Monday, February 25, 2008

Extinct Species Found In Bend Oregon

ADDENDUM: Bend Economy Man emerges from year-long hibernation & posts to his blog:
http://bendoregonbubble.blogspot.com/
YEAH!

Well, if you wondered what Armageddon looks like, go outside. This is it.

I posted an "Addendum" to last weeks post regarding mstuckers mid-Feb update on Month to date sales.

One home a day sold.

Not that that rate could possibly be sustained at such a low level, but that's 365 homes a year! We did 2,849 sales in 2005.

If there's anything I'm sure of, it's that number will pick WAY up. 6 months ago I was also sure that we could NEVER get to where we are today.

timothy said... The gears have ground to a halt. You can hear the silence. Next up: the flood of "spring" inventory.

As I've said before: This will get worse than you or I ever thought possible. Even Bends Gold Standard builders is starting to crack:

Anonymous said...

The layoffs are a comin'. Palisch homes just laid off 17 employees including 4 of their 6 superintendents. They were the last builder still slamming houses up. Supposedly unloaded the building that their offices are located in also. Maybe wal mart is hiring.

Even Duncan hopped on the Prediction Bandwagon, and NAILED IT!

So, I think we'll see the first battleground in the dining industry. Obviously, a lot of older restaurants are seeing the handwriting on the wall. The second battleground I'll predict -- with absolutely no inside knowledge, just a guess -- is in office space and condo's, especially on the west side. Third battleground are the outliers -- businesses and stores located in what may be zoned retail but not normally seen as retail.

BANG! The very NEXT DAY, the Bulletin runs this piece (and kudo's to them, I suppose, for running ANY sort of real estate piece... FINALLY):

Area’s industrial and office space vacancies rising

‘If you’re in an expansion mode,’ says one local broker, ‘it’s a great time to be looking’

By David Fisher / The Bulletin

Published: February 24. 2008 4:00AM PST

When Chemica Technologies, a Bend-based biotech research firm, pulled up stakes and moved to Portland last year, the managers at Grace Bio-Labs didn’t hesitate.

Grace, a maker of patented labware for the molecular study of cells, was about to burst out of its space on Empire Avenue, Business Development Director Michelle Carney said. So it bought the building that Chemica left on west Bend’s Cyber Drive, complete with built-out lab space and offices.

Now Grace Bio-Labs, which has been in Central Oregon since 1986, has 2½ times more space for its 17 employees, with room to build out further.

“It’s very well suited to what we do,” Carney said. “So it was just a matter of being in the right place at the right time and having the right connections that we found this building when we did.”

Businesses throughout Bend and Redmond are finding industrial and office space easier to come by this year.

After three straight years of relatively tight vacancies and gradually rising lease rates, vacancies opened up in the fourth quarter of last year, Bruce Kemp, principal broker at Compass Commercial Real Estate, said Thursday. The change was fueled partly by a contraction in housing-related business sectors and partly by the effects of new buildings coming onto the market.

According to Compass’ quarterly survey of 177 buildings, office vacancies rose to 11.2 percent in Bend by the end of the year, nearly double the 6.5 percent of fourth quarter 2006.

Industrial buildings also loosened up in both Bend and Redmond, according to Compass’ survey. Bend’s fourth quarter vacancy rate reached 10.5 percent in industrial space.

Redmond’s reached 17.3 percent, bloated mostly by the addition of new buildings.

The total amount of space leased in both markets increased through the year, but not at the same rate of growth the markets saw in 2006. In Bend, 48,800 square feet of new office space was leased out through 2007 — less than half the 124,000 square feet that was absorbed in 2006.

Industrial absorption in Bend amounted to a little less than 85,700 square feet, according to Compass’ numbers, about 33 percent off the 2006 pace.

In Redmond, less than half as much new space was absorbed in 2007 as in 2006.

The bottom line for potential tenants is simple, Kemp said. Lease rates have remained stuck, but tenants are getting much better incentive deals from prospective landlords, ranging from richer tenant improvement allowances to several months of free rent, as landlords scramble to get their buildings filled.

“If you’re in an expansion mode,” Kemp said, “it’s a great time to be looking for space.”

Who’s looking?

After a moribund fall, activity in the commercial leasing market is picking up as companies, like Grace Bio-Labs, that are not related to the housing industry begin to realize that they might be able to find a decent deal on new space, said Steve Larsen, principal broker at Steve Larsen Properties.

Much of the interest seems to be coming from the nonhousing-related financial and service sectors — insurance brokers, lawyers, accountants — who have needed for some time to grow their practices to keep up with the expanding population, but have felt shut out by a tight leasing market, Larsen said.

Now, with monthly Bend office lease rates stuck in the $1.65 to $2 per square foot range, depending on class and location, and with landlord incentives rising, some are making their moves.

“I think there are a lot of people who have kind of been on the fence for a while through 2007 who are making those kinds of decisions, either because they are out of space or they can’t wait any longer,” Larsen said.

Still, there is an air of caution in the wind, Kemp said, and it’s tipping the weight of the market toward leasing rather than buying space, and toward holding off rather than starting a new building project.

From a tenant’s perspective, the factors that go into making those decisions can get complex, Kemp noted, but it boils down to a basic question: Is there more money to be made by investing in a building or by paying rent and investing the upfront cash back into the business?

Right now, market factors are tipping the table toward leasing, Kemp said. First, there’s the question of whether to invest in a building or in something else. With lease rates flat, it’s tougher for the income stream on a commercial building to compete with the 6.5 percent or more in simple interest that a similar investment could draw in the general economy.

Then there is the question of rising or decreasing real estate values, Kemp said: Right now, there’s downward pressure on the price of commercial buildings, and particularly fierce pressure on the price of commercial land.

Consequently, Kemp said, he would expect the major office buildings that are already under construction in Bend, including The ODS Cos. building at Wilson and Bond streets and the 38,000-square-foot Bonnett Point office building at the corner of Simpson Street and Colorado Avenue, to finish up and gradually fill up this year. But any new construction that starts is likely to be a build-to-suit project for a locked-in tenant — and he doesn’t expect to see many of those.

“It’s a little bit cautionary,” Kemp said. “I think people who may want to buy at some point in time are probably going to lease rather than buy right now.”

Office condos

That’s not to say that sellers aren’t trying.

Ron Ross, a commercial property broker for RE/MAX Equity Group in Bend, said he counted eight to 10 sales of commercial buildings in Bend in 2007. Last month, there were 66 commercial units listed for sale, Ross said. About half were buildings and the rest were office condos.

Office condominiums — buildings in which the tenants can buy a small piece of a larger building, rather than having to shell out the millions that it takes to build a full-sized, Class A structure — are a relatively new concept to Bend. Two of the largest, the 32,000-square-foot Vision Plaza building and the neighboring 11,420-square-foot Columbia View Suites, sit next door to each other on west Bend’s Columbia Street. Both have had units for sale for about six months and neither is close to full.

Ross is dubious of the concept’s staying power, particularly in a market that is already overbuilt.

