Monday, January 14, 2008

Bends Mayor Arrested and Jailed For Embezzlement

Yup, that's my next prediction for little old Bend.

Well, it's just a variation on my October 15 post, when none of this Inn of The 3rd Rock - Pape - Cascade Bookkeeping business had come public. I think I put it pretty eloquently:

SOME DUMBFUCK IS GOING TO JAIL FOR FELONY FRAUD.

Prediction:

One or more Bend City Councilors will be perp-walked out of City Hall in the next 3 years.

Anyone who's been in Bend knows that local government & local business is so incestuous, that they will ultimately co-mingle their interests to such an extent that someone will hang, IF it ever leaks. And leaks happen when the feeding trough goes dry. It's dog-eat-dog time, and the jackals are turning on each other. During the Bubble it happened, of course, but Kool-Aid was flowing in such volume that they were all comfortably numb. To wit, the Ridgewater small-scale HOA scam by Cascade Bookkeeping (pdf):

October 11, 2006
To: All Ridgewater Home and Lot Owners
From: Ridgewater Board of Directors
Subject: Dues increase for 2007

At the October 10, 2006 Board meeting, the Board voted to raise the dues $4.00 per
month. To help all homeowners understand the need for this dues increase, the following information has been provided to you. This increase will be effective for the 2007 Fiscal Year that runs from January to December and will be payable with the June 1, 2007 billing.

HISTORICAL INFORMATION
In 2002, when Ridgewater was formed as a HOA, the dues were set at $40 per month.
Shortly after the formation of the HOA, the dues were decreased to $36 where they have remained through 2006. The dues were structured so that $28 was for operations and $8 was for reserve funding.
At the February 2006 Board meeting, the first meeting of the current Board, we
discovered that the Reserve funds were not present in any cash account in the amounts
expected for the time period dues have been collected. The past management firm,
Cascade Bookkeeping, was allowed by the past Board to co-manage the checking and
reserve funds. As a consequence, Cascade had occasionally transferred cash from reserve funds to operations. The major reason for these transfers appears to be the extraordinary expenses for Cascade Bookkeeping’s services, averaging close to $1000 per month for the first 4 months of 2006. As best can be determined, the reserve funds were short about $10,000.
For this reason and others, your Board terminated the services of Cascade and began to run the HOA day-to-day affairs internally. We also hired the services of Peterman Inc to do our bookkeeping/financial management with strong Board oversight.
Besides carefully managing expenses, the Board setup a Money Market Fund for reserve funds that required a majority vote of the Board to use any funds from this account. At $8 per month per lot, the reserve funds should have around $4900 per year contributed each year.
To begin to recoup the expended $10,000, the Board decided to contribute 35% of 2006 dues to this reserve account that amounts to a total contribution of around $7700. At this rate, we would recoup about $2800 each year. In other words, in about 3 to 4 more years (beyond 2006) we would recoup the $10,000.
Also during the February 2006 Board meeting, the Board voted to monitor our cash
position and expenses to determine if a dues raise would be necessary rather than raising dues for the current 2006 fiscal year. In the next section, this review is summarized.
CURRENT FINANCES
Using historical costs for the last year, your Board prepared a pro-forma budget (Table 1) that indicates at the current $36 dues, we would be in deficit about $3700 for the next year. Since that is an untenable situation, the options were:

1. Cut expenses
2. Raise dues
3. Reduce contributions to reserve funds

The Board viewed as unfeasible options numbers 1 and 3. Expenses have already been
cut to the minimum and maintaining the additional catch-up contribution to the reserve
funds was seen as crucial for future years. For example, this next month we will seal
cracks in the streets. While this only will cost $425 within 3-5 years we will need to do seal coat on all the streets. By doing this, we hope to have our pavements last 30 years.
However a seal coat currently costs about $13,000-$15,000 for our streets. The cost of oil products will determine the actual cost at the time a seal coat is needed. Other items to be paid from reserves include, repairing or replacing the commons fence, the mail kiosk, and irrigation system.
By raising the dues to where they were at the start of 2003 ($40 per month) and
maintaining the reserve contribution at $7700, the Board estimates that the deficit will be $1230. The Board feels that this is manageable since if certain expenses, such as snow removal, catch basin services or legal expenses, do not come in as high as predicted, then the budget will be close to balanced. The Board selected this option and voted unanimously to increase the dues to $40 per month ($480 per year). The billing time will be the same as currently done in June.
As previously noted, the Board is providing you with this information so that you can
better understand the facts leading up to this decision. By our By-Laws, the Board is
authorized to raise dues up to 20% by simple resolution and a vote of the Board.

Ahhh yes. The usual Central Oregon Shuffle. How many accountants are actually jailed for embezzling funds around here? 50%? Seems like it.

Ridgewater is some penny-ante neighborhood that wanted to start an HOA, and figured they'd do things right & hire a bookkeeping firm with connections. Little did they know that CONNECTIONS COST MONEY, and one of the side-effects of having the Mayor do your taxes, is that he steals from you.

All in a days work in Bend, Oregon.

What's sad, is you can see in this letter, that Cascade has ripped these people off for HALF of their yearly revenue. Do you know any business or entity of any kind that pays HALF their revenue for "Accounting Services"? I owned a business and considered 2% of revenue to be outrageous.

50% was for "extraordinary expenses" for Cascade Bookkeeping, like Linda Johnson throwing a Botox party for local developers after giving away millions in taxpayer land, such as prime downtown parcels where Lava Court apartme.... errr, condos, will go.

Again, this sort of thing has been happening in this 2-horse shithole town FOREVER. It's just that now, there ain't no wildebeests anymore, so the jackals are going to eat each other.

And if you know ANYTHING about the US Justice system, you know the outcome is usually determined BEFORE anyone sets foot in the courtroom. It's about money, pure & simple, and Pape's got it, Friedman don't, so he'll go down, HARD. We can only hope Linda Johnson goes with him.

And I guess there were some errors in who owns what, and then the requisite whaling... my philosophy is that errors are OK as long as you try to self-correct them, or at least acknowledge that in a forum of this type, they'll get rooted out & "exposed". Better that than what we have now, which is egregious lies knowingly spread by local media. Why "knowingly spread"? Cuz they NEVER correct glaring errors. "Most of The Plaza units were sold"? "Franklin Crossing sold out"?

This blog is about getting to the truth, and I myself have been waxed when I've made errors. Waxed HARD. Don't take it too hard Brucey. Even when you're right, BendBust will let you have it if he's been to Silver Moon for an evening cocktail. Nature of the beast I suppose.

I owe you a burrito

Speaking of egregious errors, I bet BendBB that we'd see medians in the $200's by years end. Alas, it did not come to pass.

See, I picture Bend RE like a big co-op bazaar: Vendors (Realtors) selling goods made by others (home sellers). Now, my bet was that the Vendors would act in a profit-maximizing fashion, and ratchet prices lower, in response to dramatically lower demand when the financing went away.

Well, the financing & demand DID go away, but the high price remained. Why?

The Cult of Bend. The idea, spewed forth from every person & institution for years, that Bend Is Special & The People Of Bend Are Special, And That We Therefore Must Not Accept Anything Less Than Absolute Top Dollar For EVERYTHING, Most Especially Our Homes.

They asked us to believe this myth so persistently and for so long that it literally has become part of the ethos. It is unquestioned.

I assumed rationality & free-market behavior would out when I made my bet with BendBB. Wrong. That simply doesn't work when you are in a cult. People were asked to drink the Kool-Aid, and they did. Now Jim Jones is asking them to do something counter to their brainwashing, and they are balking.

And so we have arrived at the current state of affairs: 78 residential homes sold in Bend in December, probably one of the lowest per-capita figure EVER.

Now, I haven't really seen final price data for December, but I'm willing to concede that BendBB got the better of me on this one, and won this bet. But he isn't saying much about it. And I'll just guess that it's like this: I bet we'd be overwhelmed by a volcanic eruption, and he bets No, and ultimately he is right, because there is a tsunami instead.

One sort of disaster didn't happen, but another did, and it seems that maybe the second disaster is actually worse. And this is the reason:

Would you rather place a $1 bet on a coin flip & get $2.20 if you're right, or bet $1 & roll a dice and get $4 if you're right?

I'd take the first, despite the fact that the dollar payoff is smaller. Bends housing market is like the latter bet: People are ASKING high prices, but precious few are actually cashing in. (If you are in fact deluded, and believe that you are Special & in some way immune from The Odds, you would take the second bet, because the dollar payoff is higher, PERIOD. THAT is the current state of the Bend RE market.) That's the "Months Of Inventory" equation. Technically BendBB won our bet, but even he seems to realize that determining a real "market clearing price" is damn hard when volume dries up. From a June 15 post (sorry, I only go there via anonymous proxy anymore, so I can't grab a URL):

Bay Area home sales continued their downward slide in May, with fewer properties changing hands and the mix of sales tilting toward higher-priced houses.
...
"Sales are really low; you'd have to set the clock back 12 years to find another May with lower sales," said Andrew LePage, an analyst with DataQuick.
...
The rising median does not mean that home values are on the upswing. Instead, it shows that the proportion of high-end sales is increasing, while comparatively fewer lower-cost houses are selling.

So I guess I lost this bet. But I think even BendBB may think it's a Pyrrhic victory: Medians in the $200's would probably actually be preferable to what actually happened; a market in the doldrums at multi-decade lows in terms of volume.

We'll see medians drop, no doubt. But I guess it'll be predicated on how long it'll take the Programmers (Bend media, Realtors, etc) to deprogram the Bend zombies. And look no further than the Complete Failure of the Fake Auctions around here, and you see the aftereffects of The Kool-Aid are still in control. It's taking longer than I thought. So I guess I owe BendBB a burrito.

Norma DuBois: Still Shoveling Shit

A few weeks ago I went to Typhoon to have lunch (really good, but WAY too expensive for what you get...), and I picked up Norma "Sold Out Again" DuBois' flyer for the commercial space in Franklin Crossing. Now, it's been well established that Norma is a lying sack, but she also has a flair for the Idiotic. From her flyer:

Just four streets define Bend Oregon's most precious asset -- it's popular Downtown District. Between Greenwood and Franklin, and between Wall St. and Bond, the indefinable spirit of Bend (both past and future) becomes visible.

Any given day, you can see the mix of business and bohemia, the blend of tourists and locals, the mindset of a mountain town driving an agenda for global business.

Seriously, I have to stop reading at that point because it's so ridiculous.

Our "most precious asset"? Awesome. Right, it's the "Downtown District", which MUST be capitalized, as it is equivalent to being it's own country. Maybe if we suffer from some sort of mass-extinction ala I Am Legend, Norma will see that without any humans, that the Downtown District isn't quite as vibrant.

I like how the INDEFINABLE becomes VISIBLE downtown.

Q: "Holy Shit, do you see that?"

A: Yeah, it's like some sort of Indefinable Spirit that has become visible in Bend's Downtown District!"

And it's both PAST and PRESENT. My Lord.

"... the mindset of a mountain town driving an agenda for global business."

Ummm, what? Were you in front of an art gallery, an overpriced sushi restaurant, t-shirt shop, or a shoe store, when you saw our "agenda for global business", Norma? Illusions of Grandeur. Or is it Delusions?

This Eyes Bigger Than Stomach phenomenon is still widespread amongst Bend's Bubble Elite. They still believe Bend is something it ain't. They honestly do.

We're a town of about half to 3/4ths redneck contractors with a 6th grade education that stumbled into a once-in-a-lifetime Bubble, and have mistaken 12 wins in a row betting red for talent, but we just lost it all on Lucky 13 are in the throes of having our winnings forcibly returned.

We ain't a a hub for Global Business.

We're a town at the end of a dead end drive that takes a minimum of 3 hours from anywhere, a drive that costs about 500% more than it did a few years ago. And our Biggest Industry of Selling Unneeded Homes to Tourists at 500% than a few years ago, has just imploded. Family wage jobs are the only thing imploding faster than the RE trade. And we're just waking up from The New Math, where 2 + 2 COULD equal 9. But now, without the leverage, without the Kool-Aid, and without the money for implanting DD's on every 50 year old skank, it ain't so great to be here.

Well, it's OK. It's just not as great as it was for that short span a few years back when everyone was a genius, everyone ate fillet mignon & drove Hummers and the silicon implants still held.

It's called Reality. And unfortunately, when it hits, all of a sudden 2 + 2 DOES equal 4 again, and we all have to get by without the punch bowl. And those with brutal hangovers seemed to be blaming those of us without, for their own indulgence:

Besides, since you are just a loser renter, this blog IS your life. Please keep it up. It is fun entertainment laughing at losers.

A comment from last weeks entry, someone obviously upset that they are suffering brutal losses, or cannot sell a home to save their life. My response:

But you're right, I'm pretty angry.

Angry that instead of blowing $3K/mo. on the house I'm renting, I blow $1K, and put the rest in the bank, so I can buy your shit shack in 5 years after you've lost EVERYTHING.

Yeah, I'm real angry about that.

I'm actually socking away more money than I have in my life, thanks to Renting In Bend. I've said ad nauseum, that I thought Rent And Invest the Difference is far and away The Best Investment ANYONE could make in Bend. And as an addendum, just so I'm clear: When I say "Invest the Difference", I DO NOT mean invest the difference in Bend real estate.

As BEM said long ago: There is NOT an affordable housing issue in Bend. There is PLENTLY of cheap, "decent" quality housing if you want to rent. In fact, factoring in what will almost certainly be exorbitant maintenance costs of upkeep for the shoddy quality of what has been built, Renting In Bend is damn near the Only Option. If you bought ANYTHING built in this town after 2003, then you know what I mean. And by "decent" quality, I mean you can rent it Brand Spanking New for the first 3-4 years for 1/3rd the cost of buying, and then abandon it & move on to another brand new rental once the first starts falling apart.

Rent And Invest The Difference: The Only Thing I'm Totally Sure Will Work Here Over The Long Haul

And finally, I guess it's becoming brutally clear that the housing-led implosion of the US economy is moving to the forefront of national attention. It is now THE leading issue in the run for President. It is constantly in the national news. It is #1 on any online media business outlet. It's not a question of "IF" anymore, but "HOW BAD".

Strangely enough, it is hardly mentioned locally. Real estate pieces that proliferated like rabbits when the Bubble was in full-swing, have all but disappeared. The Bulletins Saturday stand-by, "What's Going Up", which used to cover mega-commercial ribbon-cuttings, has been reduced to covering 2-unit condo starts.

I know we'll see The Bulletin cover last years RE performance, and there'll be some small measure of gloom. But there will be far more misdirection & unfounded ebullience, if they stay true to form. Look for it. And realize that it is this sort of misguided "We'll Market Our Way Out Of This" Kool-Aid induced catatonic embolism, that will keep Bend from recovering for many, MANY years to come.

You can easily see that people are so used to perceiving that news SHOULD BE spun for the benefit of some chosen few, that I got this sort of comment last week:

Q: Are you willing to comment about your holdings or business goals? Without that info, it doesn't add up that you're trying to help Bend homeowners.


I'm neither trying to help or harm anyone... I just don't think that's possible. I ~think~ I can give people a much clearer & less biased view of what is happening in Bend RE, that they certainly are not getting from local mainstream media. I am trying to mitigate the institutionalized spin that is firmly entrenched in this place.

I don't really benefit from any sort of collapse in Bend RE, and do not expect to own here ever, because I will ONLY buy when it is very compelling from a personal finance standpoint, which I doubt will happen in any relevant time period. Bend will literally have to collapse overnight for me to buy. I can buy today... but I won't because it is financial suicide. I like fattening my bank account every paycheck, not some mortgage company.

I have to dispute the idea that MY own holdings somehow shed light on my motivations. I don't really have any motivations for "moving the market" because as I've said many times, I think that's impossible. This thing will collapse of its own accord. But if it helps you, I'm largely in cash.

In fact, the point of this blog was to air views regarding real estate that are not HEAVILY influenced by some media agenda. Maybe there are people with some pre-determined agenda posting on here, but they will be thrown into the pot with everyone else. ALL views are aired here, from the ludicrous to well-spoken, and all in between.

I'm sick of being SOLD THE NEWS. Tell me the news, STOP selling me a condo, STOP printing RE PR, stop the BULLSHIT, stop the SPIN.

If Bend media would stop spinning for the benefit of a chosen few, this blog would probably go away due to lack of interest.

Believe it or not, I don't make money from this blog. I know, unbelievable. And I NEVER expect to buy a house in Bend. I think that by the time medians hit some sort of free-market price & I find a house I would actually WANT to buy, that the local economy will be in such sad shape that I and many others will have fled.

It's a Catch-22: We need affordable homes on a massive scale AND we need living-wage jobs. Our economy has been skewed so massively by Bubble-nomics, that I'm not sure we'll EVER be able to achieve both in some time period relevant to many people who live here. The financial contagion spawned by the Bust will infect every corner: look no farther than a chart of CACB to see the impact of this spreading plague. And note Patty Moss' change in tone, from the 3rd quarter to the 4th:

Q3:

Cascade Bancorp President and CEO Patricia Moss highlighted the positives, noting that the bank has avoided much of the financial damage inflicted on more aggressive players in the residential mortgage markets.

“In an environment of slowing real estate activity that triggered recent turmoil on Wall Street, Cascade continued to deliver solid financial results,” Moss said in the press release. “I am pleased to report the company does not have direct exposure to the highly publicized subprime mortgage issues because it neither originated nor purchased such assets in its loan or investment portfolios.”

In a phone interview, Moss said the bank’s continuing deposit and loan growth is a sign that its long-term growth prospects remain strong, despite the drag from residential real estate.

“We are in such fabulous markets, with Bend, Medford, Portland and Boise, over the long term we think we are positioned better than anybody,” Moss said. “... We have the number one growth footprint in the Northwest.”

Q4:

"The softness in our real estate markets has worsened in the past quarter, putting increased pressure on cash flows of developers and builders of new homes and subdivisions," said Patricia L. Moss, CEO. "While we are disappointed in reporting this action, we feel strongly that it is prudent to be assertive in recognizing the heightened risk in this segment of our loan portfolio." She added, "Despite the immediate cost of these steps, Cascade remains a solidly profitable and well-capitalized institution serving some of the best growth markets in the nation. I am confident that the long-term strength of our markets and our experienced management team will enable us to effectively navigate this downturn in the real estate cycle."

You see Moss, despite being slapped upside the head with Reality, is still is bobbing for apples in the Kool-Aid vat.

The Cult of Bend: It'll be the death of us all.

204 comments:

«Oldest   ‹Older   1 – 200 of 204   Newer›   Newest»
Anonymous said...

In defining the indefinable, Norma needs to broaden her boundary lines a couple more blocks. Let's not exclude the Midtown Rock & Roller Rink...certainly a fine example of Bend's "mix of business and bohemia". After all, you COULD classify the Red Elvises: The Best Of Russian Rock'n'Roll as evidence of Bend's "agenda for global business". And the Renegade Rollergirls certainly exemplify our "Most Precious ASSet".

tim said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

This post has been removed by the author.

Hey! How did you do that?

Even I can't remove comments... I don't think. That's weird.

Dottiebug said...

Sorry 'bout your losing the burrito bet. I would of lost one also; thought we'd see those 200K medians by now. As far as I am concerned as soon as summer of'09 hits I am gone....... Even with my RN's liscense I don't forsee a Bend that pencils out financially for me(us )either. I have loved all of my time here even the last few years (it's been amusing).

Anonymous said...

Homer, Read the following just came off the wire. Sisters, our slut west of Bend, is trying to do a VCB/DVA and make place sticky for tourists. All dressed up and nobody to blow.

****

Lodges in Sisters hoping to get visitors to linger longer

01/13/2008

By JEFF McDONALD / Associated Press

Visitors often stop for a look at this small Western-themed town during summer, but they don't stay long enough to survey its diverse offerings, according to a group of lodging property owners who have formed a cooperative marketing alliance to encourage visitors to explore the area and stay awhile.

The alliance, known as the Unique Properties Group of Sisters, will pool the resources of five different property owners and the Sisters Area Chamber of Commerce to market the area and create new packages designed to make what's being called the "Sisters Country" more of a destination instead of a quick stop on the way to Bend or Sunriver.

When the campaign launches in March, the five lodging properties — FivePine Lodge, Suttle Lake Lodge, Lake Creek Lodge, Black Butte Ranch and Best Western Ponderosa Lodge and the chamber — each will contribute equal money into advertising and introduce an eco-tour package where tourists could pay for a multiday walking tour of the area from the High Desert to the Metolius Basin, said Bill Willitts, developer of the FivePine campus.

The campus is a mix of businesses at the east end of town that includes the FivePine Lodge & Conference Center, Shibui Spa, Sisters Movie House and Sisters Athletic Club. A new restaurant and brew pub are slated to open at FivePine this year.

The 10-day, 40- to 50-mile tour could include overnight stops at each lodging property and would be guided by Sisters-based restoration and field guide group Wolftree Inc. on existing trails, Willitts said. Visitors would hit the trail during the day, then relax and unwind with a spa treatment, dinner and warm bed in cozy accommodations at night.

The walking tour would include a shopping and gala celebration featuring Northwest wines and beers, Willitts said.

"We're trying to build upon the national trend of experiential travel and eco-travel and attract international tourists to Sisters," Willitts said.

The new campaign, which is still being finalized, also will feature a Discovery Pass package including spa treatments, dining coupons at local restaurants such as Jen's Garden, golf vouchers at Black Butte Ranch Golf Club and Aspen Lakes Golf Course, lift tickets at Hoodoo Mountain Resort and movie passes at the Sisters Movie House to accompany overnight lodging at one of the five properties, Willitts said.

The 10-day, eco-tour idea could attract international tourists who are looking for ways to experience the Western United States in an authentic way, said Alana Audette, president and CEO of Central Oregon Visitors Association.

"Building a unique itinerary is a brilliant idea, and it's practical for what people would be getting," Audette said. "But it's something that they're going to have to modify if they want to market the idea to domestic travelers because 10-day vacations in a small area are not as frequent. But it's well-suited for international travelers because they like to immerse themselves in their itinerary."

The Unique Properties Group would initially focus 80 percent of its advertising budget — which hasn't been finalized — on print advertisements from the Portland-Vancouver area to Eugene, Willitts said. Twenty percent would be spent in Deschutes County, he said.

Cooperative marketing is a common tool in Central Oregon's $498-million-a-year tourism economy.

COVA was founded on the idea that tourism-related businesses could leverage their advertising dollars with the public and privately funded tourism-promotion agency to attract more visitors to the region, Audette said. Additionally, larger tourism partners such as Mount Bachelor's ski area and the Sunriver Owners Association have formed partnerships with COVA and seen their marketing dollars matched.

"It's a special model here (in Sisters) where competitors pool their resources to grow business for everyone," Audette said. "I'm proud that businesses have the vision to see this can be a powerful way to do effective marketing."

It would be the first time for Sisters lodging partners to work together and couldn't have happened without the recent development in the area, including the new FivePine and Suttle Lake lodges, and a renovated Black Butte Resort, all of which have helped make the Sisters area more of a destination, said Preston Thompson, marketing manager at Black Butte Ranch.

"I'm sure it's been done, but it hasn't been done right here — there are so many other options in Central Oregon, but there are serious possibilities in the Sisters area," he said. "The views alone from some of these properties makes this area a potent force."

The marketing efforts could help increase visits at Hoodoo, where most skiers and snowboarders come from the Willamette Valley for the day and return home at night, said Matthew McFarland, Hoodoo general manager.

Last year, about 62,000 of the ski area's approximately 90,000 visitors were from the valley, and only about 1,000 of those purchased discounted lift tickets from area lodging properties, McFarland said.

"Hoodoo would offer great discounted rates at volume pricing instead of offering tickets to lodging properties individually," McFarland said. "Because if somebody comes and stays for two days, they're more likely to ski a second day. We can promote this as a kind of mini-vacation and help business in Sisters at the same time."

The campaign would fit well with what the state's tourism-promotion agency is trying to market nationally and internationally, said Todd Davidson, executive director of Travel Oregon, based in Salem.

"This would give us another tool to present Oregon to international tour operators," said Davidson.

The eco-tour idea also would work well with the promotion of the Oregon brand, which focuses on the state's outdoor recreation opportunities, and would match national trends, Davidson said.

