no. I carry in my wallet a list of books I want to look at for when I have a chance to hit Powells & Powells Technical in Portland or Smith Family (two two-story ones within walking distaance) and B&N abd Borders in Eugene.

If I don't need to see it before I buy it, Amazon works.

You can find amazing things in Powells (weird tech, sexy things, hell even the full score to Mozart's 41st). Things that just could not be in our little Bend B&N.

Anonymous said...


Fucking liars from cali say just give me a few million and I'll build you the greatest University in the World out in the Badlands East of Bend. Note this guy Ray Kuratek is a Fucking bean-counter from Connecticut. Sheeeet he's got the whole city by the balls.


I don't understand. Ray is the guy who found McDonalds right? I thought Micky-D Univ was in Oklahoma. How did we get to Connecticut? Where is the Badlands?

This blog is way too convoluted for me. Please help me understand.

Where is BEM and IHTBYB they're so clear and they don't mumble jumble.

Anonymous said...

BendOregon - Bring out your Dead

CDOs – Chernobyl decay obligations Ian Kerr
09 Jul 2007
The problems at Bear Stearns are a reminder that meltdowns can take less than a year

In atomic science, radioactive decay is a measure of how long before it is safe to handle a piece of toxic waste. Half-lives, as they are called, can be anything from a couple of months to 760 million years for uranium 238. In CDO land, complete meltdowns can take less than a year. Or indeed, just a few days.

The tongue-twisting named Bear Stearns High Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leveraged Fund is a case in point. Launched 10 months ago on the back of the success of its equally convolutedly-named sister fund, Bear Stearns High Grade Structured Credit Fund, was piloted by a former head of Bear Stearns trading, Ralph Cioffi.

The Enhanced Leveraged Fund was the application of steroidal amounts of leverage to assets composed of 60% residential mortgages and 40% commercial loans. Mandated to invest 90% AAA and AA ABS bonds – all seemed set fair with this testosterone-laced fund. Even Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has admitted to steroid use.

With the Bear Stearns nameplate over the door, the fund raised $600m of tranched “equity”, which it planned to leverage with another $10bn of loans from the likes of Barclays, Credit Suisse, Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan. Bear Stearns even put its hand in its pocket to the tune of a paltry $40m investment in the transaction – although it is not clear if this was money managed by Bear Stearns Asset Management, as opposed to a direct Bear Stearns investment.

Given the ABS sausage machine that Bear Stearns is – this $40m investment was a mere token, given the management fees the Bear would earn from the vehicle and the fact that the vehicle could be a customer of Bear Stearns’ deals.

Applying the industry standard 2% and 20% to assets under structures, Bear Stearns could hope to garner £200m a year and 20% of the returns. So the Bear’s investment was in the black in a couple of months and thereafter it would enjoy these returns until maturity of the fund. In effect, the canny Bear Stearns had no skin in the deal, only upside. Nice work if you can get it.

Leverage is a wonderful thing. Great when asset prices are rising, as any London house owner will testify, but horrible when prices are dropping. In simple terms, fully invested at, say, $10bn, a 1% slide in the value of the collateral would roughly lead to a $100m hit to the equity. A 6% move in the mortgage portfolio’s value and the $600m of equity was history. A 24% plus drop in the net asset value of the collateral and the lending banks become the equity, nursing losses of $1.8bn.

Hence the hasty scramble to seize what collateral they could. Even Bear Stearns’ bail-out loan of $1.6bn to the less leveraged High Grade Structured Credit Fund is collateralised.

The Bear is letting the highly leveraged Bear Stearns High Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leveraged Fund go pop. With shareholders’ funds of $13bn, Bear Stearns was not going to put the family silver on the line to bail out a fund that bore its name.