“They just flat have not been successful,” Ross told a group of reporters and real estate agents at a Central Oregon Association of Realtors lunch Wednesday. “I’m sorry if I’m offending anybody here, but they have not been selling office condos.”

Larsen, the listing agent for Vision Plaza, said he has one of the building’s units under contract and another in negotiations. There are two letters of intent to lease some of its space — an option that wasn’t part of the owners’ plan when the building was built.

“Obviously, the last six months were not what I, as the listing agent, or the owners anticipated,” Larsen conceded, but he blamed the building’s slow sales more on market timing than on the concept.

It took more than 18 months to take the Vision Plaza building, where 1,200-square-foot units are listed for around $367,000, from the concept stage to completion, Larsen said. The market changed during that cycle — a risk that all developers of commercial buildings, most of which are large, expensive and time-consuming to build, face.

If it were easy, everybody would be doing it, and for a while, a lot of people did. But it’s a risky business,” Larsen said.

That’s true, Ross agreed. The current market has driven out most of its speculators and tax-deferred property exchangers, leaving a different sort of playing field. But it’s taking awhile, he said, for some of its players to adjust.

“Property has to stand on its own, fundamentally, right now, and if it does, we have good buyer interest,” Ross said. “That means it has to have real tenants, with good leases that are supporting the price point. If that happens, property can sell in today’s market. But unfortunately, we have a lot of sellers who don’t understand that, and even a lot of brokers who don’t understand that, so we’re building up an excess of inventory.

“Long-term, I’ve seen this picture before,” said Ross, who’s been in Central Oregon real estate since the economic troubles of the early 1980s. “I’m actually very positive … you just have to take a bigger picture, longer-term view.”

David Fisher can be reached at 541-617-7862 or at dfisher@bendbulletin.com.

First off, lemme say that Duncan has been calling this for awhile. Personally I am fairly out of touch with commercial, except for a glimmer of personal knowledge that downtown is becoming wildly overbuilt, with unsustainable lease rates. I ultimately think that the credit/housing bust will affect EVERYTHING, but this was one of those things that's off my radar.

Second, note that business expansion as measured by office space absorption has dropped in half in 2007 vs 2006. And 2007 was not really supposed to be weak. In fact, EVERYONE seemed to state repeadedly that commercial was 100% IMMUNE from the whole crdit/housing bust, at least in Bend.

My Lord, they were building commercial space like crazy in 2007!

I actually drank the Commercial Immunity Kool-Aid, and thought Bend commercial would be OK. I did NOT understand the economics of how that could happen, because I personally thought the lease rates were insane, and I thought the "office condo" had all the appeal of the "home condo": Nice if you love living wall-to-wall with your neighbors and sharing in the financial pain of the weakest link.

That horrible abomination out near Colorado will probably end up on the RIP board. Office Condo's? Geez, that'll end up being another collective "What the fuck were we thinking?" head slapper.

Apparently Dunc was right, and the only thing collapsing (Yes, they are collapsing. I don't need a freakin' dictionary to figure that out.) faster than the Bend housing market, is now the imploding commercial market.

We are headed towards a mega-glut in commercial space in Bend. Nice high, double digit vacancy rates, and all that good stuff. All those pining for The Good Old Days, circa 1983, in Bend will soon have their wishes granted.

The most interesting quote in the Bulletin piece, to me, was this:

Is there more money to be made by investing in a building or by paying rent and investing the upfront cash back into the business?

Yeah! My "Rent And Invest The Difference" motto is starting to get some traction.

Of course it would be considered far more quickly in a purely financial setting like commercial. Rent & Invest The Diff is harder to implement with your wife & kids involved.

Ross' final quote about being "positive longer-term" is a continuation on the Elizabeth Taylor SMEAR IT OUT thesis. Everything will be fine if you take the 1,000 year view.

OK, I agree with that.

Good job Dunc, on nailing this one!

So... what else happened this week?

Oh right. CACB revised their quarterly earnings to pocket change.

Huh, seemed like they had ironed out all the Q4 messiness last month:

Cascade Bancorp (Oregon) (Nasdaq: CACB) Released Results for the Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2007, Confirming Earnings Per Share at $0.19 and $1.23, Respectively
BEND, Ore., Jan. 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Cascade Bancorp ("Cascade")
CACB reported 2007 full year Diluted Earnings Per Share (EPS-diluted) at $1.23 per share down 8.4% as compared to 2006 with Net Income at $35.0 million versus $35.7 million for 2006. As pre-announced on January 3, 2008, the Company confirmed it recorded a $7.5 million (pre-tax) provision for credit losses for the fourth quarter of 2007 to increase the Company's level of credit reserves primarily related to its residential land development loan portfolio. This resulted in a full year 2007 provision of $11.3 million versus $6.0 million in 2006. Fourth quarter 2007 earnings per share were $0.19 per share on $5.3 million of net income, compared to $0.36 per share and $10.2 million for the year ago quarter and as compared to $0.35 for the linked-quarter. The Company also confirmed its pre-announced fourth quarter net-charge-offs of approximately $3.9 million, a majority of which were against loans affected by the real estate downturn.

Sorry! Hold the bus! 'Member that thing we said last month? Scratch that, that was a big load of shit! Man, were we way off. We actually got our ass waxed. Here ya go, this here is the Real Deal:


Market Report -- In Play (CACB)

February 21, 2008 4:31 PM ET

Cascade Bancorp increases Q4 provision for credit losses Co announces that it revised its estimated Q4 earnings from its previously reported results on Jan 23. Co says its Q4 results are reduced to $0.01 per share. This updated earnings estimate is the result of an $8.1 mln (pre-tax) increase in its provision for credit losses to $15.6 mln from the $7.5 mln previously announced. Co says "As we navigate through this challenging downturn in the real estate market, we will continue to monitor our loan portfolio and take appropriate measures to reserve against the risks posed."

Some among us seemed DUBIOUS about this financial wink-wink...


Bend Economy Man said...

Just a thought:

If Bank of the Cascades had 4Q 2007 earnings of $0.01 per share, probably a safe bet that in 1Q 2008 it's running at a loss.

CACB really "lucked out" (wink-wink) that even after revising its accounting mistakes, it managed to eke out a meager profit, thus delaying the inevitable "Bank of the Cascades Unprofitable" headline for a few months.

How, by the way, has P. Moss kept her job the whole time?

My target CACB stock price for April 2008: $9.

The financial sophisticates at Cascade Bancorp decided that they would sidestep the financial implosion overwhelming them:

Step 1) Drink Kool-Aid non-stop
2) Report earnings 50% below prior year
3) Wait for the hub-bub to die down, then drop the other ONE FOURTH of the earnings bomb.

Hey WAIT! "ONE FOURTH"? That sort implies this line of bullshit spewing forth from Patty "Never A Quarterly Loss On My Watch" Moss is NOT OVER.

Right. See, the losses at CACB dwarf their Kool-Aid fueled idiocy. The losses are FAR larger than what they are reporting. They have applied liberal amounts of ELIZABETH TAYLOR-FICATION to their reporting so that the horror is minimized.