"People are looking for the opportunity to test their mettle, but also have luxury as well," he said. "They want to push themselves during the day, but relax at the end of the day with a nice glass of pinot noir."

Anonymous said...

A little summary of our woes on oregonlive.com today

Bust turns developers' dreams to dust

...Developers without deep pockets are struggling to stay in business. Others have folded or lost property to foreclosure. In their wake, suppliers, excavators and street pavers try to collect millions in unpaid bills...

...St. Helens-based Decal Custom Homes, an active Portland-area builder, is scrambling to remain afloat amid dozens of creditors clamoring for money. Bank of America, for example, sued Decal and its principals in November, seeking repayment of $8.2 million...

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian
/index.ssf?/base/news/12001209227430.
xml&coll=7

Anonymous said...

Bank of America, for example, sued Decal and its principals in November, seeking repayment of $8.2 million...

*

This is the most interesting trend. Say, you loaned $10M to Breeze, and know its going down, and she still has $5M of the banks money in the 'bank'. Do you grab the money back, or let good money continue to be spent on bad projects.

I expect to see a lot of banks calling loans, and/or grabbing deposits.

Anonymous said...

nearly laughed my ass off "Homer (IHTBYB) our leader".

Shit, homer spends an hour a week, posting pic's of fat women, and writing misogynist stuff for this site, posts new dribble every Sunday AM, and then he's done for the week.

This is 'our leader'?

One thing is clear, BENDBB gets better postings of original source info, because a few 'real' realtors hangout there. Nobody on BB2 is anything but a renter. They're not even in the game. If you look at all these blogs across the country, they're all the exact same, ran by renters, and majority occupied by renters.

In normal times a 'renter' is a loser. It's like paying he BOSSHOG for a mill-house, out of your salary, while the BOSSHOG owns your mill-house.

Freemen BUY their own homes always been this way. For Homer(IHTBYB) to say he's been here +5 yrs, and didn't buy a house, shows a fucking loser, and always has been a fucking loser. Even in our current recession, the prices will not go much lower than the 2002 low, but note, that is still +50% down from the 2006 high.

The renters (losers) need to feel good about being 'renters', so they write about how smart they were to stay out of the game.

In my opinion, Homer(IHTBYB) will never buy a house, nor the majority here at this blog or BENDBB because they're renters by definition. Besides, there are NO jobs in Bend, these folks aren't going to stay here.

I have been here over +40 years, and have seen several of these recessions come and go, and over the next two years Bend will become so undesirable for the cali-transplants that they'll move on. "Owners", have no choice, but "renters" by definition have no "roots".

Human nature to is poke fun at those below you. The success of this blog is poking fun at holier-than-thou Becky-Breeze crowd that ran Bend from 2002->2007. To laugh at this crowd and Bend City Hall & Staff is whole point.

To suggest that Homer (IHTBYB) will profit from any of this is BULLSHIT. Homer could have gotten a deal when he arrived and didn't because he's a fucking renter. By the time there are 2002 deals, homer will not get a loan, nor have an income to get a loan.

BB2 is like high school, and Randy Sebastian is a football captain, and Becky-Breeze is the home-coming queen. Most of our Bend folks were elite preppy's, and now they're all taking a fall, and the NERDS love it.

99% of those here that spend time on computers are NERDS. Pure & Simple its the oldest story. The nerds get to watch the holier-than-thou crowd fall on their face.

That's it, there is NOTHING else to this blog. Don't try to make anything out of this blog. Bend is springfield. Homer is Homer.

Bart

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Homer could have gotten a deal when he arrived and didn't because he's a fucking renter.

Ahhh yes.

I actually bought a house right when I got to Cent OR (2002). Sold it for a double.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

In normal times a 'renter' is a loser.

If these were normal times, and this was a normal place.

Usually though, this is right. Real estate is not much better, it simply imposes a saving discipline that most people lack.

Anonymous said...

Homer,

I know this is twisted, but I'm trying to support you. Too often here over the past year, there is the this rumor, that the reason we 'post' is for profit! The fact is its fun sometimes, and thats about it.

There is NO fucking profit in daily reminding the people of Bend that they are house niggers & field niggers in a town of 1/2 dozen plantation owners.

Trouble is we're told by the BULL&SORE & city-of-bend this plantation is the 'best resort in the world', #1 in fact.

A nigger can never get off the plantation, until he can own his plantation, whether he gets to come in the house or not.

...

Another comment that was made about renting was that it somehow was always going to end, ... As a landlord I can tell you Bend has always had too many empty homes as long as a I can remember, before they even built Sunriver back in the early 1970's, folks had second home's here from PDX. There were always so many home & apts for rent here that as a landlord you could only get $500/mo for an apt, or $750/mo for a home.

Today its big fucking deal, our Min Wage has gone from $2HR to $8HR, back at $2/hr you could get an apt for $200/mo, and now a shit-hole will cost $800/mo. The renter is still fucked, but in Bend the landlord is even MORE fucked.

As a landlord you hope the renter doesn't fuck your home, and you hope he/she pays your Mortgage. It's always been tough to get a renter to pay MTG in Bend, even before our current 1998->2006 run-up.

My prediction for the future is that we'll have more empty houses in this area for the next ten years than ever, and it will NOT matter, they'll NOT come, because there are no jobs here.

We don't make money posting on this blogsite. We simply have a good time rubbing shit in cali-transplants faces, and better time watching our electable class walk the plank, and even a better time watching good money come to Bend, and go down the Rat-Hole.

This whole Pape is a Harvard-Case study of good money coming to Bend, and going down the rat-hole.

Nobody can call tops, until you have seen the crash, and nobody can call bottom until your in the recovery. This is just how it works.


The reason I post, and read this shit, and other blog-shit, is because I don't get news from the BULL or SORE. I think for most this is the single most important reason for doing this. I might add we don't need another reason.


I don't want no more houses, I wouldn't buy a fucking Bend house, even if they went below $100k median, because simply put, it would be just dealing with a whole bunch of un-employed renters and trying to get them to pay the rent every month.

Welcome to the REAL FUCKING BEND.

There will always be rentals in Bend, and there will never be good paying jobs that last. Never has been, never will be, because nobody ever stays for the long term except hard-core old asshole desert rats.

Since 2002 cali-transplants, grifters, and con-artists from all over USA, came to Bend, to get rich, and over the next two years they'll all be leaving by U-Haul. Nobody saw it coming, except those with their eye open.

Anonymous said...

Usually though, this is right. Real estate is not much better, it simply imposes a saving discipline that most people lack.

*
[ The following long-winded response, is an explicit example of how to make money in real-estate ] *

OK, you said and I'll respond. Our 'hypo-thetical inquisitor' of the week, also said, what kind of 'altrustic' mba are you??

The fact is the world is FULL of un-employable loser MBA's, that toilet paper degree don't mean shit. Lawyers, 90% or more of all lawyers, live in poverty, it takes an exceptional man/woman to make real money in law. Most doctors live hand-to-mouth, and have horrible lives, ... CPA's never follow their own advice.

Getting the picture, even the fucking priest-class are generally fuckups, for what Homer calls 'lack of saving discipline'.

Ok, but then lets say your in it for the long ride, and you buy a bunch of Bend homes in 2010, or back in 1983 for $120k, and you put in a $1k/mo renter, on a 15yr fixed 5% loan, and in 2025, you got a $1k/mo coming on each home for life, on top of that the home is back up to $300k, so you made lots of money on our $12k down, should you want to liquidate.

You do this for 4+ homes and you can end up financially better off than the top 98% of most lawyers, cpas, ... doctors, ... Why because they don't have time to make money.

Homer, might say he's all in cash, and that ... but the fact is real estate is a fairly safe way for a 25 year to be able to retire before 50 very comfortable, of course its generally about timing, but in Oregon the RE market collapses every 20 years, and always has, and always will. Thus a young person of 20 is most likely in their next ten years to catch a wave, and buy LOW, and HOLD, and be set for life, and end being financially better off than the top 2% of the USA public.

I had to say this for two reasons, one to explain how it works, and secondly to expound on Homers assertion of 'discipline'.

I myself back in the 60's & 70's when I bought a lot of houses all my friends said I was an idiot, now I'll my friends are still working, ... I retired in my 40's.

I have said here a 100 times, that Bend will come back to $160k medians, given our (wiki) $40k/yr median income. Yes, regarding the best my seat of the pants right now is $240k medians in Bend. I'm sure by fall of next year the price will below $200k. That said, NOTE it will have to drop below $160k, before I advise young ones to 'invest' for their futures.

Anonymous said...

Homer, When you get a chance read that above post on 'Sisters', it could possible be enough blogger-fodder to keep you employed for weeks.

The thing reads like Bend, ... Sisters is #1, we need more visitors, ... Just increase the traffic, no that's the point, they don't stay, what Sisters needs is to make the place sticky, ...

Kids should throw out nails, or put sugar in tranny fluid hold those cali-tourist in Sisters, for weeks, then they'll BUY, ...

See in Sisters the reason the RE isn't selling is nobody stays LONG enough to fall in love with the place, think about that statement, maybe there's a reason that the average tourist spends ten minutes in Sisters and says "Kids lets get in the car, and go we have seen sisters".

Water Slide? That's it, Sisters needs a world class draw, what can they do to get people to come visit, and STAY for more than a few hours?????????????

Anonymous said...

Homer could have gotten a deal when he arrived and didn't because he's a fucking renter.
Ahhh yes.
I actually bought a house right when I got to Cent OR (2002). Sold it for a double.
*
So you did come here to make a quick RE buck, ... and given that you knew you weren't staying for 20, you might as well grab your 2X while you could,...

I think its been understood since the mid 90's that economically your ahead as a renter, 'IF YOUR DISCIPLINED', ... That said I know lots of guys that just go around buy shit-hole every two years, fix it up, flip it tax free and do it over, they don't work, and those deals can still be done even now, as long as you stay two years, and as long as you get a good deal on your rehab. The best deals are poorly maintained homes on acreage, fixup, paint, and flip.

At this point if Homer waits for a deal in Bend, and then waits for his 2X he'll have to stay here almost 20 years ( hollern even said so ), thus Homer isn't going to buy RE, but most of us already knew this, I guess its now a dead horse, Homer isn't getting rich on the fact that MORONS in Bend made worthless desert land into Tulip-Mania.

Anonymous said...

Duncan comments on the below, but here is the REAL shit, COBA ( builders ) are saying ouch to the $20K SDC, trouble is this FUCKING SDC should have been $60K, and should have been applied back to 2002. Then Bend would have paid for potholes, now there is NO fucking money.

***

Bend was warned about its budget
By Andy High / Bulletin guest columnist
Published: January 13. 2008 5:00AM PST

The warning signs were given to the city that there would be a shortfall.

It is really troubling to watch the city of Bend go through budget cuts right now when it was warned its budget and projected building and planning permit volumes were way too optimistic last year. On June 19, the Central Oregon Builders Association warned the City Council that the projected permit volumes were too high and should be scaled back.

City Manager Andy Anderson refused to listen and decided to proceed as planned. Now that he is gone, the city finds itself in a tough situation that he helped put all of us in. Mr. Anderson also put the community and council in the unfortunate position of laying off good employees.

In mid-2006, COBA started to see the reduction in new home starts and warned jurisdictions that they need to reflect that in upcoming budgets.

Most refused to listen and increased or planned to maintain permit levels of 2005 to 2006 and at the same time increased fees drastically.

In the city of Bend, planning fees have gone up 150 percent in the last two years and building permit fees rose 35 percent. That is in addition to double-digit increases in system development charges and new affordable housing tax.

Why have we seen such a drastic decrease in building new homes in Central Oregon, one reason is the current market. The other is cost of doing business with cities has gone up on average in Bend with increase in SDCs and fees the average 1,500-square-foot home will be $20,000 in fees before you can even move the dirt. With the high land prices and the down turn in the market this has made it virtually impossible to make projects pencil at today’s numbers. When this happens it leaves jurisdictions with less revenue by not adding new property taxes thus taking longer to pay off construction bonds and will leave budgets short.

The city of Bend’s budget committee also questioned the large increases to the budget. The city planned back in May a 19 percent increase in this year’s fiscal budget. The committee questioned that type of increase along with Councilor Chris Telfer. Why did the city refuse to listen to the committee members and councilors?

On Jan. 2 at the council meeting, they discussed the impacts to the urban growth boundary and the delays it will have on it because of the down turn in permit numbers. This as well could have been avoided if the city would have listened and not put long-range planning for the city into a fee supported system. Long range planning benefits all of us, not just the development community. When a city is not growing it is the job of long-range planning to figure out how to grow and generate new revenue for the community. Then, when times are good, it is the job of long-range planning to manage growth through the UGB and development code along with other mechanisms.

Time and time again the city has been warned and refused to listen. It is my hope that the city under new management will begin to listen and take seriously the on the ground experience of those who want to see the city succeed and its residents prosper.

The city should prepare itself for further cuts in non-emergency personnel and spending, and they should not wait long to act as it will be more painful for employees to make changes the longer they wait.

The key to making wise decisions in upcoming budgets will be to listen to businesses and industry officials because they will be able to give us a comprehensive look at what is happening locally.

Andy High is director of Government Affairs for the Central Oregon Builders Association

Anonymous said...

First of all DUNC, these fee's should have been raised a long time ago, the fact that you and HOMER(IHTBYB) both thinks the fees should have been raised, shows clearly to all that you & homer, are just as much a part of the BEND/SDC problem. The SDC should have gone up PRE BULL, but didn't, and thus the cheap SDC created the BULL, and made Bend the #1 over-priced RE in in the country. The fact that you & homer want to keep the rates low, show as always that you & homer are the fucking problem in Bend, your NO different than Friedman, or anything other Bend parasite.

***
Bend was warned about its budget
By Andy High / Bulletin guest columnist
Published: January 13. 2008 5:00AM PST

The warning signs were given to the city that there would be a shortfall.

It is really troubling to watch the city of Bend go through budget cuts right now when it was warned its budget and projected building and planning permit volumes were way too optimistic last year. On June 19, the Central Oregon Builders Association warned the City Council that the projected permit volumes were too high and should be scaled back.

City Manager Andy Anderson refused to listen and decided to proceed as planned. Now that he is gone, the city finds itself in a tough situation that he helped put all of us in. Mr. Anderson also put the community and council in the unfortunate position of laying off good employees.

In mid-2006, COBA started to see the reduction in new home starts and warned jurisdictions that they need to reflect that in upcoming budgets.

Most refused to listen and increased or planned to maintain permit levels of 2005 to 2006 and at the same time increased fees drastically.

In the city of Bend, planning fees have gone up 150 percent in the last two years and building permit fees rose 35 percent. That is in addition to double-digit increases in system development charges and new affordable housing tax.

Why have we seen such a drastic decrease in building new homes in Central Oregon, one reason is the current market. The other is cost of doing business with cities has gone up on average in Bend with increase in SDCs and fees the average 1,500-square-foot home will be $20,000 in fees before you can even move the dirt. With the high land prices and the down turn in the market this has made it virtually impossible to make projects pencil at today’s numbers. When this happens it leaves jurisdictions with less revenue by not adding new property taxes thus taking longer to pay off construction bonds and will leave budgets short.

The city of Bend’s budget committee also questioned the large increases to the budget. The city planned back in May a 19 percent increase in this year’s fiscal budget. The committee questioned that type of increase along with Councilor Chris Telfer. Why did the city refuse to listen to the committee members and councilors?

On Jan. 2 at the council meeting, they discussed the impacts to the urban growth boundary and the delays it will have on it because of the down turn in permit numbers. This as well could have been avoided if the city would have listened and not put long-range planning for the city into a fee supported system. Long range planning benefits all of us, not just the development community. When a city is not growing it is the job of long-range planning to figure out how to grow and generate new revenue for the community. Then, when times are good, it is the job of long-range planning to manage growth through the UGB and development code along with other mechanisms.

Time and time again the city has been warned and refused to listen. It is my hope that the city under new management will begin to listen and take seriously the on the ground experience of those who want to see the city succeed and its residents prosper.

The city should prepare itself for further cuts in non-emergency personnel and spending, and they should not wait long to act as it will be more painful for employees to make changes the longer they wait.

The key to making wise decisions in upcoming budgets will be to listen to businesses and industry officials because they will be able to give us a comprehensive look at what is happening locally.

Andy High is director of Government Affairs for the Central Oregon Builders Association

Anonymous said...

This analysis on duncans on the BULL article about SDC's, is exactly why Bruce, Duncan, & Homer are all city cunts feeding at the trough.

The principal assertion in todays article is that the SDC is the reason for the collapse of the Bend Bubble.

Well this is partly true, because had the city of bend paid the actual cost of SDC in the first place then we would have NOT been CNNFN most over-valued for 05,06,07, but we were.

The fact that all of you agree that SDC's are the reason for the failure Bends RE sales shows that ALL of you are in fact KOOL-AID drinking cock-suckers, just like all of Bend.

Anonymous said...

Bend is a shit-hole, and all of you deserve to be in a shit-hold of pot holes, with sewers that backup.

The city refused to force COBA developers to pay the actual SDC cost ten years, and in 2001, they deferred until 2008, and now they want to defer until 2015.

We must protect COBA, they're enrichment is our only goal in Bend.

Today HOMER said that COBA is a collection of folks with 6th grade education, at the right time, and the right place. No that is NOT the reason COBA exists, the reason COBA exists is because they never had to pay the SDC's.

Anonymous said...

City Manager Andy Anderson refused to listen and decided to proceed as planned. Now that he is gone, the city finds itself in a tough situation that he helped put all of us in

*

There you have it Andy Anderson was fired, for forcing the City to raise the SDC's, andy was the last fucking person in Bend, who was honest, now all that is left is grifters in Bend.

Grifters all wanting to fuck each other, and Duncan hoping they need a comic book.

Duncan McGeary said...

The fees should have been high early, and especially while the boom was going on, who knows it might have slowed things which might have been a good thing.

Raising the fees after the slowdown was trying the milk the cow after it was dry.

I have zero sympathy for Andy High and the builders, who only 'warned' the city that there was a slowdown when fees were being raised. Gee, thanks.

tim said...

By the time anyone was warning anyone else about anything, it was all over.

It's like building a giant house of cards and then complaining because the dog knocked it over. Guess what, it was going to fall anyhow.

I love this finger-pointing stage. It's funny that the bust isn't the bloggers' fault anymore. And it's not the media any more. Or greedy buyers who don't want to pay up.

All those generic reasons were boring. Now people are delighting in naming names. "It was that fucker there!" "Get him!"

Anonymous said...

See in Sisters the reason the RE isn't selling is nobody stays LONG enough to fall in love with the place, think about that statement, maybe there's a reason that the average tourist spends ten minutes in Sisters and says "Kids lets get in the car, and go we have seen sisters".
============

Bill Willits is the guru of Sisters. I think he tells his friends he is the Donald Trump of Sisters and his wife is Ivanna (or is it Vanna?). So wise ol Bill builds cabins instead of condos.

Build it and they will come, says Bill. They will come to rent your cabins in the woods (5 Pines) just so that they can walk around the Sisters pine forests, and they will stay for 10 days.

And their wives will spend a week in the HinduSPA. And five days in the PodunkMovieBarn. Build a BrewPub and they will come and drink your brew, since nobody has one of those thangs where they live!!!

Build it and they will come, oh wise guru.

LOL Sisters, ya sure!

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

I know this is twisted, but I'm trying to support you.

Sorry, my fault. I misunderstood when you called my a "fucking renter". I couldn't feel the love...

Sisters, our slut west of Bend...

Again, Sisters is going down HARD. But at least they are ahead of the game vs Bend: They KNOW they're fucked. The Game of Musical Chairs that IS Sisters business, has stopped. People can't sell their shithole businesses anymore, so they actually have to -- oh, it's too awful to even think it -- operate their business as a BUSINESS. ie They have to make money. They are finding out that over the long haul (1 season), this is impossible for about 95% of Sisters businesses. 90% of Sisters business OWNERS make less than minimum wage.

You used to be able to count on The Bigger Fool Theory to unload your piece of crap, money-loser Sisters business, but the music has stopped.

"Lifestyle Business", my ass. Bye bye 401K.

Anonymous said...

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...
This post has been removed by the author.
Hey! How did you do that?
Even I can't remove comments... I don't think. That's weird.
*
Homer, google has published how to connect to 'blogger', thus anyone can use a third party client, the 'glue' to delete a comment is in the protocol, its just not in the 'blogspot' client software. Most likely this person is using a hand-rolled, or a third party blogging client that allow's deletion.
I'm just answering your question, it would be sad if all of a sudden you started selectively deleting comments.
[ If anyone wants to know how to do this I could go into detail, but I think the above is enough said. If you note the blog is on blogspot, but the comments are on blogger, the blogger has its own protocol. There are dozens of versions of 'blogger' clients floating around. I suspect a 'media' person would be using a hand-rolled, or even a cop type, for instance you could have a whole different perspective than you see here, the possibility is endless. ]
In summary, don't assume that everyone is using the same client, there are clients out there that can make everything on everyone visible. For instance the FBI has 'blogger' law enforcement clients.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, my fault. I misunderstood when you called my a "fucking renter". I couldn't feel the love...

*

It's called 'tough love', I expect the best of you. There is nothing wrong with being a renter, I'm a landlord I always give my renters the speech, e.g. "How if they were smart, they would save the difference of rent vs ownership". It's all about the 'haul' I know your not going to be here in 20, and you know, probably not even ten from now, so yes buying doesn't make economic sense, especially given you can rent a mansion in NWXC for $1k/mo.

Everything is 'pussy' this, and 'fucking' that, those are all terms of endearment. A loser renter? What's that we're all losers, e.g. we're all going to die. If your going to stay somewhere for +10, and you get a good deal, and a 15yr fixed, and pay it off, then your set, thus ownership is a good deal, sadly 99% of humanity doesn't have this discipline. None of this has anything to do with you.

Remember what got us on this thread, was 'yellowbeard', another hypo-thetical plant, but suggested that your doing this for enrichment. My humble twist was to suggest that its idiotic to call a 'loser renter', our leader whom is getting rich from Bend's collapse.

I would rather have the opposition assume that we're loser-renters, remember this is a war, and its essential that "I own my enemy, but he not know me". Sun-Tzu, Art of War.

Anonymous said...

Sisters is going down HARD. But at least they are ahead of the game vs Bend: They KNOW they're fucked. The Game of Musical Chairs that IS Sisters business, has stopped.

*

I disagree, perhaps we're mis-reading the article. But what I got is Sisters is going to market the hell out of the area, to bring them in, this is exactly what VCB/DVA ( BULLETIN/COSTA ) is doing, got a condo for sale? Market?

The whole point of the article was that people visit, but don't stay long enough in Sisters to fall in love with the place. Ok, they're a false front western town with cotton-candy shops, yes greatest fool theory has panned-out. Now money is dear, and folks visit Sisters, and say "Lets move on", Kids say "This place is boring and SUCKS", ... The good news is Central-Oregon marketing/PR is going to get a ton of CASH from Sisters, will it work? Hell NO.

Are they different than Bend? NO, Are they ahead of Bend? NO, If Bend is the most over-sold RE in USA, Sister's could be the most over-sold on the planet, and what's their solution?? More fucking marketing.

Why don't they let the place silently implode, or put a vote before their people, remember a few months ago down in Paisley, they voted out all the pro-growth politicians, whats wrong with letting Sisters fold back to what it was??

This is the problem with Bend & Sisters, there is NOT a diversified economy, everyone is dependent upon RE, and when RE goes down, then all the treasury MUST be used to fix RE , and this is the wrong thing to do when setting on inventory, heading into an RE paralysis recession/depression. Folks should just lose their money, lose the realty shops, and Sisters can once again be a diner with a gas station.

Anonymous said...

I have zero sympathy for Andy High and the builders, who only 'warned' the city that there was a slowdown when fees were being raised. Gee, thanks. - duncan

*

Dunc,

It goes deeper than that. Its not a fucking accident that Bend was #1 CNNFN for RE appreciation 05,06,07 in USA. It was because,...

1.) Marketing PR from city of Bend, millions per year to get them here to buy condo's
2.) DUMBYA zero-down is money had a little, but all things equal this was true everywhere.
3.) Low to zero SDC cost, when the cost of a new house to Bend is-was $60k/home, the builder was paying less than $10k. This subsidy encouraged builders from all over USA to come here because they didn't have to FRONT SDC money.

