Picto-Plummet - A Graphical Novel

Wow, talk about your crazy week. The markets went berzerk over the subprime contagion spreading to the PRIME market; that's code for YOU & ME, Whitey. Seems a lot of stated income "consultants" bought a lot of homes making $180K/year... well, not EVERY year, but certainly once in awhile! But mainly they made a LOT less (and if you didn't lie on your mortgage app, your loan officer was happy to do so for you). But they bought 12 homes anyway, cuz the terms were good. So once that factoid was common knowledge, the Central Banks of the World responded by flooding banks with money, more than after 9/11. I knew the housing market would get bad... but 9/11 bad? THAT'S pretty bad. I'm waiting for this scenario to hit bottom before writing about it.

And BendBB has got the motherload of MLS data, and has made it available on Google spreadsheets. I've put together some interesting data on that. And also have started putting it together in graph form.

And David Fosters monthly summary came out, but has yet to hit the Bulletin.

But I'll write about those things later. Today, I'm going to take a page from Duncan's book, and do my own little graphical novel.


First of all, I was blown away by all the building. They are building every available square inch of this town. Well, either building it or selling it. I don't drive the back roads of Bend too much, but builders are still going nuts out there, building like there's no tomorrow. I saw 2 subdiv's for sale, and I mean wholesale, all lots in one shot.



And there are signs of desperation: Lots of sales of every type, including garage sales, estate sales, car sales, and the increasingly popular fire sale of subdiv's. Remember when those "covered" re-pricing numbers were higher? Yeah, as you can see from Eagle's Landing, it's best to NEVER put the price permanently on the sign to where it cannot be easily covered up. Even Stupid Whitey, who loves a gold starburst, will look down & see how desperate you really are.




Speaking of signs, that pesky sign ordinance that the City has decided EVEN applies to Realtors (la dee da), has gone into effect at Renaissance Ridge. But since they have zero space between the sidewalk & the front door, they just folded 'em up & put 'em on the porch. The upside is that it doesn't look like a cascade of homes for sale.
But the signs that do stay up in Ren-Ridge are for available lots, reading "Stay Bend". What are we, dogs?


There's still some pretty stupid crap going on in Bend. The "GarajMahal", and "Tuscany Pines" both come in near the tops of a race that no doubt has hundreds of participants. Ummm, the GarajMahal is an attempt to sell storage spots for your car at $63,000 STARTING. No car I'll ever own will be worth that much Garajing. Or Garaging. Tuscany Pines has convenient access to the neighborhood juvy jail, so at least you can make mortgage payments selling crack to the guards. "Ranch at the Canyons" is making this idea work. Tuscany Pines, besides being a horribly conflicted name, is just in an awful location. Talk about your Bad Idea.


Well, man doesn't live by bread alone, sometimes you just need a plain sweet ride! That top dude obviously has decided to roll his paycheck into some sweet units, including a vintage International Harvester or something, a pussy-wagon Camaro, and a rusted-out 1954 VW bug converted into a chopped 1945 Ford dually. NICE! That bottom one has decided to go the other route, and has a 1995 Subaru with duct tape rear window, and cardboard underneath to avoid bringing down the house value via oil stained driveway. Now that's smart. The car says, "I'm dirt stinking poor", and the cardboard says, "But I didn't pee on the carpet."

Not everyone is dragging bottom. I drove thru "North Rim" a subdiv on Awbrey for people who like money bonfires. This pic does not do justice to this macro-shack. Holy Crap... this badboy is large & in charge.


After all the gab about NWX-ing being full/empty, I went to look for myself. Saturday afternoon, 1PM. You see for yourself. No kids, no one walking around, no one buying coffee, no one on playground.



And there is just the usual, mile-upon-mile of empty lots and of course, loads of construction, everywhere.



Lots of FSBO Dark Matter out there. BendBB's data shows Coldwell with 4-5 Eagle's Landing listings, but there are at least 50 lots there. And lots of Generic RE Broker signs. No-name nobodies that came out of the woodwork. Everyone in this town is a Realtor.


Plus, this boom has led to some real weird stuff: New mansions next to Fuqua homes, homes about 10 ft wide, and some just plain ugly homes being built. Man, and it is being built in every little corner of Bend.

Here's the upside of a great big juicy RE bubble: poor folks like me can live like a King in some sweet new construction Flipper Bait! This house is BIG!


There's just some funny stuff out there... nice homes with plywoods doors, Realtors with "come-hither" language is just hilarious, and Pahlisch posting a sign at the entry to one of their subdiv's, with some sort of quasi-legal contract about contractors shutting up while building... a sign no one has ever read but the signs typesetter.

Well, like I said, there is liquidity contagion in the credit markets when they found out Cletus was not the only one who lied about his income on his mortgage app. But I figure it was time for a brief drive thru Bend, and then top it off with just a twist of Paul-doh's warped-ass logic.