Moss & Crew get the ::eye roll:: of the week for this little facade.

Anonymous posted this:

More people moving in, but at a slower pace
California continues to be No. 1 feeder market by far
By David Fisher / The Bulletin
Published: February 17. 2008 4:00AM PST

Back in 2006, Altrec.com CEO Mike Morford and his managers figured they had to get their company out of Seattle. The offices of the online seller of outdoor gear were 15 traffic-choked miles from its warehouse, and it was running out of space.

It was tough to compete for top-level techies in a region dominated by Amazon.com and Microsoft, Morford recalled Wednesday. People’s commutes were tough.
Nobody, in other words, was having much fun.

So the company cast a net around seven or eight Western towns and regions, including Central Oregon, weighing 20 or more different variables, from transportation to space availability to state incentives, to find a new place.


It settled on Redmond. Since it moved in September 2006, the company has brought 17 families to Central Oregon from outside the area, Morford said. Its total staff has tripled, partly because it has been relatively easy to attract talented people to the area to keep its Web design, marketing and search engine functions going, and partly because it has found a reasonable supply of them here.

“It actually has worked out better than we thought it would,” Morford said. “We knew it was going to be fun, in the sense of moving to Central Oregon, but I’ve been amazed at the number of people from places like San Francisco and Seattle who know about Bend. They have a place in Sunriver, or they’ve vacationed here or something, and they are trying to figure out how to live here.”


The total number of new families moving into and out of the area has slowed with the national housing slump, if data on interstate shipments from three of the country’s largest movers is any indication, but the basic trend remains strong.

People who can afford to move, and who can afford to hire movers, continue to prefer moving into Central Oregon to moving out of it by about a 2-to-1 margin.


Overall in 2007, United Van Lines LLC, Mayflower Transit LLC and Atlas Van Lines Inc. reported 369 shipments into Central Oregon’s three counties, and 179 shipments to other states.
California accounted for the bulk of the inbound shipments with 37.9 percent, followed by shipments from Washington state at 9.8 percent.

Overall, four times more Californians moved in than moved out, with 140 coming in to 33 moving out. Washington’s 36 inbound shipments exactly doubled the number moving out of the region to that state, but some numbers were more balanced.

Sixteen shipments headed for Arizona, while only 19 came in from there
, according to statistics from the three movers.

Colorado sent 18 shipments into Central Oregon, but got 15 back.
Massachusetts was the only net draw from the Central Oregon region, attracting eight shipments out, but sending only two back.

Slowdown in moves
The inbound migration pattern may have remained strong through 2007, nearly exactly reflecting the 2-to-1 inbound ratio of 2006. But the total amount of movement dropped substantially. The 369 inbound trips of 2007 were down nearly 15 percent from 2006. Outbound moves dipped, too, dropping 10.5 percent from 2006 to 179.

The data, collected from the three movers last week by The Bulletin, gives an incomplete picture of the region’s total migration pattern because it includes only interstate moves. Moves within Oregon are regulated by a different arm of government that doesn’t require the same type of data collection.


Still, the drop in overall numbers reflects a national slowdown in shipments, Atlas Van Lines spokeswoman Barbara Cox said, which is grounded in a single factor: A sluggish housing market is making it tougher for people to sell their homes where they are, which makes it tougher for them to relocate.


The slowdown is as apparent in Central Oregon, a region whose housing economy has traditionally been dependent on newcomers for its strength, as it is in the rest of the country.
Sales of single-family homes on lots dropped 26.7 percent to 1,520 last year in Bend, according to the Central Oregon Association of Realtors, while the number of homes listed for sale topped 1,200 at the end of the year.

Redmond’s sales fell even further, dropping nearly 43 percent to 516, with more than 500 homes still listed for sale at the end of the year.
As they have in much of the country, slowing sales are translating into lower prices.

In west Bend’s NorthWest Crossing, a 400-acre subdivision developed by Brooks Resources Corp. and Tennant Development, sales of housing units slid into the 45 to 50 range in 2006 and 2007, from the 105 sold in 2005, according to David Quiros, principal broker at NorthWest Crossing Realty.
About 75 percent of the NorthWest Crossing inventory that sold last year went to buyers from outside the area, at prices that were significantly off.

Lots in the subdivision today are listed as low as $138,000, he said, down from the spring 2006 peaks of nearly $200,000.


The fiercest downturn in moving activity seemed to settle in last fall, a couple of months after a credit crunch bit the nation’s mortgage lending markets, said Harold Perry, owner of local Atlas agent City Moving and Storage Co., and it hasn’t picked up yet.
“We had some things going last year, but jeez, there’s nothing going on this year,” Perry said, calling this year the worst winter he’s seen in the local moving business since the early 1980s. “You could almost go to sleep and not miss anything, so it’s bad. Whether it comes back or not is anybody’s guess.”

Given the number of unsold houses in Central Oregon and its biggest feeder markets, the leaders of Brooks Resources, the region’s biggest development company, figure that land and home prices may have to work their way back roughly to 2003 levels before the market regains some semblance of supply-and-demand balance, Brooks Resources President Kirk Schueler said.

That would bring median home prices in Bend back to the mid-$200,000 range.
The median sales price through 2007 for Bend homes on lots stood at about $349,000, according to the Central Oregon Multiple Listing Service.

“Our prediction — I guess maybe it’s a hope — is that it squares around when we get back around the 2003 area,” Schueler said, “and it varies. Different pockets of town will do better than others.”
Who wants to be here Meanwhile, Nancy Lynch, who’s owned local United Van Lines agent Bend Storage & Transfer Inc. since 1981, said she expects the same kinds of migration patterns to continue, even if they happen in reduced numbers.

Some will move here from warmer climates, then move back again after a few winters of snow and cold. Some will move here with half-formed dreams of economic success, then fail and move away.


On balance, though, the area for more than a decade has been a magnet for retiring baby boomers and others who are anxious to get away from the rat races, Lynch said, and the ones who have either brought jobs or money with them — or both — have had the best luck sticking.
If they can get here.

California reported its lowest number of outbound moves in more than a decade
, according to Atlas’ year-end report, possibly because people found it difficult to extricate themselves from houses in that state’s hard-hit markets. But despite the national slowdown in movement, Atlas’ national statistics still indicated a strong inclination for people in the country to move West, according to the company’s year-end report, with net movement particularly strong into the Northwest.


Falling prices in the local housing stock might actually help the region pull out of its funk faster than the rest of the nation, since its underlying desirability apparently remains undiminished, said Roger Lee, executive director of Economic Development for Central Oregon.
“People still want to own homes and, in our case, boomers still want to be in the Pacific Northwest,” Lee said, “so things are playing well for us. If we were in the same position in Detroit, I don’t know what my forecast would be.”

February 17, 2008 10:58 AM

First of all, this piece goes on and on about the TREMENDOUS inbound inbalance between Oregon & just about everywhere else. Population figures from the Census bureau:

California: 36.5MM
Washington: 6.4MM
Arizona: 6.2MM
Oregon: 3.7MM

OK, we are TINY compared to these other places! There's NO ONE here to somehow push that ratio positive. There will probably NEVER be an outbound positive ratio to ANY of these states... EVER!