The result, Bend got over-built, then when the city ( ANDERSON ), knew the city was broke, and raised the SDC a measly 5%, the BUILDERS (COBA) went out of their fucking minds and had him fired.

Today, the biggest developer Hollern,Bauhofer, are trying to extend their SDC deferral another 7 years, shit why didn't the spineless council FORCE the developer to pay back in 2001???????????

Bend is FUCKED.

Anonymous said...

I cannot stress enough to you people, that in the day, Sisters was just a place to have breakfast on your way to Salem, and possibly gas up.

There was never anything else in Sisters. It's just like LA-PINES, shitty little trees and such.

Black Butte ranch ( HOLLERN ) brought some class, but remember it was always political class of Salem that bought, and they shopped in Salem before they came over, nobody ever went to Sisters, even after Black-BUTT was built, they had the only good restaruant in a 30 mile radius.

Sisters through PR&MARKETING over-sold itself, and now its fucked.


The only good thing about Sisters today, is ODOT is going to have to build a bypass, and when they do, Sisters will die.

Anonymous said...

Bill Willits is the guru of Sisters. ... come to rent your cabins in the woods (5 Pines) just so that they can walk around the Sisters pine forests, and they will stay for 10 days.

*

Read the above story, Bill wishes they would stay for ten days, the problem is they're staying for one day.

The problem is HOW do we make Sisters sticky so they stay for ten days, and buy a fucking cabin???

It's time for a Garzini Quote, "Prison farms are just cabins with 100% occupancy". Bill Willitts has an 'occupancy' problem, and Garzini, knows how to solve these problems.

Want Sisters to become sticky?? Want to keep all those rental cabins occupied, then zone Sisters as one big fucking prison work farm.

Anonymous said...

They KNOW they're fucked. The Game of Musical Chairs that IS Sisters business, has stopped.

*

Sisters has a newspaper that will print the truth, via letters to editor, Bend HAS NO MEDIA.

Sister's is 1/100 the size of Bend, folks in Sisters can go out for AM coffee and see 1/2 the town.

Sisters sold acreage, for too much money. Bend sold crap-shacks thrown together over-night, with minimal SDC cost to developers, thus everything in Bend is fucked. Sisters is all on well & septic ( acreage ).

There is ONE rich guy in Sisters, or at least thinks he's donald trump.

In Bend there are dozen guys all fucking each other with lawyers, and fucking the taxpayers. The Bend people don't even know what the fuck is going on as there is no MEDIA.

Musical chairs in Sisters can be played, because all the RE shops were a couple 100 feet of one another. Bend is a REIT town, the money comes from New-York, and Hollern gets it. The City brings in suckers via PR&Marketing, its a well oiled machine, e.g. until you fall into a recession.

Today Sisters is trying to do a "BEND". "BEND" is trying to go into deferral mode, by that I mean defer all cost to developers/builders until 2030. So that they can survive.

Bend has 5,000 crap-shacks that are going to go to seed. They're not coming. Job's aren't coming, fuel is going to go up. Tourists will continue going to resorts like Sunriver or Black-Butte. Bend is Walmart, Costco, ... Supply town.

Anonymous said...

The whole sad story sure looks to Bike like a classic greed-fueled (legal) pyramid scheme driven by an enabler coalition of developers, builders, loan brokers, real estate sales people and incompetent and/or over their heads government officials and employees. Missing was quality leadership with the courage to call "Bull!" and then "do the right thing". (OK, Bike knows that this analysis has been put forth many times but typing it out helps Bike vent some of his anger at this unnecessary situation.)

Anonymous said...

pyramid scheme driven by an enabler coalition of developers, builders, loan brokers, real estate sales people and incompetent and/or over their heads government officials and employees
*
Yup that's Bend.
Today its over and COBA says the reason for the RE recession is HIGH SDC cost.
The fact is LOW SDC cost is what caused the bubble.
Builders MUST build, and SDC's are cash up front, something they don't have.
EVERYONE in BEND is on the 'pyramid payroll', thus keep expecting to see Bend fuck itself.

Anonymous said...

http://innof7thmtn.com
Letter to AUO Attorney January 4,2008
10772-1-cuo-inn-1-4-08-ltr-to-ms-macleod.pdf
* MAYOR FRIEDMAN's GOING TO JAIL
Homer, the above is the 'smoking gun' about Mayor Friedman going to jail. Note that the PDF above says that we're going to get the Friedman books, and we're going to treat old board as if they never had any authority to pass any rules.

The PDF is a letter from the new INN7 board, this is attorney is no cracker-shack Bend lawyer, this is guy is the meanest plaintiff's lawyer in Oregon. This guy is know as the the junk-yard dog's Pitbull, p.s. his rates start at $750/hr.

Bend Economy Man said...

COBA is definitely not in a fun spot now, true. You can almost feel sorry for them. The bright horizon is a long, long way off, and by the time things turn around the current COBA poohbahs are almost sure not to be around.

But it's laughable for the builders' association to try to assume the role of Cassandra in the housing turndown. The whole time they've been blowing smoke up everyone's asses right along side the realtors, KTVZ and The Bulletin, Bank of the Cascades, DVA and other PR lackeys, the city council and staff and EDCO about the prospects of development in Bend and Central Oregon.

And they were all wrong. All of them. Actually, out of that list I would say that the City (both staff and council) were NOT the most aggressive Pollyanna promoters of a bright RE future for Bend. They were practically a voice of reason compared to COBA.

It seems like every day there's a new lawsuit or dispute in this town. And it's usually over land and development.

Weird how people suddenly start passionately defending their legal rights right when their property is worth less than they thought it would be, right? I guess it's because now they realize they're stuck with it for the duration.

But I don't feel sorry for any of the groups listed above. I feel sorry for the people who bought real estate in Bend in 2004-2007 and haven't sold it yet.

Especially those who bought in 2005. They've gone from thinking they had gotten in on the ground floor of an amazing opportunity, to realizing that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

With the number of houses on the market today, sales of 74 houses in December means that BUYERS ARE WISE that you'd have to be a fool to pay anywhere NEAR asking price for ANY home in Bend. 74 houses sold out of 1500+ offered means that very, very few people are saying "let's just buy this place. Sure it's a bit more expensive than we'd like, but we love it."

Realtors like to describe this situation as "buyers on the sidelines" or "vultures circling." That's actually optimistic, I think. I think that there's no one on the sidelines and no vultures anywhere near. I think if you lopped 50% off of the price of all real estate in Bend, it would still take MONTHS to sell. People (including lenders) have caught on to the notion that we're in the early stages of a MULTI-YEAR downturn.

Anonymous said...

Build near a toxic waste site, and they will come. Prineville, Proof that developers & buyers in Central Oregon were insane. Does anyone know if the 'chipper' sold this land as a developer, or did some sleazy developer just build next to the 'chip-plant'??
Note, for those who drive near Albany, this is some stinky fucking shit.
***
Where industry and growth meet
Prineville plant has taken steps to reduce fallout of wood particles, but neighbors still unhappy
By Jeff McDonald / The Bulletin
Published: January 14. 2008 5:00AM

A Prineville wood products company has spent more than $200,000 and plans to do more this year to reduce its wood particle fallout in adjacent residential neighborhoods.

But it may not be enough in an industrial-zoned area where sawdust has collected for years and late summer wind storms blow the dust from the ground onto nearby homes, say Woodgrain Millwork Inc. officials, who largely blame the city for approving subdivisions in an industrial area.

The Department of Environmental Quality sought public input at a hearing last week to discuss the company’s Air Contaminant Discharge Permit, which is up for its five-year renewal.

Based in Fruitland, Idaho, Woodgrain employs roughly 350 workers in Prineville and makes door and window components for the home-building industry.

In the last two years, the company has received three DEQ violations and numerous complaints from adjacent residents, said Frank Messina, air quality specialist for the DEQ, based in Bend.
On the Web

For more DEQ information about Woodgrain Millworks, visit www.deq.state.or.us/news/publicnotices/uploaded/ 071204_4031_WoodgrainPublicHearing07.pdf.

In the two more serious violations, the state agency in June 2006 and September 2007 measured air quality and wood particle fallout on pieces of “sticky paper” placed on the Woodgrain site and at homes in the 156-unit Stone Ridge subdivision to the east and southeast of the 52-acre industrial site. The agency found the wood particle fallout exceeded the state’s allotted level both times, but the air quality test revealed that the company did not pose any health risks, Messina said.

“We don’t have a health issue, we have a nuisance issue,” Messina said. “We’ll do more sticky paper testing to ensure things are getting better, most likely starting next summer.”

Neighbors would like the agency to require the company to install more advanced equipment that would control the dust and prevent it from blowing into their yards and homes.

“There are manufacturers that were, in the past, very bad polluters — oil refineries, coal-fired plants and tire plant manufacturers — that now have reduced their emissions to a low level by using current technology,” neighbor Michael Redmond wrote in a Dec. 20 letter to the DEQ. “Woodgrain Millwork seems to be using 1960s technology to control their emissions (pollutants).”

The company took several steps to improve its compliance with DEQ rules after the first violation, including enclosing its dump truck operations to prevent dust particle fallout and pressure-washing the facility’s cyclones, which are used to collect sawdust and wood waste, said Steve Forrester, general manager at the Prineville plant.

The company also has stepped up its housekeeping efforts and regularly washes the outside of buildings and cyclones, Forrester said.

The cyclones funnel woody debris into a truck, but the aging devices at the Woodgrain site are not always effective at keeping finer particles from going airborne, DEQ officials have said.

After the September violation, the company installed a baglike collection system around one of the larger funnel-shaped cyclones that traps even the finest particles, Forrester said.

The system was moved from the company’s White City mill, which closed in September 2007.

Outfitting the company’s four cyclones with new equipment would cost millions of dollars at a time when wood products companies are closing mills and sustaining losses, Woodgrain officials said.

The company also will spend $30,000 to $40,000 this spring to convert seven acres around the plant into an orchard grass field, Forrester said. The grass would help keep particles on the ground — where existing wood dust has collected over the mill’s decades of operation — from getting kicked up by the wind.

“It would serve as a trap in the event of a fugitive emissions spill and would keep loose wood fiber material currently in the dirt from getting loose,” he said.

Meanwhile, Woodgrain’s last DEQ violation was forwarded to DEQ’s Enforcement Division and will likely result in a fine of between $2,000 and $3,000, said Tom Hack, DEQ air quality specialist for the eastern region based in Pendleton.

The department has given the company until Feb. 11 to create a management plan that will address the wood particle fallout, Hack said. If the company exceeds the agency’s wood particle fallout limits again, the DEQ could levy higher fines or require Woodgrain to upgrade its cyclones with expensive equipment, Hack said.

“We’re working with them to improve things, but additional violations could require them to change out cyclones or use really modern equipment to control fallout,” Hack said.

Planning

Neighbors’ complaints are warranted, but houses should never have been located so close to an industrial area in the first place, Forrester said.

“There really needs to be some acknowledgement that this has been an industrial area for decades,” he said. “As further developments happen in Prine- ville or anywhere in Central Oregon, we have to be careful how we protect industry and how zoning changes are made.”

Wood products companies have operated at the site of Woodgrain Millwork for more than 60 years.

Prineville City Manager Robb Corbett, who became city manager after the Stone Ridge subdivision was approved, would not comment on the city’s approval of a subdivision near an industrial zone. But city staff will take the Stone Ridge residents’ concerns under consideration when they advise the Prine-ville City Council and Planning Commission on future planning issues, he said.

The city’s comprehensive plan, approved by the council in November 2007, may need to be revised because it would change two vacant pieces of land on two sides of the Woodgrain mill from industrial zoning to commercial and residential, Corbett said.

“There are obviously problems with putting homes adjacent to industrial processes,” Corbett said. “I don’t know if it was a mistake or not, but there are problems that exist. If we put more homes adjacent to a mill, I would expect that there would be more problems.”

Ultimately, the council has final say on changes to the comprehensive plan, Corbett said.

Anonymous said...

I don't know if you all are aware yet, but bruce needs money.

Go to juniper-ridge-info.blogspot.com, or juniper-ridge.info, and give what you can.

One of his 'cave dwarf' wives is losing her hair, and well you know a hairless cave dwarve, isn't a pretty sight. You would think they would smell better without the hair, but this is a case of cave psoriasis and there are no specialists in Bend. Insurance for Cave Dwarves isn't covered in Oregon.

Anonymous said...

Blogger Bend Economy Man said...

COBA is definitely not in a fun spot now, true. You can almost feel sorry for them. The bright horizon is a long, long way off, and by the time things turn around the current COBA poohbahs are almost sure not to be around.

*

COBA is winnning. Note, you see Andy High, and his letter is printed like news. Where is the opposition opinion??? Another BULL press-release this is.

Note, that the deferral of ALL SDC's from 2007 to 2014 is still online. Note that the City wanted $20k, but they got $16k, and it was $12k. COBA is winning,

Trouble here for COBA is these upfronts costs go to city, and builders have no cash.

Of course custom building is fine, rich people are still building here, they have cash, they pay the SDC's. It's the fucking developers that can't stand the SDC's for their SPEC building, we don't need any more SPEC in Bend, we have tens of thousands of SPEC that are sitting tri-county here, and will go to seed, before they're sold.

The city should have raised the SDC cost to $60k (actual) back in 2001, but COBA run's the county, soon these COBA guys will be RUNNING from the city.

Parasitic electorate of Bend had better get involved. Note also, how about that $10M Bond that is supposed to cover the Knife-River cost to date for creating Mt-Borgman at Les Schwab campus. What if they can't get the bond? The money has already been paid as cash to Knife-River ( hap-taylor ) aka Capell ( city council ).

Developer/Builders don't pay SDC, but then they expect taxpayer's to cover their infrastructure cost. The BULL & SORE and its staff should be tarred & feathered and ran out of town.

Anonymous said...

To the psychologist wondering why BB2 et al blasts Bend's bogus RE scene, here's the answer — because they CAN, MFer!

Read this from Salon for more insight:
http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2008/01/14/internet_troll/

Anonymous said...

Ok, the BULL finally printed this "FUCKING PATHETIC PRESS RELEASE", Now somebody tell me, "WHY MUST I STAY IN SISTERS".
***
Lodges in Sisters hoping to get visitors to linger longer

07:48 AM PST on Monday, January 14, 2008

By JEFF McDONALD, The (Bend) Bulletin

SISTERS, Ore. -- Visitors often stop for a look at this small Western-themed town during summer, but they don't stay long enough to survey its diverse offerings, according to a group of lodging property owners who have formed a cooperative marketing alliance to encourage visitors to explore the area and stay awhile.

The alliance, known as the Unique Properties Group of Sisters, will pool the resources of five different property owners and the Sisters Area Chamber of Commerce to market the area and create new packages designed to make what's being called the "Sisters Country" more of a destination instead of a quick stop on the way to Bend or Sunriver.

When the campaign launches in March, the five lodging properties -- FivePine Lodge, Suttle Lake Lodge, Lake Creek Lodge, Black Butte Ranch and Best Western Ponderosa Lodge and the chamber -- each will contribute equal money into advertising and introduce an eco-tour package where tourists could pay for a multiday walking tour of the area from the High Desert to the Metolius Basin, said Bill Willitts, developer of the FivePine campus.

The campus is a mix of businesses at the east end of town that includes the FivePine Lodge & Conference Center, Shibui Spa, Sisters Movie House and Sisters Athletic Club. A new restaurant and brew pub are slated to open at FivePine this year.

The 10-day, 40- to 50-mile tour could include overnight stops at each lodging property and would be guided by Sisters-based restoration and field guide group Wolftree Inc. on existing trails, Willitts said. Visitors would hit the trail during the day, then relax and unwind with a spa treatment, dinner and warm bed in cozy accommodations at night.

The walking tour would include a shopping and gala celebration featuring Northwest wines and beers, Willitts said.

"We're trying to build upon the national trend of experiential travel and eco-travel and attract international tourists to Sisters," Willitts said.

The new campaign, which is still being finalized, also will feature a Discovery Pass package including spa treatments, dining coupons at local restaurants such as Jen's Garden, golf vouchers at Black Butte Ranch Golf Club and Aspen Lakes Golf Course, lift tickets at Hoodoo Mountain Resort and movie passes at the Sisters Movie House to accompany overnight lodging at one of the five properties, Willitts said.

The 10-day, eco-tour idea could attract international tourists who are looking for ways to experience the Western United States in an authentic way, said Alana Audette, president and CEO of Central Oregon Visitors Association.

"Building a unique itinerary is a brilliant idea, and it's practical for what people would be getting," Audette said. "But it's something that they're going to have to modify if they want to market the idea to domestic travelers because 10-day vacations in a small area are not as frequent. But it's well-suited for international travelers because they like to immerse themselves in their itinerary."

The Unique Properties Group would initially focus 80 percent of its advertising budget -- which hasn't been finalized -- on print advertisements from the Portland-Vancouver area to Eugene, Willitts said. Twenty percent would be spent in Deschutes County, he said.

Cooperative marketing is a common tool in Central Oregon's $498-million-a-year tourism economy.

COVA was founded on the idea that tourism-related businesses could leverage their advertising dollars with the public and privately funded tourism-promotion agency to attract more visitors to the region, Audette said. Additionally, larger tourism partners such as Mount Bachelor's ski area and the Sunriver Owners Association have formed partnerships with COVA and seen their marketing dollars matched.

"It's a special model here (in Sisters) where competitors pool their resources to grow business for everyone," Audette said. "I'm proud that businesses have the vision to see this can be a powerful way to do effective marketing."

It would be the first time for Sisters lodging partners to work together and couldn't have happened without the recent development in the area, including the new FivePine and Suttle Lake lodges, and a renovated Black Butte Resort, all of which have helped make the Sisters area more of a destination, said Preston Thompson, marketing manager at Black Butte Ranch.

"I'm sure it's been done, but it hasn't been done right here -- there are so many other options in Central Oregon, but there are serious possibilities in the Sisters area," he said. "The views alone from some of these properties makes this area a potent force."

The marketing efforts could help increase visits at Hoodoo, where most skiers and snowboarders come from the Willamette Valley for the day and return home at night, said Matthew McFarland, Hoodoo general manager.

Last year, about 62,000 of the ski area's approximately 90,000 visitors were from the valley, and only about 1,000 of those purchased discounted lift tickets from area lodging properties, McFarland said.

"Hoodoo would offer great discounted rates at volume pricing instead of offering tickets to lodging properties individually," McFarland said. "Because if somebody comes and stays for two days, they're more likely to ski a second day. We can promote this as a kind of mini-vacation and help business in Sisters at the same time."

The campaign would fit well with what the state's tourism-promotion agency is trying to market nationally and internationally, said Todd Davidson, executive director of Travel Oregon, based in Salem.

"This would give us another tool to present Oregon to international tour operators," said Davidson.

The eco-tour idea also would work well with the promotion of the Oregon brand, which focuses on the state's outdoor recreation opportunities, and would match national trends, Davidson said.

"People are looking for the opportunity to test their mettle, but also have luxury as well," he said. "They want to push themselves during the day, but relax at the end of the day with a nice glass of pinot noir."

Anonymous said...

Anonymous informer said...

To the psychologist wondering why BB2 et al blasts Bend's bogus RE scene, here's the answer — because they CAN, MFer!

*

FUCK YOU, its NOT that complicated. About 1% of us here in Bend, are non to happy with what you fucking newbie parasites with your 'vision' have done to this fucking place.

"NO BOB, BOB GO HOME".

[ Bob is the SORE mfer that promotes Outside-Magazine & Bend as #1 ]

p.s. you can still yell 'fuck you', but these days a child uses a cherry-bomb, he would go to jail for possessing a destructive-device, and be fucked for life. Sadly, I haven't seen a cherry bomb, since the early 70's.

We used to flush them down toilets, and watch the toilet hit the ceiling, great fun.

Anonymous said...

Given today & yesterdays BIG press release all over about Sisters, it appears that PR&Marketing is doing just fine, those will to spend taxpayer money still feel that the best way to get 2005 back here ASAP, is to PR&Market the area.

It ain't coming back.

It must be tough having 100's or even 1000's of empty 'cabins' in the Sisters area... I say legalize prostitution, put something there like Gambling, or whore-houses, something that makes the place sticky.

p.s. the only people who ever did get attracted to 'central oregon' is #1 were get rich quick parasites. Bend and/or Sisters never will, and never did attract people who use their brain, this is why after all this fucking boom, there still are no sticky fucking jobs. I guess you can talk about cotton-candy, thats big and sticky in sisters.

Anonymous said...

The 10-day, eco-tour idea could attract international tourists who are looking for ways to experience the Western United States in an authentic way, said Alana Audette, president and CEO of Central Oregon Visitors Association.

* blogger fodder

Ok, the Chinese Investors are coming, market Sisters, get plane loads of Chinese newbie rich-folk, and they'll all buy time-share cabins in Sisters.

I have predicting this for months, the only hope of selling Sisters, is a whole new crop of fools with money.

Again, though you want the place sticky for chinese, you got to have gambling & pussy.

Anonymous said...

The last few years the traffic through Sisters all summer has been unbearable.

Thus how many more people do they want? Ah, they know people only drive through, they want them to stay, ...

Think about the FUCKING gridlock, if even 1% of the passersby actually stayed there?? There is no where to park, and nothing to do, except watch cars go through town.

I understand that Sisters has a deep fucking problem, of Condo's, whoops, I mean 'cabins', all dressed up with nobody to blow, but getting people to actually stop in the slutty little town, still ain't going to sell these 'condos'.

tim said...

>>For instance the FBI has 'blogger' law enforcement clients.

I'm either FBI, or there's a little garbage can icon that shows up below your comment until another comment has been entered.

Irritating that a deleted message leaves a turd behind. I guess that's so someone replying to the deleted message doesn't look insane.

tim said...

Prineville has had some desperate-ass shit going down in Craigslist the last couple weeks.

If anyone KNOWS they are fucked, it's the "investors" that bought in Prineville because Bend got too expensive.

tim said...

Oh wait. The garbage can is ALWAYS there if you want to delete a post (one of your own, though I bet Doh could delete ANYTHING).

The trick, maybe, is you have to be logged on. Anonymous Cowards probably can't do it.

Again, not that useful since the turd is left behind.

Anonymous said...

If anyone KNOWS they are fucked, it's the "investors" that bought in Prineville because Bend got too expensive.

*

This is where it gets interesting. Ya, sure all these dumb fucking sleazy fucking calis, and I mean ALL of you that moved here in the last ten years.

Then there are the people who bought in Bend during the last twenty, that sold at peak, and invested ALL their fucking winnings in Brasada, Prineville, ... Rarely in business do you win snakes eyes twice in a row. I know a lot of middle age renters in Bend, that sold, and took the cash to BUY the next big one, and they got FUCKED.

I know realtors that own 'cabins' at Brasada and Pronghorn they can't rent, the rent was supposed to pay the payments on the investment.

Bend is going to get to be ONE REAL MEAN place, and I'm not talking the kind of meanness you see here, I'm talking road rage in Bend big time.
I already see sidewalk rage, I see all these miserable fuckers walking around, and they have the look, they hate everything about this town, but they can't leave.

They ALL got sold a bill of goods.

Anonymous said...

I'm either FBI, or there's a little garbage can icon that shows up below your comment until another comment has been entered.

*

The point timmy, and I think you understand the point, e.g. there are many 'client' software packages you can use to post to blogger.com, and many of them have an explicit delete.

There is little point in being anonymous and being logged on so that google knows exactly who you are.

Anonymous said...

What are the number of non-fucked in Bend?? I mean that didn't play the game.

I know a few on my street old timers, but even some them took out the HELOC, so they're fucked, where they shouldn't have been.

I honestly think that 9 of 10 in Bend, could be extremely fucked.
Sure the $8/hr ( min wage ) renter, is in the same place they started, and we all know that in the future there are going to be a ton of min wage jobs in Bend. I think everyone else here is fucked.

As a landlord I'm fucked, I have to show houses to these loser's that have defaulted that need a place to stay, until they get their car fixed. No job, No house, and can't live in the car because its in the shop, and they expect to rent a house. 1/2 the applicants I see these days have a hotel room as a current address, welcome to the NEW fucking Bend, Oregon.