In the early days of CDOs, nearly all were cashflow structures invested in corporate bonds. A manager would buy a diversified portfolio of bonds and make his profit by the difference between the spread on the assets and the liabilities used to fund the purchase of the portfolio. Simple stuff. Investors could easily identify many of the household names that were the constituent parts of these structures. Investors might own a Ford, GM, Toyota or fly with American Airlines or BA, or perhaps shop at M&S or Kmart.

But investment bankers are nothing if not inventive. Today, only 1% of CDOs is invested in corporates. Of the $1,000 trillion of CDOs issued last year, most invested in derivatives, loans and asset-backed securities. The latter classification can range from mortgages, buildings, football ticket receivables to CDOs of CDOs. The inclusion of asset-backed securities as eligible securities has opened CDOs to being a kitchen sink dumping ground, as everything and anything can, with an inventive mind, be made to fit the investment criteria.

There are static and managed synthetic CDO structures. In a static CDO, the portfolio remains unchanged throughout the lifetime of the deal – so what you see is what you get. In a managed CDO structure, investors only know the contents of the portfolio at reporting times – usually one month in arrears.

These are black-box structures. In many cases, the rating agencies issue investment guidelines that managers must adhere to but, crucially, the actual results of these management decisions are only revealed once they have been made. Investors have absolutely no input into these investment decisions but bear all the consequences.

Was Bear Stearns’ James Cayne completely naive in asking for a one-year moratorium on margin calls from the banks? This was the very same request that the Bear famously rejected out of hand when the Fed called a crisis meeting in 1998, with respect to the Long-Term Capital Management meltdown. Bear Stearns’ co-vice-president Warren Spector is also no fool. Yet Bear Stearns is nothing if not brazen. What it was asking Merrill, Barclays, Credit Suisse and JP Morgan, was to write Bear Stearns a free one-year call on the credit markets.

If the sub-prime markets recovered, great for the Bear, as it continued to collect its asset management fees. If the market continued to tank, the Bear could say to the banks, “Sorry, guys, we did our best”. Does the Bear think Stan O’Neal is stupid? Or that Barclays, Credit Suisse and JP Morgan have gone into the charity business?

Merrill was having none of these shenanigans and promptly ceased its $800m of collateral and started a forced auction. Remember, the assets being offered were AAA, AA and A rated, and not in default. There were few takes. Being a forced seller is rarely conducive to securing the highest prices. Apparently, Merrill sold $200m in this bunfight and withdrew the balance as the cheeky bids were nowhere near the reserve. Bids of 85% of face value for current pay AAA paper is scary.

Bill Gross, head of Pimco, has said that holders of bonds rated BBB may lose their entire investment with sub-prime default at just 7%. Sub-prime CDO bonds rated A may be wiped out if defaults reach 10%. Sub-prime default rate is 13.8%.

Simply put, one in seven sub-prime mortgages are toast. Gross blames the rating agencies for failing to price risk correctly. “These good looking girls are not high-class assets worth 100 cents on the dollar.” He accuses the rating agencies of falling for “tarts in six-inch hooker heels”. I like the straight-talking Gross.

With the ABX index hovering around 55%, professionals view sub-prime bonds as digital instruments where rising householder defaults could quickly wipe out the lower subordinated classes, underpinning these AAA and AA ratings. Imagine if the industry applied the market bids received in this auction as a market-to-market across ABS sub-prime portfolios – the consequences are dire. Ambulances would be needed to cart away the walking wounded.

The reported trouble with Quoted Cheyne CDO fund – Queen’s Walk – is but a rare public example. What of the sizeable sub-prime portfolios held by UBS’s now defunct Dillon Read Capital Management?

But what is fair value for illiquid opaque instruments? Managers are usually required to post monthly NAVs. Most value assets to model, as opposed to market. But as any computer geek will tell you, a model is only as good as the data and assumptions inputs. LTCM found that two Nobel laureates, Myron Scholes and Fischer Black, who wrote the bible on option modelling, could screw up as a one in 1,000-year event happened.