This also reminds me of the recent reports that Oregon is among the lowest states in foreclosure. Wyoming is The Lowest. Lowest number of foreclosures in the country are in Wyoming.

Wow! Real estate must be KICKING ASS in Wyoming, right?

Huh, here's a nugg printed by BendBB, "New data reveal depth of housing slump":

The states suffering the biggest drop in sales in the third quarter were Nevada, down 44 percent and Wyoming, down 42 percent. Other states with big declines were New Mexico, down 39 percent, Oregon, down 38 percent and Arizona, down 37.6 percent.

Uh huh. It seems that when you measure things on AN ABSOLUTE BASIS, stuff like OUTBOUND MIGRATION & FORECLOSURE NUMBERS can make small markets look GREAT. That's SOLELY because the population figures are TINY.

Oregon is a TINY population state, just like Wyoming. DUH. That's why we don't have a lot of foreclosures.

Granted, there's more to it than population... Michigan is suffering from a depression, and THAT is going to keep them in the doldrums for years.

But even if WE are having the Best of Times, and Cali is suffering The Worst of Times, they WILL HAVE MORE FORECLOSURES than we ever will. Basic math.

Don't succumb to basic mathematical crap that is being printed around here. Is it true? Yes. Is it also misleading? Of course. Somehow you never find the footnote telling you that:

1) We are a very low population state & will ALWAYS have a small number foreclosures.
2) We are 18 months behind the curve of the RE Mega Bubble Implosion.

The header over on BendBB puts it well:

Economic statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is important... what they conceal is vital.

BEM said it best with respect to these recent Disaster Scenario Bulletin stories:
Bend Economy Man said...

I think that The Bulletin showed some backbone by publishing some rough facts and deadly quotes right after the COBA campaign began. Kudos to The Bulletin.

Yes, they followed the old Bulletin formula of Misleading Headline That Says Exactly the Opposite of the Facts in the Story / "Happy News" First and Last Paragraphs / Hard-Hitting News in the Middle. But by now I think we've deduced that this is in the Bulletin's editorial standards manual.

Another nail in the Bend Miracle coffin?

80 losing jobs at Bright Wood
Layoffs amount to 16 percent of work force; company attributes cuts to housing market

By Lauren Dake / The Bulletin
Published: February 21. 2008 4:00AM PST

MADRAS — For the second time in just more than a year, Madras-based Bright Wood Corp. has laid off more than 10 percent of its work force.

Around 180 out of 1,130 employees, working mainly in manufacturing and administrative positions, will be let go, said Bright Wood President Dallas Stovall. The layoffs started Monday and should be completed by the end of the week. The cuts amount to about 16 percent of the staff.

This should come as no surprise. And like CACB earnings "surprises", this one ain't over either. The hits will keep coming.

Area tourism feeling a pinch
By Jeff McDonald / The Bulletin
Published: February 21. 2008 4:00AM PST

Skiers and snowboarders flocked to Central Oregon over Presidents Day weekend, but the business boost was short-term relief in a so-so winter for many businesses that rely on visitors, industry representatives said Wednesday, expressing nervousness about the future.

Benefiting from clear roads, ample snow and sunny days, Hoodoo Mountain Resort broke attendance records over the holiday weekend, and Mt. Bachelor ski area saw more visitors and spending. But local lodging properties and restaurants are feeling the pinch of a cooling national economy.

A slow December and January at many area lodging properties could bode ill for the region’s $498 million-a-year tourism economy, according to Alana Audette, president and CEO of Central Oregon Visitors Association, which promotes the region’s tourism industry.

“Overall, we’re still getting that sense that people are just belt-tightening a bit,” she said. “People are getting more wary about making those vacation plans. Advance reservations for spring are off, and the summer also is showing signs of slowing. It’s making us real nervous.”

Business has dropped between 15 percent and 20 percent the past 2½ months at Merenda Restaurant and Wine Bar in downtown Bend, said Jody Denton, chef and owner. He said the slowdown has affected many restaurants and retail businesses around town. Denton also is chef and owner of Deep, which opened downtown in June.

“I don’t think anybody’s immune,” Denton said. “I thought Bend would dodge the bullet until December and January, but it’s definitely trickled down.”

Bend’s cold housing industry has played a large role in slower business at Merenda and Deep, Denton said.

Folks, you wondered what absolute calamity looked like? It's here, now.

Our commercial real estate sector has finally jumped whole hog into the bursting RE horror. Ridiculous concepts like "office condos" which is a simple-minded attempt to sell RE to the only group capable of buying anymore, BUSINESS, has failed MISERABLY. Lease rates are simply unsustainable.

Local banks, that only months ago declared themselves fit as a fiddle financially & almost completely IMMUNE from the collapse... LIED. They were firmly planted in some Kool-Aid fueled hallucination where they were exempt from reality. Even I bought into this fantasy. As GHWB so eloquently put it:


When US Presidents become confused, they invoke THE WHO!

CACB plumbed new lows, and is within eyeshot of the single digits. Who would have thunk it? Even CACB Shorter covered in the $20's.

People aren't moving here anymore. Has Bend lost its luster? Well, certainly some. I got here in 2001, and am not enamored of the "attitude" that has transformed the place in just that short time. Honking, rude, self-absorbed psychotic consumerist nightmares. Hopefully the Bust will put out that fire.

More specifically, NO ONE CAN SELL THEIR HOUSE, and we are finding that THAT is the grist of the Bend economic mill. We RELY on the ability to GRIFT PEOPLE OF THEIR MONEY. Look at that quote from the "moving" piece:

they are trying to figure out how to live here.

This is just amazing. I know of Very Few places where you have to "figure out" how to live somewhere. YOU FUCKING WORK. OK, you work.

Not Central Oregon. We are grifters, we have to FIGURE OUT how to survive. And my God, has the grifter trade here been a bonanza for the last 5 years. Ask Holz-Tek: Two of the most gifted Flim-Flam men to ever grace our shores. These two drew up a Perpetual Motion Machine on a napkin, called it a "Master Plan", and sold to the City of Bend for $2,560,000! AWESOME!

Unfortunately, this gig is up. The money has gone away, and there's no one left to pay for the nightmare created during this romp. Brucey got the Big Fuck You, when he dared address this problem with Bends Big Muckety Mucks:

bruce said... On the CC meeting: LS building looks as good as we will get, Sonia is worried about money (some real "choices" will have to be made if we don't sell any JR land next year) and the dickhead John Russell simply brushed me off with a "no" when I asked him how we were planning on paying for the roads/sewers/etc. for the 50 acres we were planning on selling if all the money from that acreage was going to pay for the current shit that we are building.

I STRONGLY ENCOURAGE you to head over to Bruce's Blog, and read his headline piece, "JR Financing Just Doesn't Make Sense". Excellent review on the Circular Financial Clusterfuck that is Juniper Ridge.