Anonymous said...

Your probably right however timmy, someone posted with a real ID, probably accidentally, and then quickly deleted their mistake, before going back to anonymous for real.

Anonymous said...

Somebody here posted with a real ID? LOL!!!! ROTFLMAO!!!!

Musta been a beaner with stolen ID.

Anonymous said...

Somebody here posted with a real ID? LOL!!!! ROTFLMAO!!!!

*

Ya, but they got in their delete before the next post, lucky they them.

That's our news highlight of the day. Probably be lead BULL story tomorrow, if we can get our 'leader', that lazy fucking renter to write a press release.

Anonymous said...

So I think "The Donald" Willits of Sisters is on to something. Maybe if he gets planeloads of German EcoTouristas to land in Sisters International Airport (hey, Jackson Hole has 767 nonstops from JFK, and Sisters is just like Jackson Hole, right?), then these German EcoTouristas can stay at the 5Pine cabins and hike over to Suttle Lake Lodge (17 miles one way) with their suitcases in hand. You know, flora and fauna, sniff the juniper berries, ever eat a pine tree, many parts are edible.

"The Donald" Willits has built it, now they will come.

Anonymous said...

(hey, Jackson Hole has 767 nonstops from JFK, and Sisters is just like Jackson Hole, right?)

Uhhh, didn't you hear? The Bend is just like Aspen schtick did not quite fly (well, like a pig flys), so why you think that the mantra "Sisters is just like Jackson Hole" is gonna fly any better?

It ain't.

tim said...

I have a serious question about the guys that start defaulting. If a dude owns 15 houses, and two or three have gone to the bank, he's done, right?

Is there any way to do triage and save a couple or a few of them? Can you sacrifice some and save the rest? Or are the banks that you screw going to come after the rest of the property?

I suppose it all depends on the loan terms, but, as a rule, are these guys doing their dribble defaults headed toward zero? Or is there some hope for any of them?

Anonymous said...

Good report's tonight from monday night @ Deschutes Brew Pub,

Very thin crowd for monday.

Lot's builders, and lots of sad story's. For Generals It's never been better year-to-date bid on full frame for +3k-sqft is now below $5k. I explicitly asked, and the response from all is "The subs must work, ..." The rumor is soon we'll be paying people to work, break even is already under-water.

Think about this, the price for full rough-frame is now down to almost $1/sq-ft!!!!!! I was talking to some builders who were paying $15k a year ago, and now sub's are taking jobs at below $3k for a 3k-sqft house. Note, two years ago wages went from $60hr to $15hr, now they have gone below min wage. The response? We have to work.

Nah, I say its time for a lot of people to find a new home.

Hey, I feel for these guys, but what's the point of building more SPEC here really? What's the fucking point? It ain't going to sell.

Yeh, subs can keep busy taking jobs that lose money, it looks good to have work?? Yeh, right... This all goes back to what Homer said yesterday about builders with 6th grade educations. There comes a time, that it is essential to pull the plug. Our own Duncan raves about the merit of working for and/or below min-wage, but folks this isn't the fucking life, that you all came to Bend for

Anonymous said...

I have a serious question about the guys that start defaulting. If a dude owns 15 houses, and two or three have gone to the bank, he's done, right?

*

Timmy, surely you have read the fine works of Serin down in Sacramento?? Please.

Anonymous said...

Is there any way to do triage and save a couple or a few of them?

*

Study 'serin' it all depends, now what serin did wasn't different banks, and loans in different states, they all don't talk, so its all de-coupled.

I guess your question is, is there a national registry?? NO, big N-O.

All the fucking regional banks were glad to get the chance to loan $500k 110% to Serin, that is why you need to study his work.

The website is gone, but there are probably remnant mirrors, "I'm in foreclosure.com "

tim said...

>>Timmy, surely you have read the fine works of Serin down in Sacramento?? Please.

Oh, I loved Casey. I read him until he went under.

But are all maniacs alike? Are all situations hopeless?

We have A LOT of people falling down with many houses. Looking at county records, some of these guys look savvy until they get the itch to go hog wild in 2004 or 2005, at which point they started paying crazy prices.

I've noticed that sometimes near the end these guys don't even bother to leave their houses for sale. It's like they've crawled into their bedrooms to hide.

Really pretty sad. I think, as was the case with Nasdaq in 1999, some people shot the moon hoping to retire in a year or two.

As for the builders, I've heard a lot of stories about guys who moved here because Bend was "hot." Where the hell the go to next? Nowhere in the US is really "hot" anymore. Or at least not so hot that builders from all over the country can go there.

Anonymous said...

||||||||

Taking long-term view of city’s financial picture
Plan being developed, but it won’t help Bend now
By Peter Sachs / The Bulletin


Consultants for the city of Bend are launching a process to create a long-term financial plan, but it won't do much to help the city deal with its current budget shortfalls.


It will take several months to come up with the plan, which will let the city project what will happen to its revenues and expenses in the next five years.


The plan is essentially a forecast of the city's finances to identify where funding gaps are likely to appear. It comes as the city is in the middle of its first two-year budget. The finished product will be used in crafting the 2009-11 budget, and also could be used as officials tweak the current one.


The financial planning process is happening as the city is still reeling from rapid declines in fees collected by its planning and engineering divisions. Those departments get most of their money from application and permit fees that builders pay. While it means residents don't have to subsidize the services developers use, it also exposes those departments to changes in the housing and construction markets that the city can't control.


Earlier this month, the Bend City Council approved moving $1.5 million from the general fund to help prop up planning and engineering.


That's in addition to 10 layoffs the city announced last month.


"In the past year in Bend you've been burned with being surprised at how quickly the downturn can come," consultant Gordon Wilson told the city councilors at a work session Monday night.


The long-term plan is something the city's budget committee has been asking for several years, Councilor Chris Telfer said, to help it better anticipate how the economy might change and how the city would have to react.


The city is paying its consultants about $35,000 to come up with the plan.


"There's no particular science to it," consultant Peter Moy said. "The key to helping you make decisions is to give you a picture of what might happen under possible scenarios."


That means crunching the numbers in the city's current budget and making a series of forecasts assuming different area growth rates or varying how quickly the housing market might recover, for example.


Those best- and worst-case scenarios will highlight if certain departments in the city will come up short or find themselves with a surplus.


"It's not a panacea," Moy said. "It's what do you do with the info we're going to give you."


Telfer said she was glad to see the city finally investing in the plan.


"I've been a very vocal proponent of long term financial planning, so big sigh of relief on my part," she said.

Anonymous said...

I've heard a lot of stories about guys who moved here because Bend was "hot." Where the hell the go to next? Nowhere in the US is really "hot" anymore.

*

There is always 'hot', for instance, you can still buy cheap in New Orleans, and it will come back.

Wait for a hurricane and go to the carribean, its always 'hot' after a storm. It's still 'hot' in Iraq, ... lots of money to be made.

Bend was easy money, all you had to do is be here, and sign for 4+ houses and you were on your way to 'riches'.

Regarding your question, as they have no skin in the game, they'll slowly leave.

*

I brought up 'serin' to answer your question, because he played the game right, he diversified. Had he only had one regional bank, they would have pulled the plug early, given that he bought homes all over the country on auction, sight unseen, using money from banks all over the country, nobody was able to catch up with him. Hell if he hadn't promoted his crime, he would still be in business.

Anonymous said...

Taking long-term view of city’s financial picture
Plan being developed, but it won’t help Bend now
By Peter Sachs / The Bulletin

*

Ok, so the city is spending $35k of our money on hiring 'experts' to tell them what to do!

Anyone want to bet that Cascade-Bookkeeping is the firm retained for advice? Have a problem hire PR, have a money problem hire a CPA.

Good article right now about Cali, how in ten years their spending went from $50B to $150B. They're bankrupt. How did they do it?? They went off budget, they got bonds, as the general fund couldn't support their spending. Bend is doing the same thing. This BULL article today is BULLSHIT, as it doesn't address the spending. Most of the spending is off-book, and done through bonds.

It's not what Bend spends, its the DEBT they're taking on that will fuck us, like AIG telling Bend this past summer it needed to pay 20% for Juniper-Ridge money. When your in debt like Bend, soon all the taxpayer revenue will be used for debt.

Trouble is Capell, Friedman, ... et-al, all profit from spending ten's of millions a month on Knife-River BIG projects, that are off-budget but financed by bonds. Bends rich continue to get rich, and Bend continues to get into debt, that will effect all of us, who aren't leaving this shit-hole.

Anonymous said...

I have a serious question about the guys that start defaulting. If a dude owns 15 houses, and two or three have gone to the bank, he's done, right?

*

Typically a single bank will only loan your for four houses, after that your rates go astro.

So, you find another four houses through another bank, and you put the deed in your kids name, watch what Brenneke of Broken-Top has done, here in Bend, he 'owns' stuff all over town, but its all in different names.

On the continuum of stupidity you have 'casey serin' types who did get dozens of homes, and lost them, and then you have the Bend Pape, Bauhofer, Leitz, Brenekke investors who have dozens of developments all with no hope of future 'investor infusions'. Then on the other end of the continuum you have the little loser in Bend, who bought a crap shack for $750k at shevlin, and one at prineville next to the mill, and a 'cabin' at Brasada that don't rent, and don't forget his Madras 'Yarrow' diversification.

Serin never even made payments, he just kept getting 110% loans, and go to hawaii with the $50k ( from the $550k loan ), ... Brenekke, Pape, Bauhofer; will all be selling their shit to a foriegn investor for penny's on the dollar, just like citi, and everyone else is today.

Our little loser, which makes up the majority of Bend, they'll let the priny house go, they'll let the madra house go. They'll keep using the Brasada cabin on the weekend as it doesn't rent. Once their 401k is done, and they lose their job, then their Bend & Brasada home will foreclose.

They'll move on, in Bend everyone is a loser, except perhaps Capell ( Knife-River/Hap-Taylor ) those boyz just keep making money ... Everytime you see a tandem dump-truck run down the street that's another $500 of city money. I hope they're investing their money ( actually our money ) in off-shore accounts.

Then there is Mike Hollern, he must be hurting real bad right now. Other than the 900+ unit low-income APT, government credit housing projects coming into NWXC there really isn't any bright light. Hollern has been through this before, sell your dogs wholesale. Keep your cash, its easy to lay everyone off when you have 100's of LLC's that are under the radar.

Anonymous said...

If this is real, it's a pretty convincing argument to rent in Bend.

$850 STOP LOOKING NOW!! 4BED/2BTH!

...Lovely lush AND private backyard with gorgeous underground heated pool with a surrounding stone patio...

http://bend.craigslist.org/apa/539363450.html

Anonymous said...

Hey Serin is on Dr. Phill next week. Maybe we can get him to come and talk to the city council.

Here's the latest from Casey.

I will be on the Dr. Phil show this Wednesday!

7PM Chanel 31 in Sacramento. Use this link to look up your state for local stations and times:

http://drphil.com/shows/listing/

I will try to get a recording of it and post it here: http://serin.us

My Current Status:

The show was taped a few months ago. I'm still trying to save my marriage. Following Dr. Phil's advice by staying off-line and working a steady job. Unfortunately there hasn't been much progress. Still hoping though. Prayers appreciated!!

And I still have 250 to 500K of defaulted debt and foreclosure deficiencies to deal with (plus other more serious legal issues). And I don't think bankruptcy will be a good move for me.

I'd love to pay it all off instead. That would be a sweet comeback story. We'll see...

By the way, do you know anybody who is facing foreclosure?

I can help by sharing my experience of going through 6 foreclosures, dealing with short sales, 1099s, deficiency judgments, etc. I was blessed with some great lessons.

tim said...

>>There is always 'hot', for instance, you can still buy cheap in New Orleans, and it will come back.

You can buy and wait, but can you build? What about the subcontractors?

tim said...

Casey's wife is a hottie. No wonder he's trying to save that marriage. But if he goes to jail, he'll have his pick of prisoner-groupie women.

Anonymous said...

If this is real, it's a pretty convincing argument to rent in Bend.

$850 STOP LOOKING NOW!! 4BED/2BTH!

*

Of course its real, this is the way its always been in Bend.

Look at whats going on today, with the Press-Release on Sisters. The folks at Suttle Lake spent millions, and so did blah @ sisters, and guess what?? Nobody is renting the cabins, and not a Brasada either, these people spent millions, there has ALWAYS been a glut of RE in Bend, that's why rent has always been low.

There is a reason, its because MOST renters make min-wage. It's always been this way, if you happen to be a lucky that makes more than min-wage, then you get to own a home. It's always been this way.

There has always been 2X housing in this town, because its 1/2 empty because people in the valley maintain a second home, after the novelty wears off, they toss the fucker to the rental market.

Now today, we have ten's of thousands of empty homes.

My prediction within a year, the above home for $500/mo, but so fucking what,...

Your fucking telecommuter job is going to be GONE.

Anonymous said...

New Orleans, and it will come back.

You can buy and wait, but can you build? What about the subcontractors

*

There's a ton of mexicans down there more than willing to work. Stuff is still selling @ 10%, and lets be honest, worldwide this is party scene #2 or #3 ( madri-gra, festival rio, burning-man ), ... New Orleans is the Paris of the USA. It will come back.

I'm simply stating the obvious, that if your young and want to make a lot of many, there are always places to go and make the money.

Bend has seen its 20 yr high, and its all going to be downhill now for at least ten years.

Anonymous said...

I was just using Serin as an example of a miserable leech, not a fucking role model.

Serin, is a russian mobster kid, that got over here, and took advantage, the old fashion, way, and why not they were handing out money.

The fact if true that Serin gets a nickel for being on Dr.Phil ( i don't own a fucking TV ), so fucking what, he's a media whore, and always was,...

Will he go to jail?? Probably not, what's important from my point of view is that there are 100's if not 1,000's of Serin's in Bend, albiet not russian, just white trash SUV calis, that got 110% loans. They didn't have a website, so Ophrah's not going to call.

Maybe someday Oprah will call homer?

Anonymous said...

Perhaps Bend's government has gotten so big and complicated that they simply must hire consultants. But to me, every time they hire a consultant, it's a failure of leadership. Every time they hire a P.R. firm, it's a failure of leadership. duncan

*

Thanks, that's my feeling all these buzzards are realtors, cpas, or mbas,... hell abernethy has a masters in public admin,

Why in the FUCK do they have to spend $35k to tell them what to do? You know why dunc, and I know why,...

It's called BLAME the fucking messenger. They pay someone $35k to be the bearer of bad news. Just fucking political cover.

Now that said, we have Garzini @ $10k/mo already, he could get us in debt, ... We're already paying for a fucking temporary city-manager, if these guys can't make decisions, then quit....

Nobody in this fucking town can do anything, except hire another fucking consultant for PR, pure & simple its always PR, in this town.

This is fucked, everything this town touches turns to shit. All that ever happens is we hire more PR & More Consultants, any mystery that everyone on the fucking city council is a fucking consultant??

They come & go, but bones will always be thrown, ... its a never ending cycle.

Someone in this miserable fucking town, needs to bitch slap chamber of commerce.

Anonymous said...

I stopped at Suttle Lake one day on my way back to PDX, to check it out. I think they were trying to find a lessee for the restaurant.

I remember the prices for lodging and food being nosebleed, and thinking, boy, I'll never be staying here.

Just by the way, our household income is $130K, so I don't know WHO the heck actually stays there, at those prices. It's not as though we're poor or something. Who ARE they aiming at? Rich out-of-staters? Are there enough of those to go around?

tim said...

>>Nobody in this fucking town can do anything, except hire another fucking consultant for PR, pure & simple its always PR, in this town.

Let's face it. Nothing is going to happen. Are you the one always saying paralysis? We got that in spades. Nothing is going to happen for years. We're frozen.

>>Who ARE they aiming at? Rich out-of-staters? Are there enough of those to go around?

The way things are going, it'll have to be Manhattanites or foreigners.

Anonymous said...

Would you rather place a $1 bet on a coin flip & get $2.20 if you're right, or bet $1 & roll a dice and get $4 if you're right? I'd take the first, despite the fact that the dollar payoff is smaller.

Logically you're right, but psychologically you're wrong. People would rather have a very slim chance at a big prize than a decent chance at a small prize. That's why lotteries are set up the way they are.

The same psychology lies behind the Bend real estate market, where home prices remain high despite a declining number of sales and huge inventory. People are thinking they'll wait out the slump and hit the jackpot in a year or two. But that game can't go on forever.

Anonymous said...

http://www.gay.com/news/roundups/package.html?sernum=5834&navpath=/channels/style/entertaining

***

Finally some BUTT-FUCKING news for this town.

Gay.Com 'Gay Dot Com' has rated Bend #1 for Gin.

Now let's see if the BULL picks up this story?

Anonymous said...

>>Who ARE they aiming at? Rich out-of-staters? Are there enough of those to go around?

The way things are going, it'll have to be Manhattanites or foreigners.

***

All the press-releases this week are targeted towards foreigners, but lets be honest DUMBYA has so fucked this place, that who in the fuck is going to go through DNA, Fingerprinting, Mugshot, just to come to Sisters and look at Suttle Lake or any pathetic fucking icon in Central Oregon.

It's NOT going to fucking happen, the PR firms just make more money on desperate fuckers who put millions into cabins all over the 10 mil radius of Sisters, and nobody will rent that shit. Now soon I'll explain what happened, its almost time to tell the familiar story that happens in all our busts.

Anonymous said...

Are you the one always saying paralysis? We got that in spades.

*

It's called 'real estate paralysis', buyers wouldn't pay the price, and sellers wouldn't sell. 1932 Great Depression, then one day buyers didn't have any money at all, because the problem then and now isn't liquidity, its solvency.

Bend is fucked, and nothing we can say or do will change that fact, in the meantime, city-hall will rob our treasury while they can, so that grifters can pay one another consulting fee's.

Anonymous said...

I stopped at Suttle Lake one day on my way back to PDX, to check it out. I think they were trying to find a lessee for the restaurant.

*

Thanks for mentioning this, now I'll tell the little story.

Ok, not too many years ago, some new folks bought the lodge and cabins @ suttle, and spent a fortune, they updated the cabins, and raised the per day from $50/day to $200/day. They banned dogs on the WHOLE fucking property. They banned anybody having fun, they said "make it expensive, make it exclusive", and only the rich will come.

They banned the dogs, to keep the old-timers from coming there and using the swimming hole, ...

That was about four years ago, now nobody goes, and even the restaurant is failing.

So here is what happens, and has happened a million times in Eastern Oregon, going back to the 1950's.

Some fucking out of towner, buys Frenchglen, Sisters-Hotel, ... Cowboy Dinner Tree, ... raises the prices 10X, bans dogs, bans snowmobiles and dirt-bikes, ... Then magically the red-necks ( locals ) quit coming. Everything is good for 1-3 years, then the yuppy's who came lose interest and quit coming, now our 'Diamond, OR', "Suttle-Lake, OR', 'Sister's, ...' is fucked, because they fucked the local's, and their yuppy's quit coming.

Here is MY little secret that I have seen happen over&over in my 50 years of studying this place. YOU FUCK THE LOCALS, and YOUR FUCKED, CUZ when the ECONOMY TURNS, and IT ALWAYS does, then the locals don't come, YOU BE FUCKED.

This is what is happening today in Sisters, this is what is happening at the cabins at Brasada, ... all these FUCKING holier-than-thou fucking newbies do all they can do to turn off the local red-neck cowboy, p.s. us local red-necks got MORE fucking money than you FUCKING yuppy's. I have seen it 100's of times, I have seen the same resorts flip over&over, out here, ... hell the Paisley hot springs is now going under, people from out of town buy into eastern-oregon resorts, they raise the price, and tax the local by banning their toys ( dogs,guns,jeeps,...)

Economy gets bad, yuppy's don't come, and their fucking filet-mignon rots in the fridge, because nobody comes to the resort.

This NEW outfit that just bought Suttle in the last FIVE-YEARS did everything it could to say FUCK-YOU to local central-oregon familys. I used to go to Suttle to swim almost everyday years ago all summer, but I quit going when these new bastards took over, hell we used to go to the bar after a swim for a cold beer, ... but bitches would say, .. "you must leave your dog in the fucking car when its 100 outside",,... can't even tie the fucking dog to a tree by the fucking car... This is why these people are going bankrupt, this is why nobody will rent their cabins.

NEVER FUCK WITH THE LOCALS, CALI-CUNT, we'll sell you these resorts for top dollar, but unless you cater to the locals, your business will NOT LAST THREE YEARS.

Anonymous said...

Rich out-of-staters? Are there enough of those to go around?

*

At Suttle its a flock of lesbians with a dream, and obviously the willingness to go into debt, yes, and for a few years when HELOC was fueling the credit card, Suttle-Lake was busy, but like you point out, the old-timers know a shaft when the see it, besides, you can stay at the campsites for $7/night, and hike/bike to the lodge, why pay their rates, my wife used to get a cabin a week a year there, but when the new owners 'fixed the place up', and jacked the prices 4X, she finally took my offer up of me parking an RV in the campground costing her and her girlfriends nothing.

The dream is always same, they see these resorts, and imagine 100's of people dining filet-mignon nightly, all paying $200/night for a room, and $100 for food. Hell the lodge up on Steen's MTN is now for sale, real nice place, ... same idea, its always this way all over eastern-oregon.

The only 'resort' that I know, that holds it own, and its way is Paulina-Lodge at Paulina Lake in the Newberry caldera, the place is still cheap, and you can still bring snow-mobiles and dogs, and you can drink beer. There are no rules, and the red-necks keep the place in business, but if & when some PDX lesbian group decides to buy Paulina, then they'll be fucked. The lodge at Elk Lake is still pretty much un-changed.

In my mind the vast majority of all our resorts flip every 5-10, and usually the buyer is NOT connected to the locals.

Want to have a resort in Eastern Oregon, and keep it open more than 1-3 years?? Provide free peanuts, have locals night once a week with $1 PBR's,... do litte things to help the ranchers, ... farmers, during their tough times, and they'll be loyal forever,... But come into a small rural oregon town, and buy a resort, and hang up a sign that says "NO FUCKING REDNECKS", and fine, you'll get no rednecks, but in 1-3 years you'll be out of business.

Anonymous said...


But come into a small rural oregon town, and buy a resort, and hang up a sign that says "NO FUCKING REDNECKS", and fine, you'll get no rednecks, but in 1-3 years you'll be out of business.


Now, full fucking circle, with this story. Cuz, now we get back to Bend, the current criminal Mayor Friedman, who has been mayor for the past five year boom, and his gal-pals, did all they could to put up the sign that says "FUCK YOU RED-NECKS", and Bend city-hall did good they sold a lot of condos to cali-flippers, ... Now the economy is imploding the red-necks have gotten used to staying away from Bend.

Bend is FUCKED, and FUCKED themselves.

Anonymous said...

... Now the economy is imploding the red-necks have gotten used to staying away from Bend.

Bend is FUCKED, and FUCKED themselves.

***

Some of you think that Redmond does better, because they're smarter, not true, I know a lot of ranchers, farmers, and cowboys that go out out there way not to spend a dime in Bend.

"Don't Bend My Town", will soon be on every bumper in Eastern Oregon.

Anonymous said...

Tonight is 'Abyss' night at Deschutes, and Homer is buying for all, all who can drink.

No more 'loser' for Homer, now he's going to be a winner.

Anonymous said...

I can understand all the doom and gloom on this site. But it seems to me the majority of people hurting real bad are those who gambled in his mess and took on way too much debt to income. Most homes I see lingering on the market are owned by these types. We've had two homes sold within weeks of their listing (November) in our area (Cloverdale). The catcher? The previous owners bought them well before the bubble run-up.

Anonymous said...

The Cult of Bend, Will be the death of ...

Bend, Ore., company executives say city lacks affordable industrial space


Jan 13, 2008 (The Bulletin - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- ZZFNV | news | PowerRating | PR Charts -- Bend is a great place to live and work, but a lack of industrial space makes it expensive and challenging to do business here, executives of two Bend companies told fellow business leaders Thursday night.

The presidents of PV Powered Inc., which manufactures solar power equipment, and Breedlove Guitar Co., which makes music instruments, spoke at a gathering organized by Economic Development for Central Oregon about the challenges they have faced in expanding their businesses and why they have chosen to remain in Central Oregon.