Assumptions about the future are based inherently on past behaviour and values, which may be worthless or have absolutely nothing to do with the present. Models always have to be fine-tuned. In May 2005, the credit markets faced a new risk – “skewed correlation”, whereby it was possible to have defaults in specific industry sectors, such as automobiles, without having defaults distributed across the entire economy, as had been previous experiences in recessions.

So CDO managers, mainly issuing banks with portfolio of equity pieces, could see these wiped out due, say, to a default by Ford or GM, while the higher rated pieces remain intact. CDO experts talk about Gaussian coupler and correlation risk (“0” being uncorrelated and “1” being highly or perfectly correlated) but I am old enough to know that when the dirt hits the fan, the correlation risk usually moves to “1”. When bond markets really stink, equity markets soon follow.

This past year has seen more than 80 sub-prime mortgage lenders go to the wall. There are 4.2 million unsold homes in the US – the highest number since the Great Depression. As a practical matter, these sub-prime lenders were the primary day-to-day servicers of many of the mortgages they originated.

They collected the monthly payments (when the mortgager could afford to pay them) and when the household could not make the payments, they collected the keys and resold the house. But these days, there are no post boxes for householders to post their key to.

The paradox of CDOs is they have in one sense been the smartest invention in the capital markets ever – in that they allow the dissemination of credit risk to so many. CDOs lessen systemic risk within the financial system and thereby strengthen it by parceling different risk components of different parties. But even CDO specialists balk at valuing a particular transaction. There are just too many moving parts and manager optionality to adjust the portfolio each month.

I doubt there is a European, American or Asian bank or insurance company that does not hold some where a piece of a CDO transaction. CDOs are the heroin fix for investment managers adjusting to the global low yield environment. Statistically, more sub-prime CDOs are held in Europe than in the US and yet, like toxic waste, nobody wants to hold the stuff when it blows up.

Anonymous said...

Of the $1,000 trillion of CDOs issued last year, most invested in derivatives, loans and asset-backed securities.

***

$1,000 trillion of CDOs {45 times the world GDP }

20% are known to be complete crap, thus that's 20 Trillion Dollars, the end is near, and little Bend Oregon, is the most over-valued of them all.

Anonymous said...

Was Bear Stearns’ James Cayne completely naive in asking for a one-year moratorium on margin calls from the banks?

***

If IHTBYB your bubble or BEM were not so busy over at Les Schwab and/or UBS perhaps they could take a few minutes off bean counting and answer this rhetorical question.

Anonymous said...


But as any computer geek will tell you, a model is only as good as the data and assumptions inputs. LTCM found that two Nobel laureates, Myron Scholes and Fischer Black, who wrote the bible on option modelling, could screw up as a one in 1,000-year event happened.


This has nothing to do with computers or geeks. This is about strong-arm capitalism, we see it first hand in Bend Oregon. Where a little bitch name Ray Kuratek was able to flash his UBS card and convince the City of Bend to give away the keys to the city to a complete out of town stranger. The city did this while ignoring the status-quo old boy chamber-of-commerce.

LTCM was no so much about nobel laureates as it was about a large amount of confidence men running a large scale scam.

Anonymous said...

>>LTCM was no so much about nobel laureates as it was about a large amount of confidence men running a large scale scam.

That's true. The Nobel Laureates were there mostly for marketing. Merriwether would have doubtlessly started his fund even without them.

It's true that their ideas were used, but by the end, the traders were doing whatever the hell they wanted, including crazy one-sided equity bets completely removed from the idea of picking up leveraged nickels from inefficiencies.

The Nobel Laureates weren't really proved wrong, or at least their Nobel contributions weren't.

Besides, the smartest one was Black, and he was conservative as hell as an investor in his real life.

--TT

Anonymous said...

If IHTBYB or BEM were not so busy over at Les Schwab and/or UBS perhaps they could take a few minutes off bean counting and answer this rhetorical question.

***

I love BEM & IHTBYB they'll bash liberal politicians all day long.