Nice Bruce.

Finally I want to retract my statements of last week, that could be interpreted that this may NOT be the Best Buyers Market in 20 Years in Bend.

I thought about it, and maybe they are right. This MAY WELL be The Best Buyers Market Of ALL TIME. Check this listing over on BendBB:

2008-02-22 2613809 Bend Mtn River Estates 1475000 725000 -750000 -50.85 219 11

This little Sugar Shack has been listed since the Earth was a ball of hot magma, and worse it's been marked down ELEVEN TIMES, for a total of OVER FIFTY PERCENT.

Think about it: This little shithole has been for sale FOREVER, and has taken 11 Reality Revisions for a 50+% hit in price. This bodes well for a strategy that has been non-existent for 5 years in Central Oregon:

The Coma Inducing, "I've Gone Fuckin Blind" 50+% OFF Lowball.

This species, long ago thought extinct, actually has a basis in reality nowadays. People who previously would have not even thought about responding... well, most probably still will not respond, but SOME WILL.

The sale of RE around here is being removed from peoples DISCRETIONARY table and being put on the COMPULSORY table. They HAVE TO SELL.

Can you imagine throwing this homeowner a 50% OFF lowball on Day 1? My God, they'd call the cops on you. "We've got a crazy person in the building!".

Have a scroll through BendBB's price change boards. Those badboys are well-populated with HUGE reductions from initial DREAMY list prices. There are people who HAVE TO SELL.

Now their prices are still insane in most instances. That should tell you something, when they are still 100% too high after a 35% price reduction. BUT, you can walk to the table in todays atmosphere of Dread, and calmly throw down a LOWBALL that renders every man in the room sterile, and every pregnant woman goes into premature delivery.

And you won't be removed forcibly. They might actually talk about it. Most won't. 90+% won't. But the ones that DO, can be worth your while. Some of these people/banks that hold onto 3 or 4 $320K EMPTY rental shitholes, MAY look kindly on a $190K kick square in their hairy-ass beanbag, if it means avoiding foreclosure on the lot of them.

This could be The Best Buyers Market EVER. But you gotta have the means & the fuckin nads to walk in unabashed, and give EVERYONE in the room FINANCIAL EBOLA & THE FUCKIN AIDS with a lowball that DOES NOT saddle YOU with their Horrific Financial Problems.

If you play their game, you will get killed. You'll hold an unsalable piece of shit in a MASSIVELY DECLINING market. You'll never break even, and you'll lose money every month, and you'll take a 33% haircut AT BEST when it comes time to sell, and that's a Big IF... IF you can sell.

But, if you firmly plant a scrote busting, steal-toed LOWBALL right in their crotch, you can actually make out OK, and that is IF AND ONLY IF you do NOT plan on selling in the next decade, and you can make that cracker shack pencil as a rental. And there are Realtors who are STARVING TO DEATH for you to play this game.

So do me proud folks: Go out looking for a cracker shack, and walk proudly to the table and throw down a LOWBALL that ruptures every eyeball vein in the place.


The Sign of A Successful Bend Oregon Real Estate Transaction


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Bewert said...

Hay, Paul-doh, some folks can't figure out the comment paging thingy...

Thanks for the nod. When I see my poor little blog next to Dunc's on your masthead, I'll know I'm a SUCCESS :)

Duncan McGeary said...

I guess I see commercial and housing as two sides of the same coin.

People work in buildings and live in houses; people live in houses and work in buildings. You know?

And the money they buy and build these buildings and houses are from the same institutions; in fact, I think from what I'm reading, the financial shenanigans were even worse with the bigger commercial projects (bigger money, more ways to hide it).

I would also point to the number of 'new business filings' in Deschutes County going from 41.9 in 1997 to 468 in 2005.

Houses have dropped merely to 1997 levels.

Business filings have only dropped to 332.

Disaster in the making. And no surprise to anyone who's been in business in Bend for longer than, say, 5 years. A RIDICULOUS number of new businesses.

People seem to see the overflow of restaurants, but not see the insane number of stores. The stores exist, therefore they must belong, right? Exceptionalism is alive and well in retail.

Countrywide, independent bookstores can drop from 7500 to 3000 over the last six years, but Central Oregon can jump from 2 to 7 and now one things thats....unusual?

But that's no more true than saying all these houses exist, therefor people must be living in them.

Duncan McGeary said...

"now one things thats...unusual?"

I write like I have a cold....

Anonymous said...

Speaking of commercial leases, does anyone know where I can setup to build my newest invention? It's a solar powered ass-cleaner/dildo washer. I need to find a place fast! I'm onto something I think.

Bewert said...

Re: Les Schwab’s departure leaves hole in Prineville

Borgman doesn't give a fuck about Prineville. He's a true "businessman", ready to fuck over anybody for his own good. With diesel so expensive and not looking at getting cheaper ever, it's only a matter of time before the LS distribution center gets moved a whole lot closer to the dock where the tires come in. The savings will result in a bigger bonus for Borgman, and true economic depression for Prineville. Nothing personal, it's just business...

Anonymous said...

Ya, Hey, Marge here:

Don't forget that garage sales are a big measure of the economy. Great and fun news. There will be tons'o newish stuff in the garage sales this year. Big stuff too ! Like complete, full tilt, Orvis fly fishing gear for 10 cents on the dollar. Skidoos, seadoos, motorhomes, tent trailers, just about everything for the great Bend outdoors. The empty spec houses will have sales on all the stainless steel appliances too.
This will be "da best buyers market in 20 years" COVA didn't say it was only gooin ta be houses.

Marge..havin a fun day :<)

Anonymous said...

http://www.ci.bend.or.us/depts/urban_renewal_economic_development/index.html

The above is a good picture of Russell of Juniper-Ridge city manager, ...

Yes, bruce is correct the end of history, there is NO history now in Bend prior to 2007, there never was a kuratek, or an OTAK,

There was ONLY the vision of Les Schwab from day one, back in 1990, old Les said JR, and in 2008 LS came to JR, and god said that it was good.

Well bruce, the doc you need to get now is the separation agreement that Kuratek signed to get his $2.5M, not only did he sign it to say he'll never sue, but also that he never existed.

There is NOW not a fucking thing in terms of history at the city-bend site now except post 2007, well after all asses were purged.

Again bruce, find the doc, there must be a doc that Kuratek signed to get his money.

Anonymous said...

Bruce,

I'll say one thing if you google .. "borgman les schwab juniper ridge", all you get is a perfect picture of Bend, Oregon.