PV Powered continues to look for a place to expand. It considered moving into an east-side building formerly occupied by Central Oregon Workensport, but that option is now off the table, according to Glenn Harris, the company's president. In an interview after his presentation, Harris said the building wouldn't meet the company's long-term requirements.

Breedlove Guitar, currently housed in a facility it leases in Tumalo, also needed room to grow and is building a new 20,000-square-foot facility in Bend's NorthWest Crossing neighborhood.

The decision wasn't cheap, said company President Peter Newport, citing the lack of industrial land in Bend.

According to EDCO, industrial land in Bend costs between $9 and $16 per square foot. By comparison, industrial land in Redmond costs between $5.75 and $9; in Portland, between $7 and $9.50; and in Reno, Nev., $4.50 to $6.50 per square foot.

Newport expects the company will recoup its costs in employee morale.

Moving the company into Bend and closer to the city's core will reduce commute times and save his employees transportation costs, Newport said.

Breedlove offers its employees a subsidy of either 50 cents an hour or $4 a day if they use alternative transportation to get to work, such as walking, biking or carpooling.

PV Powered's Harris -- who said his company is the country's sole manufacturer of solar power inverters, which convert energy collected from solar panels into electricity -- is hopeful the 45-person company can find room to grow in Bend. The company occupies a 13,000-square-foot facility near the Old Mill District.

Harris said PV Powered wants to stay in Bend, partly because of its proximity to California, the largest solar market in the country.

"We've got some good prospects," Harris said.

The company's primary market, said Harris, is Europe, where aggressive government mandates and subsidies are making solar power an economically viable alternative to traditional sources of power generation, such as coal and nuclear fission. Harris said the European solar market is 40 times larger than in the U.S.

Overseas demand is driving growth, but so is the low value of the dollar, said Harris, noting that the higher-valued euro makes PV Powered a low-cost supplier.

Harris said the company is striving for a 50 percent to 60 percent market share for its products. To do that, though, the company needs more space, he said.

To see more of The Bulletin, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.bendbulletin.com Copyright (c) 2008, The Bulletin, Bend, Ore. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA

Anonymous said...

Most homes I see lingering on the market are owned by these types. We've had two homes sold within weeks of their listing (January 2008) in our area (Inverness, Scotland).

*

Bend is different, we'll sell to foreigners, who cares if the all fools in the USA have bought, we know there are some fools in Europe.

Anonymous said...

We've had two homes sold within weeks of their listing (November) in our area (Cloverdale). The catcher? The previous owners bought them well before the bubble run-up.

*

Let's study the above 'statement' of fraud for tis night.

We've had two homes sold within weeks of their listing (November) in our area (Cloverdale).

{ Who is this 'we' realtor?? }

The catcher?

{ Note the immediate transistion to sports talk, dead give away your about to be fed shit }

The previous owners bought them well before the bubble run-up.

{ "We" sold two homes, now it turns out that 'we' had got the listing's from previous owners who had bought the property prior to the fucking run-up. What kind of fucking info is this?
}

So, yes if your a realtor, and you can find a seller who bought in 1942, and who owes say $12k, then they'll be might glad to get $200k, and your property will sell.

Anonymous said...

An Introduction to this blog-site.

Hello, Guten-tag, Nie-Hao, Mea-Culpa, Buenas-Dias

We are BB2 we provide in depth 24/7 reporting on Bend Real Estate. Our leader, homer is a renter. We're all renters. We don't know shit about Bend real estate, except what we read in the BULL.

We don't own, thus we don't belong to HOA boards, we don't pay mortgages, or taxes, in fact we don't give a fuck what the city of bend does, because they don't have our money.

Given the above, we provide in depth analysis of who is sleeping with who in Bend, and how that relates to median ( whatever that is ) property price.

If your looking for wisdom, information, or just an honest opinion from someone who actually bought a house in Bend during the boom years 2000->2006 you'll not find that person here.

What you will find here is a collection of "I told you so renters", who were telling you so long before 2000. People in prison will always tell you they're not guilty, and the poor will always tell you they're on hard times.

The economically challenged, and Bend attracts them by the boatload, need to feel good about living in Bend. It's always been poverty with a view, of course in the most recent buildup its become poverty without the view.

Welcome to Bend, Oregon.

tim said...

>>If your looking for wisdom, information, or just an honest opinion from someone who actually bought a house in Bend during the boom years 2000->2006 you'll not find that person here.

If you want to find someone who bought in 2005 or 2006, try looking in their shower. They will be there, throwing up on their feet.

Not sure you'll be able to coax any "wisdom" out of them.

Bewert said...

Just put some questions for tonights City Council meeting up in my blog at http://juniper-ridge-info.blogspot.com/

Any comments are welcome. As are more ideas and any incoming fragging.

Of to a jobsite until late this afternoon.

And, yes, Buster, I'll take you up on that burrito :)

Anonymous said...

And, yes, Buster, I'll take you up on that burrito :)

*

Bruce, how do I owe you a burrito? Hell I don't even spend money on my wife. I'm the tightest bastard in Bend.

What time & where the meeting? I might go, that said last time I went I fell asleep, this is where you young bucks have to show up, those meetings go past 8pm, and I become comatose, or is that I always fuel up first at the Silver Moon? Ah the pain of going to a political event. Or the close proximity to the Silver Moon.

At least super-burrito is within this bermuda triangle. ( city-hall, super-burrito, silver-moon ),

Anonymous said...

Has anyone ever heard of the Les Schwab Sales Agreement?

I have printed copy's for all, and passed them to your tables, I suggest you all read them.

Given that that Dec 7, 2007 Les Schwab got title to Juniper-Ridge, where is the money? Did it go to Kuratek as approved back on Oct 15, 2007 by this council??

Has anyone in this room ever seen or read the Les Schwab Sales Agreement

Anonymous said...

"We're all renters. We don't know shit about Bend real estate"

Yes, I'm now a renter. I bought in May 2004 with zero down and a 5/1 ARM. My house went to astronomical heights and started on the way down (Yes, prices are going down - median prices don't mean shit). I sold the house this fall before I lost all my equity. I now have enough for 20% down on a nice house. I'm not buying now because sellers aren't being realistic.

My house sold partially because I priced it $10 a sq foot less than the cheapest house in the neighborhood. Houses will sell if they are priced right. The unfinished redmodel on Cumberland that came on the market a couple weeks ago was priced right and got at least 6 offers. Why? It came on the market cheaper than anything else in the neighborhood.

So, for us uneducated renters can you let us know the answers to the following questions:

• Pre 2000, what was the rule for percentage of your income that should be allocated to housing (PITA)?

• What is the median family income in Bend?

• With 20% down and a 5.75% interest rate, what would that family qualify for using old rules?

• At what Price to Rent (P/R) ratio does it historically make sense to buy a home to live in?

• At what Price to Rent ratio does it historically make sense to buy a home to own as a rental?

• Over the last 80 years what is the average home inflation rate?

• Over the last 6 years what is the average home inflation rate in Bend?

• How do averages work?

• What has to happen to current prices for them to approach the historical average?

• Why isn't Bend another Aspen or Telluride? (hint - it has to do with the amount developable land and proximity to the ski areas)

• If you have a home in Northwest Crossing that is 400 square feet less than your neighbor - both have luxuries like granite countertops and a hot tub - how is your house worth $5500 MORE than your neighbor's bigger house? (I'll help you with this one - it isn't)

• When a house isn't selling, which of the following is the easiest to change: (a)Location (b)Size (c)Quality of build/ammenities (d)Price

• How many people moved to Bend last year?

• How many houses were built last year?

• Looking at those numbers are we (a)Overbuilt or (b)Underbuilt

• What is happening to real estate in our "feeder" markets?

• If you can't sell your house in California to move to Bend, will you move to Bend?

• Real estate agents make money when: (a) Houses sell or (b) Houses don't sell

• Houses will sell when:
(a) People can afford to buy them and will pay the asking price or (b) House prices are out of reach

• Real estate agents should (a) Keep prices artificially high and starve or (b) Let their sellers know that times have changed and prices went down about 10-15% last year depending on neighborhood (but we are seeing pockets of 30%), and that there are similar predictions for 2008

• If a someone buys a $300k house in 2008 with 10% down and prices go down 7.9%, how much money would that person loose including closing costs and real estate fees if they needed to sell a year later and could find a buyer? Would they walk with any money or have to pay to get rid of the house?

Anyone can take a crack at answering these questions. Since I am an idiot renter I have no idea what the answers are (except that Northwest crossing one I guessed at).

Anonymous said...

City Hall, 710 NW Wall

It really is at city-hall, hell no SilverMoon, must go to KC's first.
I like when the meetings are big over at the county meeting room.
*

AGENDA

Bend City Council

Wednesday, January 16, 2008



4:30 p.m. Light Meal



5:00 p.m. Work Session:



Transit Fleet Operations presentation (Staff Report) (Attachments)

Ballot Measure 49 Implementation Ordinance (see attachments below)

Review and Consider Approval of Proposed Funding Strategy for Bend Airport (Issue Summary Forthcoming)



Executive Session pursuant to ORS 192.660 (2) (a through h)



7:00 pm City Council Regular Meeting

City Hall, 710 NW Wall



1. Roll Call: Mayor Bruce Abernethy

Councilor Linda Johnson

Councilor Mark Capell

Councilor Chris Telfer

Councilor Peter Gramlich

Councilor Bill Friedman

Councilor Jim Clinton



2. Pledge of Allegiance

3. Receive Visitors

4. Auditors Presentation of Fiscal Year 2006-07 Audit



5. Good of the Order

A. Presentation of Government Finance Officers Association Budget Award for 2007-09 Budget



6. An Ordinance Vacating a Portion of Georgia Avenue and Lava Road that Lies in a portion of the SE of Section 32, Township 17 South, Range 12 East, Willamette Meridian, City of Bend, Deschutes County, Oregon (Issue Summary and Ordinance)

A. Hold a Public Hearing

B. Consider the first reading of Proposed Ordinance

7. Consider the first reading of an Ordinance Repealing the City's Measure 37 Procedural Ordinance and Replacing Section 1.950 in the Bend Code with a New Section Entitled "Requirements and Procedures for Filing and Reviewing Measure 49 Claims for Property Located, in Whole or in Part, Inside the City of Bend Urban Growth Boundary," and Declaring an Emergency (Issue Summary) (Ordinance) (Inside UGB) (HB 3540)

8. Consider the first reading of a proposed Ordinance Amending the Bend City Code to Prohibit Open Burning, and to Repeal Certain Provisions of the Bend City Code that Permit Open Burning (Issue Summary) (Ordinance)

9. Consider the first reading of an Ordinance Amending Bend Code Section 6.315 by Changing the Method by Which Parking Penalties are Established (Issue Summary) (Ordinance)



10. School District Annexation

A. Consider a motion authorizing the Interim City Manager to sign an Annexation Agreement for NW Bend (Issue Summary) (Annexation Agreement)

B. Consider the first reading of an Ordinance Annexing 19.86 Acres of Land and 10 Additional Feet of Right-of-Way Located North of Skyliners Road, East of Skyline Ranch Road into the City for the Purpose of Building an Elementary School, Declaring an Emergency and Prescribing an Effective Date of February 6, 2008. (Ordinance)

C. Consider the first reading of an Ordinance Amending Ordinance No. NS-2074 to include 10 Additional Feet of Right-of-Way inside of the Urban Growth Boundary, Declaring an Emergency and Prescribing an Effective Date of February 6, 2008. (Issue Summary) (Ordinance) (Legal Description and Map)


Quasi Judicial Land Use Matters



11. Statement of Procedural Rules by City Attorney and declaration of ex parte contacts and conflicts of interest.

12. An Ordinance Amending the Bend Urban Area Zoning Map by Changing the Zoning Designation of a Parcel of Land Totaling 4.33 Acres from RS Residential Urban Standard Density to PF Public Facilities. File No. PZ-07-325; Location: north of Bear Creek Road, east of the cemetery, and west of 15th Street; Applicant: City of Bend (Issue Summary and Ordinance) (Exhibit A) (Applicant Memo) (Hearings Officer Recommendation) (Map)

A. Hold a Public Hearing

B. Consider the first reading of proposed Ordinance



Conclusion of Quasi Judicial Land Use Matters



13. Consider a Motion to Approve Consent Agenda A:

A. Receive December Financials (Executive Summary) (Detail) (Investment Report)

B. Authorize the Interim City Manager to sign a Quitclaim Deed to remove roadway and public access easement for Bend LaPine School District No. 1; Location: Yeoman and Purcell (Issue Summary) (Quitclaim Deed)

C. Authorize the Interim City Manager to sign a Quitclaim Deed for the unused utility easement crossing Todd A. Debonis's property; located at NW 11th Street and Quincy Avenue (Issue Summary) (Quitclaim Deed)

D. Authorize the Interim City Manager to sign Quitclaim Deeds for Ice Boom Utility Easements Adjacent to the Deschutes River (Issue Summary) (Attachments)

E. Approve Acceptance of Right-of-Way from State of Oregon via ODOT by Relinquishment Deed (Issue Summary)

F. Authorize moving 1.0 approved full time equivalent (FTE) from 2008-09 to 2007-08 in the Water Reclamation Division (Issue Summary)

G. Authorize the Interim City Manager to sign an Addendum to the Agreement with Aero Facilities LLC for Development of Property for Bend Municipal Airport East Side Development (Issue Summary)

H. Water Reclamation Expansion (Issue Summary)

Approve an administrative budgetary adjustment in the Water Reclamation Fund that would reprioritize the Capital Improvement Program (CIP) as recommended by the Engineering Division.

Authorize Interim City Manager to sign a contract change order of $432,000 with Carollo Engineers to provide additional engineering services related to the Water Reclamation Headworks Expansion.

I. Receive Report on Liquor License Endorsements



14. Consider a roll call vote on Consent Agenda B:

A. Second reading and roll call vote of an Ordinance Vacating a Public Alley, located in the S of Section 32, Township 17 South, Range 12 East, Willamette Meridian, Bend, Deschutes County, Oregon; Location: portion of an alley East of Lava Road between Colorado Avenue and Arizona Ave (Issue Summary and Ordinance)



15. Council Action and Reports.



16. Receive City Manager's Report.

A. Distribute Retreat Materials



17. Adjourn







Accessible Meeting Information

This meeting location is physically accessible to persons with disabilities. Communication or other accommodations for people with disabilities will be made upon advance request. To request accommodations or to obtain this information in an alternative format, complete the Request for Accommodation or Barrier Removal Form (available at: City offices, www.ci.bend.or.us, 693-2141, or ADA@ci.bend.or.us). Providing at least 48 hours notice will help ensure availability.

Anonymous said...

• If you can't sell your house in California to move to Bend, will you move to Bend?

*

Yes, they're coming to Oregon everyday, because rent is cheap, and they're living in their car, or staying at motel-6, ...

They assume there are jobs here, and yes all the walmart jobs you could want.

Anonymous said...

• Why isn't Bend another Aspen or Telluride? (hint - it has to do with the amount developable land and proximity to the ski areas)

*

Wrong question, correct question is, "How many costcos, walmarts, home-depots, and Lowes" are in Aspen & Telluride?? This is what makes Bend the #1 resort in USA.

www.visitbend.com

www.gobend.com

Anonymous said...

Is it true that every person that moved to Bend in the last ten years is blood sucking parasitic SUV driving vampire?

*

Yes, this is true. Why they came to Bend, is anyones clue, but now that Morons can no longer get rich in Bend, maybe they'll all leave.

Anonymous said...

According to EDCO, industrial land in Bend costs between $9 and $16 per square foot. By comparison, industrial land in Redmond costs between $5.75 and $9; in Portland, between $7 and $9.50; and in Reno, Nev., $4.50 to $6.50 per square foot.

Newport expects the company will recoup its costs in employee morale.


Read: Employees will take part of their pay in scenery, same as always...

tim said...

I'm friends with some Realtors.

When a Realtor tells a seller, "You have to drop your price," the seller says, "I can't." The seller asks the Realtor "what creative ways will you market my house?" The Realtor says, "That's expensive and it won't sell your house. Look, it's really all about price." Then the seller decides to get another Realtor.

Some of these houses have been for sale by 3 or 4 Realtors.

So why even have these hopeless listings if you're a Realtor? It's surprising, but there is a good reason. So that you can hold open houses and try to grab the "buyers" and be their buyers' agent.

tim said...

I have an answer on population growth. Bend's growth slowed by half this year (summer 2006-2007) over last year (summer 2005-2006).

My theory is that it's easier to grow fast if people can afford housing. They could "afford" it during the bubble thanks to loose lending and appreciation.

Someone with no job could afford a million dollar house in 2004 because the house was spinning off money. In fact, the more you spent on a house the more the house paid you.

If prices don't go up in Bend rapidly, very few people can afford living here.

That's why I think Bust is right. Hard times coming, and the number of people it's good for is diminishingly small.

Anonymous said...

That's why I think Bust is right.
*

Even if that is 100% true...it's really not worth saying out loud.(or worse putting it in writing) It's only gonna encourage him.

Anonymous said...

Come on...we all love Buster! Even if you don't agree with him, you gotta admit he's funny!

Bewert said...

Re:According to EDCO, industrial land in Bend costs between $9 and $16 per square foot. By comparison, industrial land in Redmond costs between $5.75 and $9; in Portland, between $7 and $9.50; and in Reno, Nev., $4.50 to $6.50 per square foot.

The Les Schwab deal set the JR rate at $7/sq ft without SDC's, $6/sq ft with SDC's.

Bewert said...

Just to piss you all off, words on Youtube from the one man that might be able to change the national paradigm a little. Maybe, with a huge fight and a lot of public support:

Challenge the System

Bewert said...

BTW, in the interests of accuracy, Friedman is the ex-mayor and current council member. Bruce Abernethy is the current mayor.

Bewert said...

Re: 50% was for "extraordinary expenses" for Cascade Bookkeeping, like Linda Johnson throwing a Botox party for local developers after giving away millions in taxpayer land, such as prime downtown parcels where Lava Court apartme.... errr, condos, will go.

Lava Court, that name just keeps coming up.

From tonights packet:
6. An Ordinance Vacating a Portion of Georgia Avenue and Lava Road that Lies in a portion of the SE of Section 32, Township 17 South, Range 12 East, Willamette Meridian, City of Bend, Deschutes County, Oregon (Issue Summary and Ordinance)

From the Issue Summary for said motion:

Staff Review and Recommendation to Council: Staff recommends that the City Council hold a first reading to vacate a portion of Georgia Avenue and Lava Road.

History: Presented for Petition

Acceptance: June 6, 2007
Heard before Planning Commission: July 9, 2007

Background: James S. Guild is the petitioner for the vacation of a portion of Georgia Avenue and Lava Road. The total area of the proposed vacation is approximately 3,630 square feet. The petitioner is requesting the vacation to better establish his home property
boundary and for private use.

Also from tonights packet:
14. Consider a roll call vote on Consent Agenda B:

A. Second reading and roll call vote of an Ordinance Vacating a Public Alley, located in the S of Section 32, Township 17 South, Range 12 East, Willamette Meridian, Bend, Deschutes County, Oregon; Location: portion of an alley East of Lava Road between Colorado Avenue and Arizona Ave (Issue Summary and Ordinance)

From the Issue Summary for this:

Hold a Second Reading and roll call vote of an Ordinance Vacating a Public Alley East of Lava Road between Colorado Avenue and Arizona Avenue

Staff Review and Recommendation to Council: Staff recommends that the City Council hold a second reading to vacate a portion of the Public Alley East of Lava Road.

History: Presented for Petition Acceptance: April 4, 2007

Heard before Planning Commission: May 14, 2007

Public Hearing and 1st Reading: June 6, 2007

Public Hearing and 2nd Reading: January 16, 2008

Background: Jason Adams of Colorado Street Development Partners, LLC is the petitioner for vacation of a portion of an alley East of Lava Road between Colorado Avenue
and Arizona Ave. The total area of proposed vacation is 660 square feet. The petition was signed by all abutting property owners and owners of more than two-thirds of the affected area. The petitioner is requesting the vacation in order to better accommodate a mixed-use
development.

Discussion of the Issue and Alternatives Explored: The noticing required under state statute for the Council initiated right of vacation has been completed. The Council may hear and vacate the right of way.

This second issue especially is the kind of bullshit that just plain pisses me off. Hidden under the arcane legal description is the fact that this alley being given to the developer at no cost is very close to downtown, and we the taxpayers of Bend should be compensated for it. The staff wants the first guy to pay, so why not the developer? And why didn't the most easily accessed public notice state the streets, like the other instance did.

Expletive deleted.

Bewert said...

Re: Don't take it too hard Brucey.

Never do. Like warm water off my back.

BTW, it's Bruce E., or bewert, or simply "E". And there is a hand signal that goes along with that last nickname. Remnants of a damn fun decade in Alta, Utah...

Anonymous said...

www.visitbend.com/

***
Okay, you guys are entertaining and all — but come on, Bend looks like paradise (see Bend photo gallery). I think your motive on this Web site is that you want Bend all to yourself! (the psychologist didn't think of this!)

Admit it!!

Bewert said...

Re: I think your motive on this Web site is that you want Bend all to yourself! (the psychologist didn't think of this!)

Admit it!!

Judging from the number of empty houses with a click of me, we are well on the way.

Bend is just plain way overbuilt.

It has delusions of grandeur, of family wage jobs, but the only way that can happen in a place so geographically distant is with digital media or something similar. Alt energy may also work, as it has some incentive subsidy, but if you have to ship by truck or rail you are at a disadvantage out here on the High Desert.

Anonymous said...

, Friedman is the ex-mayor and current council member. Bruce Abernethy is the current mayor.


*

Thanks brucy, we know that, but the fact is Mayor Friedman is still the Mayor, and Abernethy is just a little twat along for the ride.

Abernethy wanted to be Mayor, and Friedman wanted to run the city, everyone won.

Friedman is still Mayor in terms of power, while yes, technically Abernethy is the 'mayor', Friedman is the 'MAYOR'.

Anonymous said...

The Les Schwab deal set the JR rate at $7/sq ft without SDC's, $6/sq ft with SDC's

*

That is a BULL SHIT stat bruce-pussy.

The $7/sqft comes from $3million divided by 20*20k-sqft ( 20 acres ). Problem is the city spent $10M in improvents in order to get $7sq-ft, thus the city lost about $20/sq-ft on the sale, and DID NOT IN FACT net $7/sqft.

Les Schwab pay $3M
City pay knife-River $12M

City loses $9M on Deal, and then you use this as a comparable??

Read the FUCKING les-schwab sales agreement BRUCE-PUSSY, its says "Property to be shovel ready", "City to pay for all services", Schwab to only pay for Paving.

Anonymous said...

I think your motive on this Web site is that you want Bend all to yourself! (the psychologist didn't think of this!)

Admit it!!

*

My motivation, is that you all fucking leave.

Anonymous said...

Hard times coming, and the number of people it's good for is diminishingly small.

*

Old timers know how to survive the hard times. To us these are the 'best of times'.

Newbies, cali grifters will bail out here ah so quickly once the shit gets nasty.

Want a fucking taste of Bend next year this time downtown?? Go to Walmart today and run the fucking homeless begging gauntlet, within a year they'll be downtown begging the precious tourists at the DEEP & Typhoon.

The the shit will hit the fan.

Anonymous said...

Hidden under the arcane legal description is the fact that this alley being given to the developer at no cost is very close to downtown, and we the taxpayers of Bend should be compensated for it. The staff wants the first guy to pay, so why not the developer? And why didn't the most easily accessed public notice state the streets, like the other instance did.

*

This is Bend bruce pussy get over it, do you really think that these folks do this shit for nothing? They have been stealing Bend blind for years, theres enough for everyone. Hell, everyone is a consultant in Bend, and if you just show up you can get $35k for telling them what they want to hear.

Anonymous said...