They'll bash flipper's.

They'll even bash silly cali's.

But never ever will they explain why out of town confidence men need 'incentives'.

Nor will they ever talk about CDO's, or the bonds that financed the bend-bubble, nor will they discuss Juniper-Ridge.

Oh, they'll bash the hell out of CACB, bank of cascades or whatever.

Never will they bash UBS, Paine, Warburg,... Never will they bash secrecy in Government.

Our bend-bubble was engineered with easy-money, the folks that built the house of sand was UBS; sub-prime hedged junk bond kings.

Look at the MOU deal the City of Bend was going to get 90% of profits on Juniper Ridge if UBS put in $30M, ya right. What's most interesting in that MOU was that the City gave away the land to Les Schwab for free! I know you all say, 'You got to attract the first few clowns/fish'. In order to have profits the city would have had to market the HELL out of Juniper-Ridge, yet the rhetoric is-was 'inexpensive industrial land', yet the UBS MOU is all about the city being in the Speculation Business.

UBS backed out of the deal $30M, back in late August 2006, the reason was they said they weren't going to make enough money. Perhaps they saw the light!

The City got ALL the Juniper Ridge land from Deschutes County for One-Dollar. You would think the county should have the right to input, and the region?

Something fishy is going on with our MBA's, they sure like to root for the BendBust that UBS orchestrated, but they refuse to discuss the underlying cause of subprime.

Like they say, "its NOT what is said, but WHO said". Likewise "its NOT what they said, but what they'll NOT say". If you always follow these two rules, you can learn a lot about people.


Certainly somebody on this board is very involved with bonds, UBS, and playing the City of Bend as a puppet. Running the real estate values down,... Making money on the rise, running it into the ground, and making money on the rise again. The richest people in the world think out 50-100 years, you have to do this when your the bank managing money for the richest people in the world.

Anonymous said...


""Hey, you're making up this whole 'Boss Hog' concept, like there is this horribly incestuous relationship between Bend real estate and City decision makers, and no such thing really exists. I mean, Come On!".


The problem here is what is a boss-hog?

In the past it was old time land-holders that went from being land-poor, to land-rich.

To me the BOSS-HOGS are the cali's who have UBS business cards telling this city to ignore the Chamber of Commerce.

To me the Boss-Hogs are the new confidence men that have come in this city during the last 50-10 years and planted the city-hall with their own people.

Bend is changing in ways that the old-timers don't want, the NEW boss-hogs don't give a shit, they just move on every 5-10 years to a new DEVELOPMENT and do the bidding of their masters.

Our blog of the week discusses the obvious,

1.House's in Bend aren't selling, we myrtle we know.
2.) Linda Johnson is an idiot, yes we know, but so is everyone else running this city a lackey.
3.) Bend is over-priced, yes the only people who don't know this are people who don't know how to read.

The city has taken the largest bank in the world, the bank known for subprime bonds, CDO's, and bankruptcy. Then they take this bank and make it the master-developer for Juniper-Ridge. Then everyone trys to get rich. The city even last week in the Bulletin had a little story about how cheap industrial land is needed, and JR is the solution.

Yet, the WHOLE damn plan of JR is to get in a few Les Schwabs and then make a fortune selling the land to suckers.

This is all happening right now. This is the biggest game in town, ...

And what is IHTBYB talking about?? Bend houses aren't selling, like that horse is so dead, even the realtors know this. Bend is over-priced? Hell we're the most over-priced in the country. End of story.

What's happening right now? Who are the Boss-Hogs? What are the incentives? Why is the biggest bank in the world running the Juniper Ridge project?