I think this is why Russell doesn't give you kisses and such,


***

BendBubble: Juniper Ridge: Les Schwab Corporate Welfare - JUST SAY NO
Mount Borgman: Bends Les Schwab Nightmare; Juniper Ridge is Dead: Long Live Les Schwab Urban ... Juniper Ridge: Les Schwab Corporate Welfare - JUST. ...
bendbubble.blogspot.com/2007/11/juniper-ridge-les-schwab-corporate.html - 52k - Cached - Similar pages

BendBubble: Les Schwab Handoff "Planned in Detail"
These search terms have been highlighted: schwab juniper ridge ..... Mount Borgman: Bends Les Schwab Nightmare · Juniper Ridge is Dead: Long Live Les Schwab ...
bendbubble.blogspot.com/2007/05/les-schwab-handoff-planned-in-detail.html - 82k - Cached - Similar pages

More results from bendbubble.blogspot.com »
Bend Blogs » BendBubble » Mount Borgman: Bends Les Schwab Nightmare
Borgman. Very few rock outcroppings survived the pillage of being exempt from the Juniper Ridge Master Plan. The city let Les Schwab do it there way, ...
www.bendblogs.com/BendBubble/2007/11/22/Mount_Borgman:_Bends_Les_Schwab_Nightmare - 128k - Cached - Similar pages
Bend Blogs » BendBubble » Juniper Ridge is Dead: Long Live Les ...
Borgman CEO of Les Schwab, wants to commute from Awbrey to Juniper Ridge, and his quest for that lifestyle, tore a city apart. ...
www.bendblogs.com/BendBubble/2007/11/15/Juniper_Ridge_is_Dead:_Long_Live_Les_Schwab_Urban_Renewal_Zone - 116k - Cached - Similar pages
More results from www.bendblogs.com »

Anonymous said...

Homer,

Your post wasn't so funny today, why the somber mood?

Ya'll notice that homer has been working more lately?

So tell us Homer, you sticking around?

Yes, the next 3-6 months in Bend are going to be very interesting.

RE paralysis is now going to enter the next phase, and at the same time that MTG Loans will dry up.

Even the MTG Office owners I know in the State have sent their wives, "BACK TO WORK".

In 3-6 months we'll have Realtors on welfare, 1,000's of construction folks out of work.

If your a renter, and NOT in for the long haul, you better right now make sure your in a secure hood, cuz crime is going to sky-rocket and soon.

Bewert said...

Re: Well bruce, the doc you need to get now is the separation agreement that Kuratek signed to get his $2.5M, not only did he sign it to say he'll never sue, but also that he never existed.

Yep, that and any and all records or documentation Kuratek provided for documentation of expenses. There are actually three documents to be negotiated and signed according to Garzini, plus those payables docs. You know Cooper Robertson doesn't work cheap, but it would be interesting to see just how much of a profit Kuratek made on the deal.

Going back through the old docs the whole JRP thing was such a setup, two guys with very little actual experience win out in a rigged system for a 20+ year contract. If they hadn't gotten greedy, we would probably still be stuck with them.

The city needs to get out of the development business and stay in the zoning business. And when something is zoned in a master plan, don't change the fucking zoning. I hate it when somebody buys a piece of property knowing full fucking well what the zoning is and then goes crying to the City about how he needs it rezoned to make any money, boo hoo, boo hoo. That's how we end up with a bunch of fucking crap stuck together in a way that makes no fucking sense.

And don't even get me started on fucking LS providing their own CCR's to the city...that fucking deal is the noose that is going to suffocate the JR dream.

Anonymous said...

Flooded Retail...
How long can a cinnamon bun store last? Across from the old Eddies. You have to be an old timer to know Eddies, now know as OLCC east.
How long for designer edible food arrangements?
How long for 6 stores within 1/4 mile of Hwy 20 and 27th that sell cell service?
People buying jobs, just to go broke and be in debt. Take a vacation instead.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

How long can a cinnamon bun store last?

You talking about the place near Longboard Louies? I've been over there a few times, and NEVER has it been open. And yes, I am there during their stated business hours....

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Hay, Paul-doh, some folks can't figure out the comment paging thingy...


I probably can't either, cuz I don't know what it is....

Duncan McGeary said...

People really don't 'get' Bend. One of my first jobs when people get here it to reorient them. This isn't San Fran, it isn't L.A., it isn't even Portland, or....even Eugene or Salem.

The question gets asked every day: Am I the "ONLY" game, comic, card, whatever shop. I always want to say, there are dozens of us, what do you think? Comic shop on every corner.

Just where the hell did you think you moved to?

February 24, 2008 4:16:00 PM PST

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Homer,

So far, so good...

Your post wasn't so funny today, why the somber mood?

Do the words FOOL ME ONCE, SHAME ON WU mean anything to wu?

Ya'll notice that homer has been working more lately?

I have.

So tell us Homer, you sticking around?

Welp, I don't have any immediate plans on leaving.

But I do have a distinct feeling of forbidding. I think that if things completely went to hell for me here, I would probably consider leaving, instead of trying to "stick it out".

The economy here is largely illusory. Mfg is going away. No hi-tech to speak of. Construction... well, you know. Very little so far as ways to "make it" here. Opportunities to lose everything abound however.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Marge said...

Flooded Retail...


Marge you know how that economic Armageddon talk gets me going.

Let's hop in a closet & get weird...

Anonymous said...

Closet stores...next to go.
Then?..Who do you think go to RIP?

LavaBear said...

Very little so far as ways to "make it" here. Opportunities to lose everything abound however.
***

Now that got a laugh out of me. I'm sure Buster spit up beer through his nose as well...You just described our economy in a nutshell. It's what we do. I know the last 5-7 years people have lost sight of that but it's how we survive. Cali moves here looking for the good life flush with cash from house sale and decent job. We fleece 'em for everything and they go back to the hole they came from. Lather, rinse, repeat.

tim said...

>>But I do have a distinct feeling of forbidding.

Oh dude, you hit one of my exposed nerves. It's "foreboding" you feel. I feel it too.

Is any "hood" safe now?

I see my old hoods in Cleveland are very nearly war zones now. The extreme outer sections of Charlotte--one of my favorite cities, are having trouble with defaulted houses stripping and vandalism.

We're in a hard place. Even those great old downtown Mirror Pond neighborhoods will have problems, won't they?

Anonymous said...

My post @ Ducn's in an answer to him.

I can tell you the RE folks were some of the first and last flippers. All believing it would never end. Many that I know are still trying to refi into other loans. One has jingle keyed a lot in Brasada. One had 3 rentals on OP arms, that is yet to be played out. It will come and bite her though. Another has a Westside spec that I told them to sell 6 months ago...but noooo..they pulled more out $"s to buy another lot. How long will they look through the rosey glasses and keep giving poor advice to buyers. Some are saying I am a Doomer. Do ya think? Doomer or realist cover your asses now.

LavaBear said...

I had a feeling of foreboding as I toured the Forbidden City.

I agree that even the great old downtown Mirror Pond neighborhoods will have problems. I also think that you'll have to turn over a lot of rocks to find a place in this country that won't.

I was in Asheville, NC last month --one of my favorites-- and they are in trouble as well. I even heard the word "foreboding" come out of my pals mouth. He said it funny though being that he's from there. Sounded closer to forbiddin'.

Duncan McGeary said...

Marge, we've been proselytizing this deluded village for years and you're our prize convert.

Anonymous said...

>>But I do have a distinct feeling of forbidding.

Oh dude, you hit one of my exposed nerves. It's "foreboding" you feel. I feel it too.