Oregon carpenters, painters and plumbers, in high demand last summer, are having trouble finding and keeping work. Unions and staffing agencies report that this winter's construction slowdown is worse than normal, especially for residential work as the housing market slows.
On Monday, officials confirmed their accounts, saying the state's construction sector cut 5,100 jobs in December, twice the normal loss for the month.
The dip marred a fairly favorable monthly picture released by Oregon Employment Department economists. The figures were too mixed to indicate whether Oregon will get by national economic turmoil with a slowdown instead of a recession in 2008.
The state added 900 nonfarm jobs in December atop its November gain of 7,500, on a seasonally adjusted basis. Payroll employment rose 1.6 percent for the year. The unemployment rate remained essentially flat at 5.6 percent.
"We have a lot of folks out of work," said Randy Shelton, Portland recruiting manager at Madden Industrial Craftsmen Inc., a staffing company. "I'm not optimistic that it's going to improve much," when construction normally picks up with better weather in March.

Anonymous said...

I think your motive on this Web site is that you want Bend all to yourself! (the psychologist didn't think of this!)

Admit it!!
*
My motivation, is that you all fucking leave.

***
Thanks, you just proved my point -- MFer! I knew it!

If you came after 1968 I want YOU to leave. The sooner the better.

Anonymous said...

Jan 15,2008
Detectives seek ‘person of interest’ in transient camp assault
by Cheryl McDermott

Three men were injured in an assault at a transient camp south of Bend Saturday night, and detectives are seeking a fourth individual they have named a “person of interest”.


Detectives are seeking Ben Bust, a person of interest in the transient camp assault- DCSO photo
According to a news release prepared by Deschutes County Sheriff’s Lt. Kevin Dizney, Bend Police officers were called to St. Charles Medical Center (SCMC) about 8:40 p.m., January 12, when two men identified as Jesse David Lopez, 43, and 64-year old Earl Wayne Blackshear were admitted with “varying levels” of injury. Lopez was later released, Dizney said.

After determining the assault involving at least three men occurred at a transient camp located off China Hat Road and near Highway 97 just outside the city limit boundary, officers called in Deschutes County Sheriff’s deputies and detectives.

Sheriff’s detectives said that the assault involved Lopez, Blackshear, and Kevin Daniel Dill, 40 - a man who was also admitted to SCMC about midnight with non-life threatening injuries - and possibly a fourth man.

Detectives are asking the public’s help in locating this fourth man, a “person of interest” they said was present at the time of the assault, but whose involvement is unknown. Ben Bust is 83-years old, Dizney said. He is described as 6-foot 3-inches tall with an approximate weight of 275 pounds, and has blue eyes and Gray Hair.

“No clothing description is available,” Dizney said, adding that Bust is not associated with any vehicles or specific locations in the area. Anyone who knows the whereabouts of Bust or has information about the incident is asked to contact detectives at (541) 693-6911.

Anonymous said...

Nearby US citizen lives by 39 million people ..below "Poor line"...
Heartless hard attack including economic policy of big enterprise priority by Uncle Sam.
The nearby citizens do not have a health insurance at all by 45 million people.
Eight dollars for one o'clock (In the figure that adjusts the inflation), and minimum wages are only five dollars and 15 cents in 1968 now.
97 years
The half of the work force is a part.
It keeps decreasing in year of 25 every year of the past and 97 years are 10.2 dollars ..11.2 dollars it in 73... the real wages of the United States part (hourly wage)

Homeless, that is, about five million people overflows in the town, and almost the same population spends the life that not is while the food cost remains.
The real wages keeps falling in 3/4 of the work forces in 1973.
Pay and treatment rise only by 1% while productivity rose during 90 year by 7% in the United States. Stock prices zoom.
42 ratio % of 96 years from 22% of 79 years of owned wealth of the top the United States 1 %.
so that crime increase

Bewert said...

FLASH: Les Schwab pays city, straight from the mouth of Ms. Sonia Andrews, City Finance Director.

Their seems to be a discrepancy about this line item between the Budget Summary and the Detailed Budget Report, which I'll look into more when I am fully awake.

More from the City Council meeting at my blog, of course. For google: http://juniper-ridge-info.blogspot.com/

Bewert said...

Re: City loses $9M on Deal, and then you use this as a comparable??

We know all that, but to any incoming corps they will just see a nice new road, already paid for, and will research the land deal NewLes got and use that as a basis for negotiations.

Bewert said...

Re: Mayor Friedman

He was looking a bit worse for the wear last night...

I think I'll go down to the County Court and get a copy of Bours v INNspired, et al., Case# 07CV0724AB. It should be interesting reading.

Anonymous said...

Regarding the homeless Bend some of you complain about ...

... they have been there for decades!! Who remembers all the bums riding the rails back in the day 30-40 years ago. They were always roaming around the railroad tracks. They had bum "camps" set up all over town in abandon shacks. We used to ride our bicycles through their camps in SE Bend.

Homeless in Bend is nothing new -- so you can't blame it on current factors.

Bewert said...

Bio for the new Inn of the 7th board:
http://www.balljanik.com/professionals/bio.aspx?id=146&number=s0

"Mr. Cahn’s practice emphasizes complex and sophisticated large-dollar commercial and business disputes (including business torts and fraudulent transfer claims) and real estate disputes....

Mr. Cahn was one of the primary attorneys involved in litigating MAN AG v. Freightliner, LLC, which resulted in a judgment on behalf of our client in the amount of $850,000,000 in compensatory damages, which was the largest verdict in the United States in 2006, and $350,000,000 in punitive damages, which is the largest punitive damages award in Oregon state history."

Now compare that bio to this one for Tammy MacLeod, the old board's lawyer, who is trying to keep Friedmans' balls out of the fire:
http://www.karnopp.com/Attorneys/Tamara_MacLeod/

Attn: Tammy MacLeod--There is a Freightliner heading right for you, and you might want to step out of the way.

Anonymous said...

"You can't blame homelessness on current factors"

I didn't so I'll say it again.

Go to Walmart today and see the meth lab gauntlet, my prediction is that Walmart parking lot today, will be Bend downtown tomorrow ( one year from now ), the homeless will increase, in case you haven't noticed the contruction racket is over, un-employment is going to sky-rocket.

My only point was if you want to see what downtown Bend will looklike next year this time, go to Walmart today.

That was MY point, nothing about the fucking economy.

Just that the 'agressive' panhandles were going to increase, because there were going to be more. I concur that along the tracks, ... there have ALWAYS been homeless, of course DOH!

Today they hang en-masse at Walmart south, because they can park their RV their and/or walk to the close by desert access. Last time I was at Walmart I had 2 or 3 aggressive young women hold baby's in parking lot DEMAND money so the could feed their baby.

My point is these folks are coming to downtown, and when they do, they'll be seen by our beautiful tourists at the DEEP & TYPHOON.

Anonymous said...

If your a RE appraiser, then carry a gun, be safe.

***

Convicted Appraiser Exposes Toxic Debt Tie to Inflated Values

By Sharon L. Lynch and Bob Ivry

Jan. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Home appraiser Julian ``Tony'' Perez conjured $7.5 million out of thin air in the first six months of 2001 by overvaluing 33 condominiums in the Atlanta area.

Perez valued eight unfinished properties at the Deere Lofts development on April 2. Some were missing ceilings, cabinets or sinks. Each had been bought the previous week for $90,000 to $167,000. Perez said they were worth $177,000 to $330,000, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Atlanta.

``These are the worst condos ever,'' Perez said last January during testimony at the federal trial in Atlanta of developer Phillip Hill, who used the appraisals to resell the properties. ``Those values are super over-inflated, probably double what the amount of that property is probably worth.''

Perez and appraisers like him helped exaggerate U.S. mortgage values by as much as 10 percent, or $135 billion, in 2006, according to Susan Wachter, a real estate professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in Philadelphia. Such appraisals artificially inflated the value of collateral supporting mortgage-backed securities and are contributing to record foreclosures because borrowers end up owing more than their houses are worth.

Lenders and investors in mortgage-backed securities depend on independent appraisals to value their collateral. Buyers use them to make sure they aren't overpaying.

`Blesses the Loan'

Mortgage lenders, eager to make bigger loans and win market share during the five-year housing boom, relied on both higher appraisals and the proliferation of subprime and adjustable-rate mortgages, said Wachter, who has consulted for mortgage buyer Freddie Mac and General Electric Co.'s U.S. home loan unit.

``There has to be an appraiser who basically blesses the loan,'' she said. ``There are lenders who are deciding what terms to extend and then there are appraisers indicating it is appropriate or isn't appropriate.''

Lenders and mortgage brokers routinely pressured appraisers to boost values, said Jonathan Miller, a New York property appraiser for more than two decades who writes a blog about the problem.

Protections established by the Washington-based Appraisal Foundation, a non-profit that sets industry qualifications and standards, came under attack in the 1990s as banks cut their appraisal departments to save money, Miller said. The system was further corrupted when lenders began moving mortgage applications to third-party brokers who only got paid if a loan closed, he said.

Market Mentality

``There just became less and less emphasis on quality,'' Miller said. ``You started to see more and more loan products that would keep payments low, and I see that as correlating with appraisal pressure because those products only work in a rising market.''

Ninety percent of appraisers surveyed in a study published last year by Richfield, Ohio-based October Research Corp. said they felt pressure to make bogus valuations. Five years ago, that figure was 55 percent.

Almost three-quarters of the appraisers said that mortgage brokers asked them to bend the rules.

Perez said in court that he did it because it ensured steady work from brokers connected to Hill's properties. In some cases, he valued condos that needed substantial work as if they were complete. He also used the sale prices of more expensive apartments nearby to justify inflated values.

The decision cost both Hill and Perez. Hill landed a 28- year prison sentence for using the appraisals to defraud lenders out of $112 million and Perez pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud and is awaiting sentencing. He declined to comment.

Appraisers who resist pressure to inflate values said they may be blacklisted.

`Squeeze Another $20-$25,000'

Paul Bodeving saw his business dry up after he was hired by an appraisal management company to evaluate a four-bedroom, 3,500-square-foot house in Grants Pass, Oregon, last February.

After examining the value of comparable homes, Bodeving determined the property was worth $837,000. The appraisal management firm asked him to ``squeeze another $20-$25,000'' in value so the lender could close the loan, Bodeving said. He refused and rarely gets work from the company anymore.

``It's absolutely horrible,'' he said. ``We've never had the pressure we have now.''

Debbie Huber, a Las Vegas home appraiser, says a third of the mortgage lenders who want to hire her are looking for a guaranteed value before she appraises the property.

Pistol-Packing Appraiser

``We get calls like that every hour of every day,'' said Huber, past president of the Nevada Appraisal Commission, the state agency that oversees appraisers.

The problem became so severe in Florida that appraiser Pamela Crowley said she started an e-mail distribution list in 2003 for real estate appraisers to report suspicious sales and refinancing deals.

Crowley said she was forced out of the appraisal business because she refused to report property values that were higher than the actual worth. She has turned the e-mail list into a Web site, and says she now works with a snub-nosed .38-caliber pistol at hand because she's afraid of retribution.

``There are a lot of people who made a lot of money on this whole game and I was hurting them,'' Crowley said.

Appraisers also are being pressured to overlook imperfections in homes or ignore housing trends in a community that might bring a property's value down, said John Oakvik of Tozzer, Oakvik & Associates Inc. in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Oakvik said he got a call in October from a mortgage broker who asked him if he'd made a mistake when he checked a box on an appraisal report that said home prices were falling in the area.

`No Red Flags'

``She asked me to change the box from `declining market' to `stable market,''' Oakvik said. ``Mortgage brokers just want a generic report, no red flags.''

Appraisal practices are drawing the scrutiny of prosecutors. At least seven states have opened investigations into the mortgage industry, including ties between appraisers, lenders and brokers.

In New York, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo subpoenaed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two biggest buyers of U.S. mortgages. He also sued sued First American Corp.'s eAppraiseIT LLC for allegedly caving to pressure from Washington Mutual Inc., its biggest customer and the largest U.S. thrift, to inflate values.

Cuomo said in November he uncovered a ``pattern of collusion'' between lenders and appraisers to bolster home values.

$4.7 Trillion Market

The investigations call into question $4.7 trillion worth of mortgage securities guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and may limit the availability of home loans to borrowers with good credit, CreditSights Inc. analysts Frank Lee and Sarah Rowin said in a Nov. 8 report.

``If there is a disruption in Fannie and Freddie trying to buy conventional loans, that would be very, very bad right now,'' Lee said.

The valuation crisis in the credit markets may cost banks and investors $400 billion, according to November estimates by Deutsche Bank AG analysts.

Lenders including Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the biggest underwriter of mortgage-backed bonds in 2007, say they too have been victimized by fraudulent appraisals.

New York-based Lehman sued 14 people and five companies including Passarelli & Potts Appraisal Service and appraiser Fred Passarelli in U.S. District Court in Tampa, Florida, alleging ``grossly inaccurate'' appraisals that valued residences in the Sunset Bay development at about $733,000 when they were only worth $73,000.

Inaccurate Appraisals

Jurors ruled Dec. 13 that Equitable Title of Florida Inc., based in Clermont, and Passarelli & Potts of Winter Park, Florida, duped Lehman Brothers' Bancorp unit into funding millions of dollars in mortgage loans secured by properties worth a fraction of their sales price.

Equitable Title was ordered to pay $2.8 million for breach of contract. Passarelli & Potts Appraisal was ordered to pay $4.5 million for negligence, jurors said. The jury originally said Passarelli & Potts was liable for $6.9 million, then reduced the amount by 35 percent, saying Lehman was responsible for that portion.

Lenders made about $2.7 trillion in new mortgages and home refinancing deals in 2006, according to the Washington-based Mortgage Bankers Association.

For some appraisers, including Perez in Georgia, going along was the key to staying in business.

The Georgia case in which Perez testified hinged on 300 inflated appraisals, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Barbara Nelan. Hill and companies he controlled bought 50 houses and 250 condominiums and made money by recruiting straw buyers to repurchase the properties at inflated prices.

Even before Perez pleaded guilty, he paid for bucking the system, said his lawyer, Page Pate.

``He liked the steady stream of business,'' said Pate. ``My client refused to inflate a few appraisals and they cut him off for a long time.''

To contact the reporters on this story: Sharon L. Lynch in New York at sllynch@bloomberg.net ; Bob Ivry in New York at bivry@bloomberg.net .

Anonymous said...

We know all that, but to any incoming corps they will just see a nice new road, already paid for, and will research the land deal NewLes got and use that as a basis for negotiations.


*


FUCK YOU bruce pussy, they didn't get a new road, they GOT everything paid for except the BUILDING and the PAVING

Read the FUCKING les-schwab agreement Bruce Pussy!

The $7/sq-ft doesn't means SHIT. The city of Bend Paid Les Schwab $9M to move their campus from priny to Bend, and probably when its over it will be more.

Now where in the HELL is this bond to pay the $10M+ ?? How much interest are we paying?

How come the richest native Oregonian company had to get welfare from the city of bend?

Anonymous said...

Les Schwab pays city, straight from the mouth of Ms. Sonia Andrews, City Finance Director.

Their seems to be a discrepancy about this line item between the Budget Summary and the Detailed Budget Report, which I'll look into more when I am fully awake.

***

Dec 7, 2007 shows a county recording that the city got the money from Les-Schwab for Juniper-Ridge, that money was passed directly to Kuratek, This was the deal going back to Nov 06, 2006 when it was realized that Chamber-of-Commerce wanted Kuratek out.

This was always a done-deal. The $10M paid to Les-Schwab was the carrot to get Brogman to go with the deal.

Win-win: Chamber gets rid of Kuratek

Knife-River makes millions

Schwab - gets a campus for 20% of cost

City of Bend get's $70M in debt

win-win for all

Anonymous said...

Did we mention that not a fucking home sold in Bend, Oregon. How do you like to have shit wiped in your face everyday??
***
Oregon home builder donates to charity after home auction

01:02 PM PST on Thursday, January 17, 2008

By kgw.com Staff

LAKE OSWEGO – A Lake Oswego home builder who sold 141 homes during a special auction at the Oregon Convention Center said he's donating $253,700 from the proceeds to local charities.

The Buena Vista Custom Homes sales generated a total of $65 million in sales, which is believed to be the largest sales event in Oregon real estate history, as well as the largest real estate auction by a single seller.

“The auction was a huge success for us. We have been committed to helping our ‘Profit Partner’ charities and with the sales made at the auction we were able to make sizeable donations to help these worthy organizations,” said the Roger Pollock, President and Owner of Buena Vista Custom Homes. Profit Partners was created to benefit children and those suffering from addiction issues with a monthly check on behalf of Pollock and the program.

Background: Read more about why the builder resorted to an auction

The auction drew 2,209 attendees who bid on the 240 homes offered in the auction.

The owner of Buena Vista Custom Homes, Roger Pollock, announced prior to the auction his intent to use the event to sell the company’s inventory of completed homes. Prior to the event there was much speculation about the “reserve prices” which are standard in a real state auction. Buena Vista set their reserve prices to mirror their costs. Ninety six percent of the homes sold were sold under the “reserve” price.

“We came to the auction to sell, and we did just that. To sell 141 homes in less than 48 hours is truly remarkable, said Pollock.

Homes offered at auction ranged from 1,113 to 5,073 square feet and were located in some of the areas of highest demand around the Portland metropolitan area.

Additionally, 29 homes were also included from the Bend, Oregon market. Homes sold from as low as $195,000 for a 3 bedroom 2 and a half bath home in Sandy, Oregon to $510,000 for a 5,073 4 bedroom 3 bath home in the Shadow Ridge subdivision in Happy Valley, Oregon. Virtually all areas were strong sellers with two exceptions, the homes being offered in Bend and Buena Vista’s portfolio of rental homes. None of the homes in Bend sold and few of the rentals found buyers.

The company’s move to enlist their entire standing inventory in the auction was an aggressive move, but reduction in inventory will allow Buena Vista to become a land buyer again, taking advantage of dropping prices for build-able lots.

Pollock was initially cautious about what type of message an auction would send, but asked himself, “Did we overbuild?”, and after answering “Yes”, he quickly decided that it would be an innovative sales strategy to move out the overbuilt inventory.

The company now plans to move to a much more conservative model of offering few finished homes, built on speculation of future sale and more pre-sold to buyers.

“We will still be an aggressive player in our market. The sale of the homes from the auction puts us in a great position as a buyer. There are some great deals to be had out there right now on lots,” added Pollock.

Buena Vista will donate over $250,000 from the event to area charities as part of Pollock’s “Profit Partners” program. The program donates a portion of each home sold, regardless of price, to 19 area charities.

Anonymous said...

The following is the good news, 'Bend' is exceptionally FUCKED, 80% of Bend, will be up-side down by summer, 30% of Bend is upside down today.
***
Housing Doom

Many experts are now predicting that home prices will dip 30% by the end of 2008. That means that nearly 20 million homeowners will be “upside-down”, that is, they will owe more on their mortgage than the current value of the house. (Imagine owing $400,000 on a home that is currently worth $325,000!) 40% of all homeowners in the US will be upside-down by the end of next year. This is a grave systemic problem that will have widespread implications. Experts already know that when mortgage holders have “negative equity” they are much more inclined to put their keys in the mailbox and skip town. Hence, the name for this increasingly common practice — “jingle mail.” Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson is desperately trying to put together a national “rate freeze” to avoid, what could be, the most devastating surge of foreclosures the world has ever seen. Paulson’s rate freeze does not offer “New Hope” as promised but, rather, a lifetime of servitude paying off an asset of ever-decreasing value. Underwater homeowners are better off taking the hit to their credit and letting the bank repo the house. Let the bank worry about it. They created this mess.

The housing bubble is deflating faster than anyone had anticipated. Overall sales have slipped more than 40% from their peak in 2005 whereas, prices have gone down a mere 6.5%. Prices, which are a lagging indicator, have a lot further to drop before they touch bottom. Robert Schiller, Professor of Economics at Yale University and author of Irrational Exuberance, “predicted that there was a very real possibility that the US would be plunged into a Japan-style slump, with house prices declining for years.

Professor Shiller, co-founder of the respected S&P Case/Shiller house-price index, said: “American real estate values have already lost around $1 trillion [£503 billion]. That could easily increase threefold over the next few years. This is a much bigger issue than sub-prime. We are talking trillions of dollars’ worth of losses.” (Times Online, UK)

Schiller’s on the right track, but his estimates are way too conservative. After all, in 2002, the median price of a single-family home in Los Angeles was $270,000. But, by 2006, the cost of that same house had doubled, to $540,000 — “pushed by unbridled speculation fueled by unparalleled access to mortgage capital.” (LA Times) The problem was cheap credit that was readily available to anyone who could fog a mirror. All that has changed. The banks have tightened up their lending standards, and jumbo loans (loans over $417,000) are nearly impossible to get. So, why doesn’t Schiller believe that prices will return to 2002 levels? They will. And they’ll go even lower; much lower. In fact, real estate is quickly becoming the leper at the birthday party; everyone is staying away. That means that prices will fall — and more rapidly than anyone imagined. The word is out on housing and it’s not good. The blood is in the water. Get out before the pool of mortgage applicants dries up entirely.

Anonymous said...

Just ask CACB how to spell "SOLVENCY".

***

Banking Tsunami

The US banking industry has never faced greater challenges than it does today. Many of America’s largest and most prestigious investment banks are seriously under-capitalized and buried beneath hundreds of billions of dollars in complex, structured investments that are being downgraded on a weekly basis. On top of that, many of the banks main sources of revenue have vanished as investor interest in sophisticated mortgage-backed bonds and derivatives has disappeared altogether. For example, the sales of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) “plunged 85% to $15.69 billion in the fourth quarter.” Also, “The value of Alt-A mortgages . . . issued in the third quarter fell 64% to $39.3 billion from the second quarter’s record high of $109.5 billion . . . S&P said the dramatic drop is the result of ‘unprecedented credit and liquidity disruptions’ for both borrowers and lenders” (Dow Jones) These are steep declines and represent a serious loss of revenue from the banks’ bottom line.

Many of the banks are simply in “survival mode” trying to conceal the magnitude of their losses from their shareholders while attempting to attract capital from overseas investors to shore up their sagging collateral. (via Sovereign Wealth Funds)

The banks are now struggling to fulfill their function as the main conduit for providing credit to consumers and businesses. They have curtailed their lending as their capital base has steadily eroded through persistent downgrading. The Federal Reserve has tried to resolve this issue by opening a Temporary Auction Facility (TAF), which allows the banks to secretly borrow billions from the Fed without the embarrassment of disclosing the transaction to the public. The banks are also free to use Mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and commercial paper (CP) as collateral for securing the Fed repos. It’s a sweetheart deal and more than 100 financial institutions have already taken advantage of the Fed’s largesse.

This is a bad sign. It indicates that the banks are seriously overextended, “capital impaired” and need a handout from the Central Bank to keep from defaulting. It means that the vaults are stuffed with worthless mortgage-backed slop that they are deliberately hiding from their shareholders and depositors. If there were adequate regulation then the banks would never have been allowed to dabble in such risky debt instruments as subprime loans and toxic CDOs. The whole catastrophe could have been avoided. Instead, hundreds of billions of dollars will be wiped out, a number of banks will fail, and public confidence in their institutions will be shattered.

This week, the Federal Reserve announced that it “will increase the size of two scheduled auctions of emergency loans by 50 percent to $30 billion as part of a global attempt by central bankers to restore faith in the money markets.” (AP) In other words, the Fed will provide an even bigger begging bowl to prop up the banks to maintain the appearance of solvency. It is an utter sham.

Anonymous said...

I suspect much of this speculation has been fueled by the get-rich quick books by the likes of Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad, Poor Dad), Carleton Sheets and other "authors". Seems everyone read those books and went hog wild in the early-mid 2000s.

Anonymous said...

I suspect much of this speculation has been fueled by the get-rich quick books by the likes of Robert Kiyosaki

*

BendBust is currently having a real nice imperial stout, but you made him spit 1/2 a 'gulp' on his shirt.

Are you now telling us that reading books is a American Past-Time?

I don't think so, I don't own a TV, but I know that Oprah promotes "rich dad, poor son", ... No, the problem is that MORONS could borrow money with nothing down and buy four houses, and EVERY moron in Bend did so, and now there are NO more morons coming to Bend.

To suggest that Bend Morons 'read' is crazy, as Homer eloquently says in this weeks blog, "The average Bend person has 6th grade education". That might have seen 'rich-dad" on Oprah, but they sure as fuck didn't read the fucking book.

No what happened in Bend, is that Every broker, realtor, ... mtg-banker, called every hair-lip in the USA and said "bend is #1", and they all bought, now there are no fools.

Plleeeeeeze don't blame books for moronity.