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

A Realtor.com inventory update:

May 14: 2,280
May 18: 2,320 (+40 -- 4 days)
May 23: 2,343 (+23 -- 5 days)
May 31: 2,391 (+48 -- 8 days)
June 11: 2,439 (+48 -- 11 days)
June 16: 2,464 (+25 -- 5 days)
June 20: 2,514 (+50 -- 4 days)
June 23: 2,546 (+32 -- 3 days)
June 29: 2,598 (+52 -- 6 days)

July 9: 2,609 (+11 -- 10 days)

I noticed that on July 1 (or so) there was a "reset" or something on these numbers, as about 40-50 listings disappeared. I think this happens periodically in the Realtor.com database. Seems to be a quarterly thing, and they clean out some stale listings.

Anonymous said...

Ray Kuratek, Juniper Ridge Master Consultant

* Development Specialist for Bay Meadows Land Company ( Juniper Ridge Master Developer )

* Joined PaineWebber Real Estate Group in 1997 ( UBS-PAINE )

* Assists with asset management and development

* Focused on project entitlement and political strategy

* Over 30 years experience in commercial and residential development

* B.S. in Finance and M.B.A. in Finance from University of Connecticut

NOTE Juniper Ridge finance is-was being done by Stockbrige, owned by UBS.

Anonymous said...

I'll talk about CDOs. You won't believe this story.

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/07/bagholders-in-tears.html?ref=patrick.net

--TT

As for bashing liberal politics, I'm willing to do that. This state is a terrible state to do business in because it's unpredictable. An Oregon city will designate an area for commercial development, let a company start to build on it, then, zap, sorry, that's wetlands. They'll give tax break and then take them away.

I don't mind liberals, but if they want a strong economy, they'll need to at least be predictable, and not bow to the gusts of populism.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Anyone got a bead on a piece in the Bulletin today:

Riverfront project aborted; Developer shies away amid cool high-end home market

I'm curious who that is. Wasn't it Sun Forest construction that said their subdiv sales sucked, but the high end was chugging along just fine?

Anonymous said...


The city even last week in the Bulletin had a little story about how cheap industrial land is needed, and JR is the solution.


Ok, read the below, one week ago from the Bulletin, the sky is falling we need cheap industrial land... Again BAIT&SWITCH the motto of JR, there is GOING to be NO affordable land, because the bankers have setup a get-rich-scheme from day one, and the City is the biggest recipient. This is why EVERYTHING has been secret.

JR was NEVER about Cheap land. Bend's limited industrial land supply and the high prices. Yes, that is a problem, and this is why the JR process was hijacked, and turned into an out-of-state lotto. Originally in 2004 the JR plan was exactly this, but because of UBS and a weak city-council JR has become a boon-doggle that will never fix the problem.

***
More industry leaving Bend
Manufacturer to expand on cheaper land in Redmond

By Anna Sowa / The Bulletin
Published: June 25. 2007 5:00AM PST

Another Bend manufacturing company is leaving the city to expand elsewhere, saying Bend's limited industrial land supply and the high prices that the land commands have priced it out of the market.

Ameritech Machine Manufacturing Inc., which has been in Bend six years, expects to relocate to a 2.2-acre site on First Street off Lake Road in Redmond, said Ameritech President Ron Cook. The 26,500-square-foot building is expected to be completed in April 2008, although the property sale is not final, Cook said.

"We need to grow, we need more space," he said. "And we can't do that in Bend." Light industrial space in Bend is nearly gone, economic developers say, as the city's growth has quickly absorbed available land. While space dwindled, costs shot up, says Roger Lee, executive director of Economic Development for Central Oregon, or EDCO.

In Bend, raw industrial land costs around $13 to $16 per square foot, according to EDCO, with NorthWest Crossing industrial land hitting $16 per square foot. In Redmond, prices are nearly half that - around $7 to $8 per square foot, Lee said, with some cheaper spots available, depending on location.

In October 2005, Bend Tarp & Liner announced it was being priced out of Bend and was moving its 16-person manufacturing operation to Prineville, where the new site's 10 acres cost around $2.50 per square foot. Tarp & Liner officials, like Ameritech, said Bend simply doesn't have enough space to expand. And what little space exists is too expensive to pencil out.