Timmy -- I thought so too, but looked it up first before second-guessing Paul "da man" D'oh. He's right. Here's the def of forbidding in Websters:

1 : such as to make approach or passage difficult or impossible (forbidding walls)
2 : disagreeable, repellent (a forbidding task)
3 : grim, menacing (a dark forbidding sky)

seek his forgiveness lest he smite you.

Anonymous said...

Ya then there Dunc...
before I found ya, I have been talking ta myself and few of my old crony pals dat have been here longer dan myself. I seem ta fit bedder wit dem dan most of the newer folks. Ya knoow whad I mean?
Like my Brainerd accent?

Anonymous said...

Is any "hood" safe now?

Even those great old downtown Mirror Pond neighborhoods will have problems, won't they?
***

4 words: Baker City or Bust!

Anonymous said...

seek his forgiveness lest he smite you.

Smited

Anonymous said...

We're in a hard place. Even those great old downtown Mirror Pond neighborhoods will have problems, won't they?

*

We're armed to the teeth, to quote the Great GW Bush, Bring it ON!

Anonymous said...

And don't even get me started on fucking LS providing their own CCR's to the city...that fucking deal is the noose that is going to suffocate the JR dream.

*

The LS didn't BUY JR, the LS got full control of ALL CC&R's into perpetuity.

I think we have already killed this dead horse, post Dec 2006, JR is LS, pure & simple. Forever.

Besides, its a fuck for JR, if they ever decide to expand they're fucked, does anyone think for a moment they'll spend $800k/acre to expand that rock with their own money?? Hell No!

It's game over for JR, it was always a mirage, and now LS is holding the fucking bag.

Dick Borgman will go down as an aborted fetus of Patti Moss (CACB).

tim said...

Ah, Webster. See, that's why I prefer the OED to you. You can't even use yourself properly.

You need to think long and hard about the difference between a noun and an adjective. But try not to think so hard you hurt yourself.

I was correct. Paul wasn't. And you failed to use yourself properly.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Timmy -- I thought so too, but looked it up first before second-guessing Paul "da man" D'oh. He's right. Here's the def of forbidding in Websters:

Yup, I looked it up too! And I initially wrote foreboding. But that isn't nearly forbidding enough.

Forbidding. derived from the Latin 'for-bidding', meaning for bidding. ex

"I think this auction is for bidding."

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Woo hoo!

Posted 1 minutes later! In your face INAPPROPRIATE LANGUAGE USE!

Yes.

tim said...

Paul would have been OK if he had said, for example, "The road ahead is forbidding."

But, sorry, you can't have a "feeling of forbidding." If he had said he had a feeling of "forbiddingness," I would have given him a pat on the back for attempting a Shakespearean level of creativity.

Enough, though. Back to office condos, please.

Bewert said...

Re: Back to office condo's

In a minute, but but first I have to share with you the sad, sordid details of the death of a Baptist preacher in Alabama:

Straight from the autopsy report:

"Clothing: The decedent was received wearing two (2) wetsuits, one scuba diving mask, one pair of divng gloves, one pair of slippers, one pair of rubber underwear, two (2) ties, five (5) belts, eleven (11) straps.

Personal Effects: One yellow metal ring intact on left ring finger, one dildo."

Now how we was "wearing" all this stuff is behind the link. He was very safety conscious--he covered the dildo with a condom before anal insertion.

Funny thing, dildo isn't in the spell check...

OK, now back to office condos.

Anonymous said...

timothy said...
You need to think long and hard about the difference between a noun and an adjective. But try not to think so hard you hurt yourself.
****

Ouch! that spanking felt like a smiting!

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Funny... FORBIDDING news like the following is just so pedestrian & normal, it just gets a big yawn:


Resales of U.S. homes and condos dropped 0.4% in January to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 4.89 million, the National Association of Realtors reported Monday. It was the lowest sales pace since the real estate group began tracking combined sales in 1999. Resales were down 23.4% compared with the previous January.

Anonymous said...

Just an FYI...The Real Estate Forcats Breakfast jus predicted the bottom of the market to be April 2008...... Well that will be intereting, last years advise was to buy lots in Prineville.

Anonymous said...

Bruce,

Besides finding and posting the KURATEK DIVORCE papers on your site we also need to document what historical documents are missing.

I think most of them are tombstoned on your site, we can check the other sites as they're all linked to 'city', and they'll all have to be backed up from google cache to a static site like yours.

You need to do a post on the fact that the city-of-bend has destroyed/removed ALL juniper-ridge historical documents from their website.

Given that the KURATEK divorce means NO court or lawsuit, its interesting that our MOTHER-FUCKERS that run this city want to cover their tracks? My guess is there is going to be a public lawsuit against city-council, I can see no other reason why they're doing this ,...

All the doc's were simply public records.

Bewert said...

Re: JR docs

If you find any, just email them to me as an attachment. I'll throw them up on my server. We need to get all the BURA, CC, and Planning Commission docs that refer to CC as well. That's one of the reasons I am doing the timeline. First I want to get the data, then I'll make it pretty.

I've been trying to upgrade my Rails MySQL database, but it's been giving me a headache this morning...sometimes Linux is so effing obscure that Windows actually looks pretty good ;)

Bewert said...

Re: All the doc's were simply public records.

But they are a lot harder to share when you have to file a Records Request and then scan and digitize them...

There are some I think we need though that have never been made public, like the RFQ responses from parties other than Kuratek, notes from the San Mateo visit to check out Kuratek, 3rd party info on just how involved Kuratek was in Bay Meadows (which was never developed) and the Franklin Templeton HQ (which I've read somewhere he was only peripherally involved in) and minutes of San Mateo CC meetings where he is actually mentioned as appearing before them (I've had a tough time finding any...)

It might come in handy someday. I tend to agree with Bruckner in that moving towards a Celebration-type master plan was just plain stupid, and not done with much public input or explanation, and really want to be able to put the screws in when we start getting chances for public input this spring and summer. To try to provide an easily accessible historical context that ideal could be reduced to 1-2 pages in a PDF for printing.

Bewert said...

Re: The Real Estate Forecast Breakfast just predicted the bottom of the market to be April 2008.

To be headlined in the BULL tomorrow morning.

Those folks have got to start dealing with reality at some point. Maybe monthly sales under 50, or even under 100, all summer would help them. I don't really see it getting much higher than that unless prices really start tumbling towards $100 sq ft...

Bewert said...

PS How come no one thought that adventurous Baptist preacher was as funny as I did? I spit my coffee out through my nose laughing this morning--maybe I'm just a sick fuck, but that last sentence in the "Evidence of Injury" paragraph was so droll struck me as fucking hilarious.

Anonymous said...

Bratton forgot that there are some years that come after 2008..like 2012, possibly 2011, when we will hit bottom.
I would like to call peak as being July - Sept. 06 at a median of $373k. The current trough is a median of $320. Wish I could call the bottom however.

Bewert said...

Re: Wish I could call the bottom however.