Anonymous said...

If your must 'blame' I would prefer to 'blame' the SUV driving lard-arse golfers who smoke cigars, and wallow around Bend like land-whales.

These mother-fuckers are 'republicans', and they're DUMBYA created the easy-money so every moron could quit working and just flip RE, and worked much of 2004->2006, and then Every Moron in Bend was playing the game, and then our Cali feed market imploded and it was game-over.

90% of Bend is Republican, which is why I always say that 90% of ALL you mother-fuckers can leave, and this would be a better place.

( Yes, this imperial stout is very good. ).

p.s. I wasn't impressed with this years Abyss, I thought it sucked, $10 for 22oz bottle, and $20 for a geri, bullshit, fuck gary-fish, what the fuck is doing??

Great-Divide 'Yeti' is 1/2 the price and 100X the beer. Deschutes is fucking itself in the ass, don't fuck the locals, don't price your beer out of reach. Deschutes is doing the classic 'fuck the locals', and remember 'fishy boy' it was the locals that made your business, that said he's been fucking his employees out of benny's the past year, so the company is fucked, its not suprising he's fucking his customers.

Anonymous said...

LOL! Wish I was there to join you. While I see some of your points, your penchant for blaming political parties is unflattering to you. You're telling me that no Democrats are in mortgage trouble either here either? I bet that the split in Bend (remember Calis are generally liberal due to their time spent in hell-holes like SF and LA) is DEAD FUCKING EVEN amongst the two-card monte political party game in this country. I mean you're a smart guy Buster, that's obvious, but don't fall for this Dem vs Repub bullshit. You're above that. People are greedy no matter what their political persuasion.

The books I mentioned are best sellers for a reason and I maintain that it had SOME (maybe small) influence on the flourishing of flippers/newfound real-estate entrepreneurs-with-no-experience. The easy $$$ was the rope they could hang themselves with.

Yes, Fish is all big biz now, except maybe Daddy Fish.

Anonymous said...

Seems everyone read those books and went hog wild in the early-mid 2000s.

*

Ya, not a fucking thing with DUMBYA dropping interest rate to 1%,

Not a fucking thing to do with zero-down,

Not a fucking to do with 5/1 arms, ..

Not a fucking thing to do with DUMBYA, all because of 'books' written during the ClitorisB/H prez, ... HillyPooh is Cheney is Drag.

Not a fucking thing to do with the fact that Bend is the #1 resort in the world ( walmart, costco, lowes, home-depot, we have everything that makes a resort )

Not a fucking thing to do with the fact that Bend was CNNFN's #1 over-valued RE for 2004,2005,&2006.

No It's all because Duncan sold a book to a hair-lip called 'rich-dad, poor dumb fucking bend folk', that Bend imploded,... Note Mayor Friedman was running his HOA racket long before this book.

Anonymous said...

Whilst checking spelling on "monte", I ran across this little tidbit:

Surely you or Homey can work this into a blog post regarding Bend Real Estate, Mortgage Industry, & Realtors:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-card_Monte

Anonymous said...

>> Ya, not a fucking thing with DUMBYA dropping interest rate to 1%,

*****

And none of the turds (Dems or Repubs) running in 2008 would have done the same damn thing if it was them in the White House! Dude, we're fucked, I agree but its not a dem vs. repub battle. Free yourself from the political game we're playing Buster-man.

Anonymous said...

I mean you're a smart guy Buster, that's obvious, but don't fall for this Dem vs Repub bullshit. You're above that. People are greedy no matter what their political persuasion.

*

Fuck You is a term of endearment. Everyone is fucking smart, if you couldn't read you wouldn't be here, that puts you in the top 5% of Bend.

DEM&REPUB are owned by the same fucking people.
It's not top versus bottom, nor left-versus-right, its corruption. Schwab, Friedman, Hollern, Brenneke, Pape, its the same old.
HillyPooh is Cheney-in-Drag. DUMBYA is the prez that this fucking country deserves.

Greed? Nothing happens by accident? Over 50% of RE 'investors' are under-water, they're going to be debtors for the rest of their lives. You really thing this is about fucking greed? The 'maestro' said long ago when you see or hear an orchestra, look for a fucking conductor.

I insult the 'republicans' because they're in FUCKING power Mother-FUCKER. If & When the Dem's come back they'll get my insults 24/7.

Can't handle the fucking truth? Then go over to BENDBB or the SORE or the BULL.

Anonymous said...

. Free yourself from the political game we're playing Buster-man.

*

FUCK YOU CUNT

THE BLAME MUST BE PLACED ON THOSE IN POWER, YOUR PLAYING A RUSH-LIMBAUGH rhetorical argument..

THIS shit came down on DUMBYA's guard, so DUMBYA is going to get the fucking BLAME.

Anonymous said...

>> FUCK YOU CUNT

***
Ahh, I knew I'd see the love sooner or later.

I think blaming any political party is pointless. I used to be hard-line repub but DUE TO Rushy and friends realized its all the same type of people playing the same games. FUCK EM ALL! Hunker down, take care of your own, and keep your powder dry CUNT (aka buddy in busterspeak)!

Anonymous said...

>> It's not top versus bottom, nor left-versus-right, its corruption. Schwab, Friedman, Hollern, Brenneke, Pape, its the same old.

*****

Very True! Where did you get your strong sense of justice????

Anonymous said...

http://loanswest.net/
Rob Ezell and Mike Smith
Senior Loan Officers
Sunset Mortgage
Services: Commercial, Residential & Hard Money Loans

A conversation with Rob Ezell and Mike Smith, Senior Loan Officers with Sunset Mortgage

*

I was 'googling' "mortgage meltdown", and Bend, looking for national story's, ... & I found these two goons Rob & Mike, I mean they look like retired Florida Mobsters, and the best part they're classic SUV DUMBYA voter's, I mean these guys are poster-boys for Bend.

I know that Homer doesn't fuck with guys, being a mysogynist and all that, but they guys need a RE/MTG reaming.

Talking about Bend-RE DUMBYA voting Republican's, here is my image of them, and they're in Bend by the 'google', they are 90% of todays Bend. Note closely how outdoorsy and 'Bend' they look,... these guys look like they spend their free time digging in grave yards. They're Bend, and they're Republican, so Bend.

Anonymous said...

Services: Commercial, Residential & Hard Money Loans

*

A hard money loan, are these guys romantically involved with Bendbb and Garzini too??

What the fuck is a RE/MTG 'Hard' money loan? Is this different than 'soft' money? I suspect they're talking about private deals.

Again, look at those fucking mugs, even the lighting looks like Florida during the monsoon season, not Sunny Bend Oregon.

Anonymous said...

A Deschutes County Planning Commission member says that Bend's "main commodity sold here is livability" and that "Central Oregon's major industry is growth. If you have no growth, the industry will collapse and there will be a huge loss of family-wage jobs. ... Fortunes are being made by the growth industry providing livability for people who want to be in Central Oregon."

[www.bendbulletin.com]

Remember when Pres. Bush said that the country is "addicted to oil" in his State of the Union speech? Bend is "addicted to housing developments." At some point in the past (really taking shape around the mid-80s), as the wood-products industry was dying down in Bend, regional leaders (including Mt. Bachelor) decided that future of Central Oregon was in upscale resort-style development. This took the form of actual destination resorts, California-style named housing developments, and a re-orientation of what was a mainly blue-collar, industrial / resource-based economy where goods and materials were exported from the area in exchange for dollars (with a significant but smaller tourist base) into a service-and-retail-based economy with more tourist-oriented facilities.

For most of the 20th Century, Bend was well-known around Oregon, and less so around the Pacific Northwest, as a place for skiing, camping, hunting, fishing and other outdoor activities. As part of expanding its appeal, in the 1980s Bend's civic leaders began promoting Mt. Bachelor/Bend as a national-scale destination ski resort, and even went after Japan's economic boom (the Japanese were fascinated with Central Oregon because of the popular FUJI-TV program From Oregon With Love). Flights were opened from Redmond to Denver and glossy ads were placed in national magazines.

This didn't work so well, because Bend could not compete as a destination tourism resort with places like Aspen, Vail, Sun Valley, Mammoth Mountain and the Utah resorts. Mt. Bachelor's slopes were flatter, and bad weather often closed parts of the mountain. The snow was not as good as in the Rockies or in Utah. There was (and is) no night skiing. The biggest liability was its location. The closest airport wasn't in Bend, located 20-some miles from Mt. Bachelor, but in Redmond, located about another 20 miles from Bend. Last but certainly not least, there were (and are) no slopeside accommodations and no ski village. Tourists simply could not leave their hometowns and be on the slopes in a matter of hours as they could at the more-established destination ski resorts. And once skiiers got to the slopes, there would always be an annoying back-and-forth commute to off-mountain accommodations along an icy road lined with fender-benders and motorists applying snow chains. And then, those accommodations were typically not located within walking distance of Bend's best restaurants and nightlife.

Some people did come, though. Word spread about Bend as a kind of "best-kept secret" - an outdoorsy, mountain town with both summer and winter recreation, a laid-back but family-friendly vibe with costs lower than in most places.

Steadily Bend grew. The sign outside town said 17,800, then 20-something thousand, then 30-something thousand. Folks who moved in, even those with college educations, found that while high-paying, white-collar jobs were hard to come by, you could always make a buck remodeling houses or selling real estate. Teachers, who had the summers off, would buy backhoes with their savings and run construction crews as a cash sideline while keeping their teaching jobs for the insurance and retirement benefits. At some point, outfits who were already involved in the building trade and real-estate development in California and other states--but were looking for new stomping grounds where startup costs were lower and the competition less cutthroat--moved to Bend with the economic opportunities first in mind and the recreational opportunities second.

Sometime in the mid-1990s, there was a tipping point: Bend was officially a "boomtown" with a boomtown economy, which this blog defines to mean an economy based on a constant flow of newcomers.

This is an important distinction. Non-boomtowns, which have something other than growth at their base, keep their essential character through good and bad times. Portland's population has ebbed and flowed, but if there was a net outflow of people from there, it would retain its essential character. Same with New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Eugene, and so on. For example, if the U of O moved out of Eugene it would become an essentially different town, but if it has a net outflow of 10% of its population over the next 5 years it would still be the liberal college town we all know and love. But Bend is different. Do people think that if Bend's population dropped 10% over the next 5 years, it would still be essentially the same?

If Bend stopped attracting newcomers, what would it look like? No one knows. Would it become a ghost town, without enough residents to fill its houses? It wouldn't be Oregon's first. Would its increasingly yuppie residents turn to ancient redneck survival techniques, time-tested in Oregon over generations, such as hunting for food, cutting wood to heat homes, wearing homemade clothes? They would if they were intent on staying in Bend through thick and thin. Would the town, with lots of new housing stock but few jobs, become a retirement community, populated mainly by old folks and healthcare personnel? Doesn't sound like much fun.

Anonymous said...

Very True! Where did you get your strong sense of justice????

*

You'll never get it from watching TV Cunts.

Kill your fucking TV.

Anonymous said...

Hunker down, take care of your own, and keep your powder dry CUNT ...

* A dry powdered cunt will not help you in the following scenario *

Will Bend's increasingly yuppie residents turn to ancient redneck survival techniques, time-tested in Oregon over generations, such as hunting for food, cutting wood to heat homes, wearing homemade clothes? They would if they were intent on staying in Bend through thick and thin. Would the town, with lots of new housing stock but few jobs, become a retirement community, populated mainly by old folks and healthcare personnel?

tim said...

I blame Greenspan. No matter which President he was under, he never let the economy take a single sip of medicine. His whole reign was about looking brilliant and oracular. He's Mr. Bubble.

Anonymous said...

No timmy, we have me the enemy and he is us.

The reason that all the presidents kept Greeny in power all those years, is that the American public loved him for what he gave them.

We get the goverment, and the green-spam we deserve.

Anonymous said...

No matter which President he was under, he never let the economy take a single sip of medicine.

*

Timmy,

I normally agree with you, but I happen to have been alive when greeny said "Irrational Exuberance", and he caught hell. Many time greeny tried to give the american public 'medicine', and at all times they told him to go fuck himself.

It's human nature to be loved, and greeny just gave them what they wanted.

The real problem in the current crisis is like Bend, where every hairlip bought four homes with nothing down, without a job, and without an application, and 100X of his income. Many people tried to stop the practice, but the DUMBYA administration stopped them. It has been well documented by the WSJ that when DUMBYA was running for his second term that Rove turned the green-light on to the MTG industry and said 'anything goes', ok now 3-4 years later we're facing the greatest RE foreclosure threat in US history.

Greenspan, or the FEDERAL reserve has NOT a fucking thing to do with micro-managing MTG laws. There's tons of lawsuits coming down now about DUMBYA governments refusal to stop MTG fraud.

Just look at the pic's above from our Bend ( florida mod MTG boyz ), people came from all over to Bend, to flip homes, and sell MTG. Bend is a republican paradise, it was the wild-wild west of MTG from 2003-2006. Now we face the greatest foreclosure crisis in history, all our CDO paper is worth 10 cents on the dollar to zero, and thus all the banks are insolvent.

Many folks demanded that DUMBYA crack down on MTG fraud back in 2003/2004, but he refused, now we all pay the price.

tim said...

>>Greenspan, or the FEDERAL reserve has NOT a fucking thing to do with micro-managing MTG laws.

Well, I agree with that. And even when there were laws, people were breaking the laws all over the place and there was no regulatory enforcement at all.

But I still blame Greenspan. He's the one who set up the incentives, and he KNEW there was no enforcement.

He was a pussy. When the markets zapped him, he cowered and simply learned to not repeat what shocked him.

Anonymous said...

A good story about a $75M housing tract built by a Bend-Developer in Cali,... Trouble is he forgot they needed drinking water. This is how the City-of-Bend should shutdown folks that don't pay SDC.
***
Drinking water shortage stalls subdivision

By David Benda (Contact)
Friday, January 18, 2008
AT A STANDSTILL: Nearly a dozen homes are in limbo in The Vineyards subdivision uphill from the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Anderson because a drinking-water system is not in place.

Photo by Nathan Morgan / Record

ANDERSON -- Nearly two years after the first home-building permits were issued, The Vineyards subdivision is still waiting for drinking water.

Sandy Sanderson of Sanderson Communities in Bend, Ore., and Anderson officials are working to get water to the first phase of his 243-lot project.

The lack of drinking water also has Sanderson at odds with two builders that he sold 20 lots to within his development, which sits above the Wal-Mart Supercenter and features views of Mt. Shasta and Lassen Peak.

The builders, Bergstrom Enterprises of Redding and Vernon C. Palmer Inc. of Bend, are erecting 12 homes in The Vineyards. At least two appear complete. But no "For Sale" signs are posted in front of the homes. No "sold" signs appear in any of the windows. Some of the windows have been shattered by vandals; others are boarded up with plywood.

Ironically, one of the homes has a pool with a waterfall flowing into it.

"It's tough to sell homes" when youdon't have drinking water, said Leonard Bandell, manager of Redding's Insignia Builders, which is building the Homewood subdivision in Anderson off Alexander Avenue.

Sanderson is embroiled in a legal battle with Bergstrom Enterprises and Vernon Palmer. Neither party will talk about the civil suit, which is scheduled for a hearing Tuesday in Shasta County Superior Court.

Anderson City Manager Scott Morgan said The Vineyards is unique because it sits outside the city's main water-pressure zone, the first such home project in his nearly 11-year stint as city manager.

Nevertheless, in mid-2006, Anderson officials "obliged his (Sanderson's) request to get started on model home construction prior to completion of (water) service within the new pressure zone." But it was agreed that drinking water would be flowing before the homes received a final inspection, Morgan wrote in an e-mail.

Shasta County records show that Bergstrom and Palmer bought the lots -- they paid about $134,000 for each one -- in late July 2006 and mid-August 2006.

Morgan expects a drinking water system to be in place by summer. The system will get water from booster pumps off the Anderson Heights Reservoir and is expected to cost more than $1 million. Meantime, water from a construction well within The Vineyards is being used to supply irrigation water for landscaping.

The water will serve the 243 approved Vineyards lots and the 173-lot Pleasant Hills subdivision, the Robert Loring development that sits below The Vineyards on Pleasant Hills Drive. Home construction hasn't started in Pleasant Hills.

Loring didn't return a phone message left Thursday.

Sanderson and Loring will pay for the water system, Sanderson said. Morgan couldn't confirm that an agreement between Sanderson and Loring has been reached.

Meanwhile, Sanderson is seeking about a $65 million construction loan for his project. Sanderson wouldn't say what the money is for or whether he's run out of money for The Vineyards.

Sanderson is a fifth-generation Californian who moved to central Oregon in the early 1980s. He built homes in Southern California during the 1970s and '80s.

In Grass Valley, Sanderson has proposed a planned community on some 750 acres. But Sanderson is in a legal dispute over that project with his business partner, Henry Wilms of Danville. Wilms in November filed a lawsuit in excess of $75,000 in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, claiming a breach of contract.

Wilms also has an interest in The Vineyards, where his development company, Two Sassy Sisters LLC, owns 22 lots. Anderson City Councilman Keith Webster said Thursday that the money needed to put in a water system in The Vineyards probably exceeded Sanderson's finances. Blame some of that on the tanking housing market.

"I think their timing has been very poor," said Webster, who met with Morgan and Sanderson last month to talk about the project. "Obviously the economy has been very weak; the housing market has not been strong."

Bill Nagel, Redding's top building official, said his city has systems in place to prevent what's happened in Anderson.

"In addition to having recorded lots, before we will issue permits, you have to have most of the improvements completed, including a water system, curbs, sidewalks, gutters," Nagel said.

Shasta Association of Realtors President Greg Lloyd said his colleagues have forgotten about The Vineyards, which when unveiled in 2005 was ballyhooed as having the potential to alter south Shasta County. Ultimately, Sanderson envisions more than 5,000 homes being built over 25 years.

"Everybody took a look at it in the early stages, then it kind of went on the back burner because nothing is going on," Lloyd said.

It's a shame the project is on hold, Lloyd says, because so much has been invested.

"You wonder why it went that far along with all the building ... all the roads and sidewalks? How did it get that far along without that (no drinking water) coming to light?"

Anderson Councilman Webster said there's a lesson to be taken away from The Vineyards.

"I think if the situation pops up again, we would be very much aware ... be more cautious about it," Webster said.

Anonymous said...

He's the one who set up the incentives, and he KNEW there was no enforcement.

*

Greenspan doesn't set incentives for the MTG industry. He only controls the interest rates that banks can borrow.

Greenspan's job is not to please stock-holders, nor to please home-flippers.

The job of the federal reserve is to maintain unemployment and inflation in equilibrium. They have no other public mandate.

Anonymous said...

He's the one who set up the incentives, and he KNEW there was no enforcement.

*

Greeny had nothing to do with morons getting zero-down loans in Bend, see our Florida mobsters above, Greeny didn't have time to think about these kinds of people.

It was DUMBYA and MTG regulators that turned their eye from fundamental lending practices.

Anonymous said...

Buster: Are rednecks Dems or Republicans?

Anonymous said...

Buster: Are rednecks Dems or Republicans?

*

That's a good question.

A good Redneck is neither, as they by definition have a brain and use it.

I personally think that Bend has a Cali-Infestation problem, and most of them are Republican parasites.

A real red-neck, in Bend, is a self-sufficient person, and thus is a parasite on nobody.

Then there are them liberals, and they tend to be as FUCKED-UP as Republicans. There aren't many real liberals around, in the true sense, they tend to be lesbian parasite class, ... From what I have seen there are very few 'real' liberals in Bend. Quite a lot in PDX. Bend right-wingers have pretty much driven the liberals out of Eastern-Oregon, or at least the liberals lay low and don't draw attention to themselves.

But a real 'fucking' red-neck, those are few and far, and most have long got the fuck out of Bend.

Anonymous said...

Buster: Are rednecks Dems or Republicans?

*

I don't think a 'real' Red-Neck, would have anything to do with either. If your talking the flag-waving, ...

HL Mencken 80 years ago said "Everytime I see a man wave a flag, I expect to get a bill".

Not much has changed, dems&repub's are both feeders, just like Bend city-hall, and all our influx calis parasites, all these people want something for nothing, which is how DUMBYA got his second-term, those zero-down loans to morons got him re-elected.

I doubt many 'red-necks' bought into the fucking zero-down, interest-only, MTG Bend program.

Let me make this clear Dem's & Repub's are both dog-shit eating goat-fuckers, they'll both clean you clean, again the reason I devote my time bashing the repub's, is they just happen to be in power, if you haven't noticed.

Anonymous said...

>> Kill your fucking TV.

***

Already done 2 years back! With you there 110%.

>> A good Redneck is neither, as they by definition have a brain and use it.

Hmmmmm, a Libertarian bent maybe??? Self Sufficency? But does one reconcile the obvious necessity for human compassion, mercy, while at the same time believing that you should take care of you fucking self and be responsible for your actions?

I'm as "self sufficiency" oriented, (you bought too many flipper houses with no income, you're fucked) as any conservative, but damn, I've seen some bums who really needed a fuckin meal. I also have NO PATIENCE for the god damned panhandlers. If you got needs, there are places and organizations who can help you. Panhandlers are grifters on the opposite side of the Bend spectrum.

Anonymous said...

Self Sufficency? But does one reconcile the obvious necessity for human compassion, mercy, while at the same time believing that you should take care of you fucking self and be responsible for your actions?

*

Let's look at the Bend-Parasite, take Mayor Friedman, try and take 50% of HOA's, with the full power of City-Hall behind you, this would be called a crime, in an honest town.

But Bend is a city of grifters, crooks, entitlement whores, and amenity vultures, nuttin new our leader has said this many ti
mes.( that be homee )


FUCK-YOU compassion, let's see $10M to les-schwab is compassion for the richest company in Oregon, and tens of millions per month to Knife-River is compassion.

FUCK-YOUR compassion in Bend.

Mercy?? That's letting Mayor Friedman keep all the money he scammed in the past +10 years, while running city-hall.

Go watch the 'wild bunch' some night, Peckinpah has some great quotes.

Don't compare vultures and criminals to working people. Mercy & Compassion are there for those in Need, nobody in Fucking Bend is in need of anything, except a grey-hound ticket or a u-haul gift certificate.

Anonymous said...

I also have NO PATIENCE for the god damned panhandlers.

*

Get used to the panhandlers, god bless them, in 1-2 years from down one in five of Bend citizenry, will be begging door to door.

In oregon its free speech to panhandle, if you can't handle that, then go back to cali.

Anonymous said...

Panhandlers are grifters on the opposite side of the Bend spectrum.

*

Panhandlers AINT nothing like clinton, johnson, abernethy, pape, hollern, friedman, brogman, leitz, ...

A panhandler looks in your eye, and begs for nickels, the above boyz steal the city blind, and do it behind 'executive session', with the full blessing of bend law enforcement behind them.

Anonymous said...

I will say one thing about dem's & repub's, they both HATE panhandlers, why pray tell??

Because they just hate to see the result of their busy work.

The panhandling is going to explode, I have written about this extensively for over a year, want to see downtown Bend tomorrow, go to Walmart today, during the day, and see dozen's of souls wondering the lots going car to car begging.

Multiply this by 10X, because panhandlers don't like competition, in time they'll find out the winnings are better downtown, and everywhere else there is NO competition.

The 'riche' of Bend will have no where to hide, coming out of Newport Market with your bag of grocerys there will be a fucking gauntlet of mothers with hungry infants in their arms, its that way already at Walmart now.

You cali fuckers created this situation, you wanted everyone to come to bend and get rich, will they came, and now they're living in their car.

Anonymous said...

Here's the deal, in the last ten years 40,000 cali republicans came to Bend to get rich, 75% or 30,000 will leave. 5,000 might survive, another 5,000 will be on the streets of Bend, begging.

They're all republicans, they all bought the jive, the DUMBY dream, they're all DUMBYA-Children, and they're angry as hell, that things didn't work out.

They're poster children for what went wrong with TEAM-DUMBYA, and the fucking elite republicans ( rulers of Bend ), want to hide those republicans that fell by the wayside.

Anonymous said...

>> FUCK-YOU compassion, let's see $10M to les-schwab is compassion for the richest company in Oregon, and tens of millions per month to Knife-River is compassion.