"It's just not cost-effective to stay in Bend," Ameritech's Cook said, joking that Bend doesn't want the company. "Redmond - they want us."

Lee says Ameritech's move is not a loss for the region because the company will remain in Central Oregon. Still, he expects more manufacturers will leave Bend until new land opens up.

"There's just no other options," Lee said. "The only new industrial land proposed to be added (to Bend) is at Juniper Ridge."

But Juniper Ridge, the 1,500-acre mixed-use development proposed in north Bend, is moving forward like a snail, Lee said, which is frustrating for companies interested in moving there. Les Schwab Tire Centers will be the first project in Juniper Ridge - construction is expected to begin this fall on its 120,000-square-foot corporate headquarters, which will move from Prineville, its home for more than 50 years.

"The only other possibility is maybe some redevelopment (of nonindustrial space)," Lee said of Bend creating new industrial opportunities.

Until then, Lee expects more stories like Ameritech and Bend Tarp & Liner.

"This is probably a sign of things to come in the Old Mill District," he said, "where they still have bits and pieces of land for light industrial use ... it probably will eventually all go away."

Ameritech's new space will cost $1.5 million, including the land and building, Cook said, and will create much-needed room for the company that makes structural steel and ornamental iron parts, like support columns and stairs on homes. The company also designs and builds equipment for the steel processing industry, like roll formers, flatteners and uncoilers, Cook said.

With the expansion, Cook's 16-person staff will increase to 25 to 27, he said.

To help fund the Redmond development, Gov. Ted Kulongoski awarded Ameritech a $33,000 forgivable loan Thursday. Kulongoski awarded the loan through the Oregon Economic and Community Development Department. A forgivable loan is one with no repayment obligation if a project meets certain requirements necessary for the loan.

Anonymous said...

As for bashing liberal politics, I'm willing to do that.

*

Perhaps your forgetting that this whole sub-prime MTG collapse was on a republican guard?


Left vs right, top vs bottom, is BORING.

Fact is Bend is conservative, and PDX is liberal. Always been that way.

Anonymous said...

Riverfront project aborted; Developer shies away amid cool high-end home market

***

As of APRIL 2007 all NEW construction requires that you sell 25% before you get financing.

You can NO longer just borrow, and build. Now you must line up actual buyers with a significant down, before you can get the construction loan.

Anonymous said...

Liberal\Conservative

Both are complete jackasses.

The neocons in charge now are Borrow and Spend liberals.

They grow outraged about any spending on social programs but gleefully borrow Billions and Billions driving up debt for war meanwhile assuring the younger generation "we just can't afford to fund Social Security, you'll pay in but never get a pay out". They are bilking us blind. Bah, the military is a social program too. Republicans are just better liars but both parties lie.

Anonymous said...

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/07/bagholders-in-tears.html?ref=patrick.net

**

TT, its all in fun, ... so don't take the tone personal.

Ok, this has ALL been predicted CMO/CDO's are ALL pension money, and after dot-com, everyone wanted 6%+ return, and thus wall-street got into the MTG biz, and created subprime ( UBS ), now some 20% of this paper is worthless, we're talking $2 Trillion know to be lost. There will be MANY americans that lose ALL their money.

The point here for BEND is that soon there will be NO MTG money for a long long time, as everyone will be afraid to loan money to something that say's MTG, just like after dot-com everyone feared high-tech.

Bend is FUCKED the RE bubble is not coming back anytime soon, because the easy money is over for a long-long time.

The gig in town, now the only gig in town is CDO-MUNI-BOND this is where UBS goes to a stupid little town like Bend and builds things like Juniper Ridge for $100M, and puts ALL the projects together into a CDO, that is backed by the good name of the city.

These are The ONLY kind of CDO's that are selling now. This is why UBS is here, and this is the future.

FUCK the past, its already happened, its over, and it was on republican guard.

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