>> FUCK-YOUR compassion in Bend.

>> Mercy?? That's letting Mayor Friedman keep all the money he scammed in the past +10 years, while running city-hall.

***

Did you seriously think I was referring to these type of people in my question? You KNOW I was referring to the truly needy. My question still stands.

Would you give a nickel to a cali panhandler who lost it all on flipper houses? How about a drunk who spent his family's last dime on a beer? Read any Dostoevsky?

I'm not from Cali, I don't drive an Escalade/Suburban, I'm not a renter or a flipper, nor am I connected to RE in any way. I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere so I know the subject of rednecks well.

What I dislike about dishonest panhandlers (and they are in the majority) is that they prey dishonestly on people's sense of charity. Handing out tax free $$$ on street corners does NO FUCKING GOOD. Offer them a meal and they'll spit in your face. They want drugs & booze.

I was once at a KFC and a dude came up and asked me for a meal. I knee-jerk said, NO. I didn't want to get ripped off. I walked to my vehicle and something hit me. That dude NEEDED A FUCKING MEAL. It doesn't matter why, he needed it and he didn't ask me for $$$. I went and bought him a bug meal at stinking KFC (if you can call their slop a meal). Why was my knee-jerk reaction no? Because fucking "panhandlers" are rip-off artists in general (note I'm not referring to the needy). I mistook him for a panhandler when this dude was needy.

>> Panhandlers AINT nothing like clinton, johnson, abernethy, pape, hollern, friedman, brogman, leitz, ...

>> A panhandler looks in your eye, and begs for nickels, the above boyz steal the city blind, and do it behind 'executive session', with the full blessing of bend law enforcement behind them.

EXCELLENT FUCKING POINT. With the electorate staring down the barrel of a Bend PD gun if they don't like it.

Anonymous said...

>> A good Redneck is neither, as they by definition have a brain and use it.

***

Rednecks are self-sufficient and let you mess yourself up if thats what you want to do...but at the same time they'd give you the shirt off their backs. It's hard to pigeon-hole that into a political party!

MStucker said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Jan. 31 — WORD CAFE: Marc Futterman, a demographer, will give a talk on the changing face of Central Oregon; free; 5:30 p.m.; Bend Public Library, 601 N.W. Wall St., Bend; 312-1034.

Anonymous said...

Rednecks are self-sufficient and let you mess yourself up if thats what you want to do...but at the same time they'd give you the shirt off their backs. It's hard to pigeon-hole that into a political party!

*

Politicians will take the shirt-off-your back, and give it their owner, in exchange for holding office.

This is is why 'red-neck' doesn't have a fucking thing to do with politics. Politics or 'elections' are an advanced auction of stolen goods where party A promises to steal from Party B, on behalf of Party C.

Bend will get its reward, its coming.

Anonymous said...

What I dislike about dishonest panhandlers (and they are in the majority) is that they prey dishonestly on people's sense of charity. Handing out tax free $$$ on street corners does NO FUCKING GOOD. Offer

*

I know what your saying, but look at Bend, 40,000 calis came up here to get rich, many will end up on the mean streets of Bend, now these folks were parasites to begin with, but they went along with TEAM DUBYA. They're angry, they're mean, and if you don't give it to them, they'll take it from you, because the world owes it to them, because Rush Limbaugh says so.

Homer says this week that the average construction worker/builder in Bend has 6th grade education. These folks came to Bend by the 1,000's in the past five years, and now 90% are out of work. They're 100% team-DUMBYA players, and they're going to be mad as hell.

There's NOT a fucking thing any of us can do, Mike Hollern of BEND forced the city hall to not charge SDC, and Bend got over-built, and too many of these 'builders' came, and now they're broke, angry, and destitute.

It's going to get really fucking ugly. Like me & homer have said for a long time, once the prices for RE here drop to NIL, you will not want to live here.

Sort of reminds of me Africa or Mexico, go into a store, and leave your car? Then hire meanest guy on the street to watch it for you, while your in, this is how Bend is going to become.

Does TEAM-DUMBYA fucking care?? Of course not, because prison-industrial-complex is #1, they want to hysteria, they want to create large regional prisons, Garzini & Borgman want to to lock people up by the thousand and pay them $1.20/hr to make tires.

Anonymous said...

This gets back to all these fucking 'gated community's' in Bend, anybody that travels, and sees what going on today in USA, knows what's coming, and whats going on.

Oh, yea DUMBYA is going to give everyone $300 in the coming months to fix the problem, so you can buy something, or pay some bills.

Anonymous said...

Hmmmmm, a Libertarian bent maybe??? Self Sufficency?

*

I'm not sure, words are 'fucked' liberal should mean liberty, and certainly libertarian.

In oregon liberal means a lesbian, who wants the EPA to list her as an endangered species so she gets priority in government hiring.

A 'libertarian' thinks he has the right to piss in the public well, cuz its his right.

I think the essential problem, is that we're in the desert, and all desert survived because people were nomadic. You can't have a lot people in one place in the desert, especially an oasis like Bend, as it will quickly become a desert, and the locusts ( calis ) will then move on.

Getting back to politics look at the current republican candidates its all about who is closer to baby-jeebus. The fucking democrats its all about who is the real black-man, remember clinton was our first black prez.

Life has always been hard, and now will get harder, the more people that leave Bend ASAP, the better. Those who know how to heat with wood, and forage will survive.

The western USA has always been about gold rushes, today is no different, they came by the 1,000's during the gold rush, and left when the mines played out, today in Bend the RE gold has played out, and they'll go on to the next gold-rush.

Anonymous said...

Bend creates a beer demand, by artificial shortage. This all sounds so familar, have an obscure paper rate 'Bend' as #1, nobody knows about Deschutes, desperate for marketing. Even Newport Market only got five cases, they even wanted it to be 'rare' in Bend. The beer ain't that good, Great-Divide "Yeti", is much better, and 1/2 the price.

Once again, Bend does what Bend does, get a favorable review, create a shortage, and market the hell out of it, and then hope that "Deschutes" is coveted by association.

Fact is $10/bottle, and $20 for a geri is a fucking RIPOFF, and Deschutes is just fucking itself.

They made it big time with black-butte porter, widmer has heifeviezen, if the fucking Abyss is so fucking good then make it all the time, and quit playing fucking marketing games.

p.s. last year the Abyss was pretty fucking good, this year it sucked. IMHO.

***
Demand draining specialty beer dry
Limited release - Deschutes' Abyss is quickly snatched up despite Oregon distribution doubling
Saturday, January 19, 2008
JOHN FOYSTON
The Oregonian Staff

Men's Journal magazine recently called Deschutes Brewery's Abyss the best stout in the world, and this part of the world seems to agree: Abyss 2007 hit stores a couple of days ago, and precious few bottles remain for sale in Portland.

"We didn't start selling it until 11 o'clock this (Friday) morning," said Mitzi Komisar at Belmont Station, a Portland specialty beer retailer. "It's just before noon now, and we've sold most of 10 cases. There are about 40 cases left, and they probably won't last through the day."

John's Market in Multnomah Village, another specialty beer store, sold most of the 50 cases it received midweek and expected to be out by Friday evening.


The Abyss is an imperial stout -- a dark, complex, strong beer aged in oak barrels. It has won several national and international awards, and the wax-sealed 22-ounce bottles sell for about $10 each. Oregon received 12,000 bottles -- a thousand cases.

Chris Hudson, the Bend brewery's regional sales manager, said a special beer like Abyss works only if people who want a bottle can find it without too much trouble.

That goal may be remote, despite Oregon receiving twice as much of the limited release this year. Hudson even heard of a Washington County store that got a call from a New Yorker wanting to buy its entire 10-case ration, cost no object.

Komisar said she's seen this kind of buzz once before at Belmont Station. "Last year's Abyss flew out the door, too," she said. "We hoped we'd get some more, but the distributor just laughed."

Find more information and a list of Abyss retailers at http://blog.oregonlive.com/thebeerhere/

John Foyston: 503-294-5976; johnfoyston@news.oregonian.com

Anonymous said...

Men's Journal magazine recently called Deschutes Brewery's Abyss the best stout in the world, and this part of the world seems to agree:

*

Mens journal isn't a beer-rag, this paid editorial by Bend PR&MARKETING has no meaning.

City of Bend "PAID" Outside Magazine editorial to say "Bend was the #1 MTN-BIKE place in the world", so fucking what, it doesn't mean shit.

"Mens Urinal" saying that Abyss is the worlds best beer don't mean shit either, and we all know, that whoever wrote it, is-was on the city of bend/deschutes payroll.

Anonymous said...

This Abyss BS is a chapter straight out of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. People WANT to be on the IN. Ridiculous.

PS-Great book recommendation Buster. Thx.

tim said...

>>or at least the liberals lay low and don't draw attention to themselves.

Except on bumper stickers. For the life of me, I don't know why people put their politics on their cars. R or D, I just want to egg your car.

Bewert said...

Re: political types, etc.

Let me throw one more out there-- progressive populism.

Someone who emphasizes personal responsibility (including not being corrupt)and hard work while having empathy and realizing some people really do need help, some people have been dealt terrible blows they need to, or may never, recover from.

Someone who believes in an equitable tax system, with the revenues spent on education, Social Security, universal health care, preserving the environment, and renewable energy and green infrastructure that provides local jobs, rather than bridges to nowhere and endless wars over oil.

Someone who thinks morality does not refer to what you do in private in your bedroom, but rather the good you do in the world around you, how you help those around you, and what you do to leave things better off than how you found them.

None of the MSM-promoted candidates comes anywhere near this, but there is one who is being shunned, including by the leadership of his own party, who comes very close:

Challenge the System

Here's another, with more issues covered, in front of a few thousand people in LA who obviously didn't get the message that he isn't really a viable candidate.

Flame away.

Anonymous said...

Someone who emphasizes personal responsibility (including not being corrupt)and hard work while having empathy and realizing some people really do need help, some people have been dealt terrible blows they need to, or may never, recover from.

*

Newboy 'Bruce' our self-appointed spokesman is a case in point, fresh off the fucking bus from Utah(sandy) or Sacramento. Wants our fucking pity.

Listen, virtually everyone that came to Bend in the last ten years came to hustle, the fact that you came hear, and didn't do your home-work is your problem, and not ours.

You'll get no crocodile tears on the 'Wo is Bruce, Almighty'.

I know zillion folks that have came here in the last two years from cali, most go straight to 'redmond' cuz its cheaper, but they're all in the same boat, they knew it was cheap, and that 'construction' jobs were plentiful.

I my HUMBLE opinion our city-hall that over-sold this shit-hole up until a few months ago, and in fact still does, failed to tell all those people coming here that there are NO jobs, unless working at walmart is your goal.

Fucking pity, how about those that have lived here for generations, and now can't afford to because you mother-fucking equity-parasites came here, I know your going to fix the place cuz your so fucking smart, that's why you left where you came from.

Anonymous said...

Let me throw one more out there-- progressive populism.


*

Kuratek, comes to mind, a guy from out of town, in a K-mart suit, talks the talk, these are your progressives.

They have always been around, when I hear someone say progressive, I always assume that they don't know what they're fucking doing, usually its a cover for being so new at something they don't yet even know what they're doing.

I would rather have someone be 'classical', or 'convervative', but fucking progressive, this is just babble from PR/Marketing people to convince young voters they're on to something, remember brick&mortar a years ago, it was going to go way, as the web was the progressive future, ...

Just another class of con-artist, just like your babble, ... NOBODY is going 'fix' social-security, because it can't be fixed, its a pyramid scam, and those early on got more than they put in and eventually the youth will shut it down, when they find out they'll get less than they put in.

All your fucking progressive 'brucey' dribble is just fucking KURATEK out of town promises, hell even when kuratek didn't deliver the SEP06 financing, he was out, the good old boyz didn't put up with his 'progressive' talk, cuz bullshit walks and money talks, and kuratek didn't deliver any fucking money.

Anonymous said...

. R or D, I just want to egg your car.

*

Ya, its pretty fucking stupid, but there's two I like, and I would like to create a fund so we could print 1,000's and paste them on the tourist cars,

1.) "Don't Bend Our Town".

2.) "If its tourist season, how come we can't shoot them".

Anonymous said...

Someone who believes in an equitable tax system,

[ bruce pussy this is an oxymoron, there is no 'equitable' taxation, there never has, life isn't fair, never has been, never will be ]

with the revenues spent on education, Social Security, universal health care, preserving the environment,

[ with an efficiency of about five cents the on dollar, yeh lets collect all the money have our 'gubmint' redistribute, and lets have the lesbians be the gatekeepers ]

and renewable energy and green infrastructure that provides local jobs,

[ an oxymoron, all energy sources destroy, it really all comes down to where you dump the residue, .e.g air, distant country, rural, ... batterys are toxic, solar-panel construction is a toxic process, wind turbines kill birds, ... get your wife to pedal generators on fixed bikes, and all the strong women she knows, and then we'll have a local energy source. Perhaps we can force them to pedal for free and create an 'equitable' energy system in Bend. ]

rather than bridges to nowhere and endless wars over oil.

[ bridges to somewhere, if you live near there, then they are to somewhere, I have been in that part of Alaska, me thinks bruce-pussy spends too much time propagating democrat rhetoric, ... OIL is the most efficient portable energy system, in the history of man, the good news is will be gone in a generation or so, the bad news is until its gone, we're all going to kill each other for it ]

Anonymous said...

Hmmm, not cheap, but I'd still buy one of each:

http://www.makestickers.com/Stickers_Pricing.aspx

Bewert said...

Re: Wants our pity

Fuck off, asshole. You ever get the courage to actually put your real name on the bullshit you spout, I'll take you seriously. Until then you are just another Anonymouse with a cunt.

I left where I came from because I hate the fucking Mormons. You get an infestation of them here, too, but they are a minority.

Most of those people who came here when laboring jobs were plentiful will leave. The morgtage brokers and RE types will find something else to do.

I wasn't talking about people trying to make a quick buck or support their families on the back of a bubble, I was talking about people who get T-boned by someone else heading south on 97 on an icy day, or have their pensions taken away by a corrupt corporation like Enron, etc.

Kuratek is no progressive. Progressives don't fucking build shit no one wants, like at Bayside Meadows. Get a fucking clue or shut the fuck up.

I don't want or need your fucking pity, asshole. Go crawl back in your slimy little hole.

Anonymous said...

Kuratek is no progressive. Progressives don't fucking build shit no one wants, like at Bayside Meadows. Get a fucking clue or shut the fuck up.

*

Bayside meadows was a 100 year old horse-race track, before Kuratek tried to have it torn down so he could build Condo's on the land. He tried to get the land condemned by the city of San Mateo, he had them in his pocket like Bend, but the good people of San Mateo ran him out of dodge, and he then came to Bend, where people love to get screwed.

Kuratek is a 'progressive' in the finest tradition of Bend, why that old Juniper-Ridge might have sat forever if he had not discovered it, and reminded people that it only cost a dollar, and nobody needs industrial jobs here, hell what we need is more condo's. It the progressive gold of Bend Condo's. It the progressive 'GOLD' of the new millenium.

In summary, I don't think Kuratek ever got much of anything off the ground down there, thats why he came up here, where 'progressivism' is more receptive.

The good-old boyz of Bend were conservative, and didn't like Kuratek, but Abernethy, Capell, & Friedman adore him, he talks their 'progressive talk', which of course is 100% PURE fucking bullshit.

Anonymous said...

Me thinks bruce pussy is having a hard day.

Perhaps its the water? Or maybe the idea of having his wives ride stationary bikes to generate progressive risk-free cost-free energy for Bend was a little to close to home.

Perhaps those CACB perpetual motion micro-turbines could be hooked to the all those bikes.

So many Mormrons, and so little time.

Anonymous said...

I wasn't talking about people trying to make a quick buck or support their families on the back of a bubble, I was talking about people who get T-boned by someone else heading south on 97 on an icy day, or have their pensions taken away by a corrupt corporation like Enron, etc.

*

Then say so bruce-pussy.

I agree, all those terrible accidents this winter, are all from calis that think that they're still driving in cali, even on the ice.

Well I hate to tell you this brucy, but Private Pensions, got taken away in the 1980's, that an old story from long ago.

Anonymous said...

Kuratek is no progressive. Progressives don't fucking build shit no one wants, like at Bayside Meadows. Get a fucking clue or shut the fuck up.

*

By my humble estimation bruce pussy, that would make Kuratek the finest kind of fucking 'progressive'.

You see bruce pussy, there is no 'bayside meadows', there never was, its all a shell, a holding company a dream, ... Did anyone here read the story above about the $70M housing tract in North Cali, built be a Bend guy that has NO DRINKING WATER?? A guy borrows $70M, and nobody things to secure drinking water for the subdivision...

What Kuratek did was find land that city's own, and try to steal it from the people to build condos, San Mateo ran him out, and he came up here, Its not clear that Kuratek ever did anything other than dog&pony shows, but who cares, that Bend, that's why we love him, and thats why he'll always be our poster boy for 'progressive' causes.

Kuratek NEVER built shit, but since you brought this up, that is my definition of a progressive, someone that builds something that nobody needs. Pets-dot-com, ... ALL the DOT-CON(COM) was all a progressive sell, the idea that youth could bring in new ideas.

Anonymous said...

Most of those people who came here when laboring jobs were plentiful will leave. The morgtage brokers and RE types will find something else to do.

*

Bruce pussy if your not one of these two groups, then when are you going to leave??

Anonymous said...

From the ONLY TV show I'll watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1skUElGtak

Anonymous said...

Hmmm, not cheap, but I'd still buy one of each:

http://www.makestickers.com/Stickers_Pricing.aspx

*

We need to get duncan to add it to his repertoire,

If duncan sets up a paypal, I could donate some money to help get it going.

It's just an idea duncan, somebody has do it, and it would increase your foot traffic to have all the cool 'bend' bumper-stickers.

Is there anyone in Bend selling these??

Trouble is you need quantity to get a good price. We need to get a feel of the demand, in this group its probably 2 or 3 max.

Bewert said...

Re: I have been in that part of Alaska, etc.

I have fucking family in Alaska. Most of the people near that proposed. bridge didn't want it, either. They had a perfectly acceptable ferry.

No, life isn't, has never been, and will never be fair. Assholes ignore other peoples problems, not realizing that someone without problems might actually contribute to society instead of being a drag on it.

Progressives say help people who want to stand up and society will be a better place, both for them and for yourself. Progressives say tax the fuckers who make tens of millions in non-wage income and use it to educate people, to provide health care to people, to create infrastructure in our country, not some country we bombed flat.

Oil is incredibly efficient. Energy does always have a cost. My point is why be so fucking stupid as a society to use way more fucking energy than we need to. Why ship trillions of dollars overseas instead of giving carpenter and electricians and plumbers jobs in green rebuilding here? Why drive 6000 pound vehicles around with one person while all our wealth flows to others? Why destroy our environment by flattening entire mountaintops for coal instead of making a real effort at becoming more efficient in our use of electricity?

Why not try to make a difference, unless you are shortsightedly self-interested, lazy, or corrupt?

You can sit behind your keyboard and be a fucking cynic that does absolutely nothing to make your world better, or you can at least make the effort and try.

I prefer the latter. That way I can look myself in the mirror at the end of the day.

/rant off

I have some work to do, but I'll be looking for more incoming later ;)

Bewert said...

Re: Bruce pussy if your not one of these two groups, then when are you going to leave??

When I feel like it. Most of my income comes from licensing my patents, which does not involve anybody in Bend.

Other than my tall, blonde, athletic wife.

So fuck off and go back to your slimy little hole.

Sorry, but I really have no respect for those who state they are doing nothing and it's just fine the way it is, that anyone with problems can just figure it out themselves. Health care is not right, you know. Too poor, and you can just die off.

And especially if said someone can't even stand up for themselves in person for that kind of pathetic statement.

Anonymouse with a vagina.

BTW it's "if you're not", not if your not...

Anonymous said...

>> BTW it's "if you're not", not if your not...

Now this is serious insult hurling here on this blog! If we open the floodgates to grammer and speling, we're dumed!

Bewert said...

RE: if we open the floodgates to grammer and speling, we're dumed!

Yeah, oh well...

Go PACK!

Anonymous said...

... because panhandlers don't like competition, in time they'll find out the winnings are better downtown ...
***

1. Will Bend Law acually let this happen -- and ruin tourism?

2. So you're saying, when the going gets tough, the have-nots will start forcbly taking from the haves in Ben?

If so, then it sounds like Bend will be the first spot of the American apocalypse.

Bewert said...

Re: If so, then it sounds like Bend will be the first spot of the American apocalypse.

Dude, you haven't seen the south side of Chicago or downtown Detroit, let alone south of Market in San Fran before the dot.com boom. The pushy beggars at Walmart aren't even close.

Wait until they have encampments with fires in barrels. That's still outside city limits, or down by Knott Landfill.

But, hell, realistically, they have more than enough empty houses to break into to find shelter.

Anonymous said...

Meh. If there's a homeless problem brewing, all Bend has to do is buy a few WORKING busses and drive the homeless over to Eugene. It's warmer there and Eugene actually likes the homeless--they treat them like lost puppies.

Anonymous said...

All of Oregon coddles home-less, that's why its legal to hitchhike on the FWY here.

Problem is the republicans want them to be invisible.

Like someone earlier pointed out, they have ALWAYS been in Bend, ALWAYS.

Today the're visible at home-depot, lowes, walmart, ... in the summer they're all over drake-park, they have always been along the rail-road tracks.

Today with the loss of jobs related to RE, there are 100's of people living in their cars, and with the Bend towing rules, many of them end up on the street.

Anonymous said...

Re: If so, then it sounds like Bend will be the first spot of the American apocalypse.


*

Bend is toxic.

Bend is #1.

Bend is ground zero in RE implosion.

Bend is-was the most over-valued RE in the USA 2005,2006,&2007.

They're still coming, even though there are no jobs, The city of Bend is still marketing Bend as if it were exceptional. ( If you work PR/Marketing, Bend is exceptional, or if your a 'consultant', it has unlimited capacity )

Suicides in Bend started last year, old people killing themselves because of debt. Mothers at Walmart begging for food-money ( or meth money ),...

Anonymous said...

1. Will Bend Law acually let this happen -- and ruin tourism?

[ Tourism in Bend is already FUCKED, its a town of Walmart, Home-Depot, Lowes, ... Tourists go to Sunriver or Black-Butte. Most of the recent tourist influx has been RV crowd, they're dinosaurs now with gas prices. It's over, that's why the city is spending more than ever before for PR/MARKETING of Bend. ]

2. So you're saying, when the going gets tough, the have-nots will start forcbly taking from the haves in Bend?

[ Nobody said 'forcibly' OUR beggars will beg, the gilded of Bend, take forcibly with the Bend Cops behind them in executive-session ( secrecy ). The Forced takings in Bend have been going on for years to finance Knife-River, and Brooks Resources. ]

Anonymous said...

They had a perfectly acceptable ferry.

*

Most ferry's in Alaska are shut down right now and falling apart.

Same with the ferry system in Washington.

Anonymous said...

Now this is serious insult hurling here on this blog! If we open the floodgates to grammer and speling, we're dumed!

*

Pleeeeeze we already have bruce-pussy as a net nanny, and there's bendbb over in his world.

Homer say's the average Bend person has a 6th grade education. Let's not make him wrong.

Anonymous said...

all Bend has to do is buy a few WORKING busses and drive the homeless over to Eugene.

*

Bend's homeless are here, because they want to be here, they came here because of the 24/7/365 marketing of the city-of-bend, build and they will come.

Well they came, now what the fuck are you going to do?

Oh, yea I remember the 'riche' were supposed to come? Where are those fucking rich? All I see is people who lost their homes in Cali coming up to Oregon, to start over, because we're exceptional, Bend is the next Aspen, its all trickle up here, everyone is rich. Even the 'homeless' have a better lifestyle in Bend.

Until the fucking city of Bend starts using their infinite PR/Marketing/Consulting skills to to tell the truth about this shit-hole, they'll just keep coming and coming.

Let's remember that the WHOLE marketing/PR scam of Bend is to attract morons and imbeciles, and then get them to buy zero-down homes. Trouble is nobody has had the balls to tell the city that, that game is over. The city of Bend, still thinks its 2005.

«Oldest ‹Older   1 – 200 of 204   Newer› Newest»