To start we need a realistic count of houses/condos that people desire to sell, both listed and not, AND a count of lots platted and ready to develop. How much overhang is there? And then compare that to expected population changes. With the new credit guidelines I don't think 2nd homes are going to be very big for a while.

My rough guesstimate on overhang, just from driving and riding my bike around, is over 5000 units. And that we are at least 2, maybe 36, months from the bottom. Although things may accelerate down for the next 12 and then level out some as the bottom gets close.

Bewert said...

...at least 24, maybe 36 months...

Meaning Jan-Feb 2010 or 2011. But I'm not a Realtor so what do I know :)

tim said...

>>PS How come no one thought that adventurous Baptist preacher was as funny as I did?

Because this is the Internet and I see three things like that every day on Fark.com.

tim said...

It doesn't matter when the bottom is. Bottoms only matter in markets that go up and down steeply. Once this one hits "bottom," I think prices will go up with inflation. So there will be, effectively, a long long long bottom.

Anonymous said...

It just so happens, that today, someone shared with me a study done , independently of The City, of vacant lots in Bend City limits.

Vacant platted lots in new or exisiting subdivisions = 2,896.
Proposed new Res lots (pending land use decisions) = 3,165.
Vacant lots with no home or improvement (infill)=453.
I don't have a guess on homes for sale not in MLS. The FSBO's and Craigs list are not good indicators as they may also be in MLS.

Bewert said...

RE: So there will be, effectively, a long bottom.

I agree. A continuing drop over 12 months or so and then a slow leveling off for quite awhile as inventory slowly gets taken up. I'm saving up my dimes for that period, if our little city doesn't go downhill too far.

Marge's numbers are quite a bit higher than I expected. It could take 48+ months for inventory to work out, but new construction could resume at lowered levels in 24 or so.

And I think there are a lot of homes not even listed that have been in the past. April's listing numbers should give us a sense of those.

Anonymous said...

Bruce, You need to clean up the following so that "fucking" doesn't show on the google search, your just going to drive people away. Edit this blog, and remove the fuck, otherwise your material is very professional.

*

Juniper Ridge Info: FLASH--Les Schwab Pays City
The County recorded the fucking sale of Juniper-Ridge to Les Schwab on Dec 7, 2006, thats when they got the fucking money. ...
juniper-ridge-info.blogspot.com/2008/01/flash-les-schwab-pays-city.html - 63k - Cached - Similar pages

Bewert said...

Re: fucking sale

That's an issue. It's in comments, which I promised to leave alone in the beginning. I don't want to moderate them. And I don't think I can, at least for the current comments.

However, the person who left those f-bombs comments here as well, and may want to consider moderating his language just a wee bit.

"... very professional"? Thanks! I'm getting there. I want to be taken seriously, to offer a broader range of pointed reporting on the issue than anyone else, because I have no agenda other than wanting Bend to remain a decent little city. I even moderated my latest post some in regards to John Russell, after reading it in the morning. So yes, the raving f-bombs are on my mind.

Are you listening, Anonymouse?

Bewert said...

BTW, if anyone from the city or whatever wants to feed me info, email me. I'll maintain confidentiality as requested.

Anonymous said...


Suicide often the Best Way Out of an Underwater Mortgage.


Mortgage Meltdown Hits Las Vegas Residents Hard

Updated: Feb 25, 2008 04:50 PM

Nevada's foreclosure laws sometimes leave renters out in the cold. Renters can be forced out even if all their rent is paid. The problem is that it happens all too often, and recently it had deadly consequences.

Behind the gates in Stallion Mountain, Karen Axley found the perfect home for her family. Now Karen calls it something else, "My expensive storage unit."

Axley moved to Las Vegas in November and rented a house to meet her family's growing needs. It has a great price --$1,200 a month -- but there's a problem.

"I'm paying my rent on time. I haven't broken my lease. I don't want to move," she said.

Karen's mailman delivered foreclosure notices addressed to the people who are supposed to own the home. Confused, Karen dug around for clues.

What she found was that the owner, David Jones, let the house go into default in October, a full month before Karen even moved in.

Now, she and the rest of the family must be out by April, victims of someone else's foreclosure, "I don't know where I'm going to live in six weeks."

While the recorder's office lists David Jones as the owner, the leasing company says it actually belongs to someone else.

"The homeowner is listed as Carolyn Pierce," said Axley.

Two different names on the same address. So Eyewitness News went to the listed address and found another gated home and this Carolyn Pierce.

"I don't want to sound confused about it, but I'm kind of confused about everything right now," she said.

Pierce told us her husband was a partner with David Jones in an home owner investment group. They would buy houses and rent them. But then the market tanked and the investments failed.

"Basically, any rent money goes right back into the mortgage, but it was never enough to cover the mortgage," she said.

That $1,200 a month rent only covered half the mortgage. Carolyn and her husband were hemorrhaging money with one house already defaulted and their mansion about to go into foreclosure as well.

Carolyn's says their financial situation was so bad her husband committed suicide.

"In relationship to foreclosures and mortgages and things, we kept trying to work with, but couldn't," she said..

Pierce never knew what her husband had done until it was too late, "Obviously my husband was not in the best frame of mind."

Now all that's left is a shattered widow, two lost houses and a family with a looming April deadline.

"I would say everybody lost in this situation. There's no winner. Things are just horrible," said Pierce

The Axleys will have to be out in April when the bank forecloses with a three day notice. Carolyn Pierce will likely lose her other home as well, a terrible end to a story repeated far too often in Las Vegas.

Bewert said...

RE: "Basically, any rent money goes right back into the mortgage, but it was never enough to cover the mortgage," she said.

Someone that is realistic. It is very unfortunate that she lost her husband. What can I say?

Anonymous said...

Krugman warns of lasting housing downturn
By Dan Slater | 26 February 2008

House prices could fall by 30% between now and 2010, destroying $8 trillion of wealth, says the Princeton economist.

It has become a tradition for extremely intelligent people to say very depressing things at CLSA’s benchmark Asian conferences. The latest example, with economist Paul Krugman addressing institutional investors and company managers in Tokyo, did not break with convention.

Krugman said the housing slump in the US could take up to two years to work through, and that up to 20 million mortgages could be underwater if house prices decline by 30% between now and 2010 – which Krugman believes could well occur.

Housing is illiquid and people are reluctant to sell, factors which will prolong the pain. In contrast, stock collapses tend to be short and violent, points out Krugman. Political considerations could also draw out the process, such as freezing foreclosures, or bailing out homebuyers. It took six years for the South California housing bubble to work itself out in the early 1980s, said Krugman, who believes the national housing bubble of recent years is much worse. He noted that real estate prices in California had given up all their gains by the end of the recession.
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“The recession in the US could be L-shaped or U-shaped, but it won’t be V-shaped like the Asian financial crisis,” said Krugman, “because the US seems to intent on adopting some of the same strategies as Japan adopted in the 1990s.” In other words, rather than permit a savage purging of the system, the policymakers might decide to ‘buy time’ rather than solve the problem.

The housing bubble inflated to historically unprecedented proportions between 2004 and 2007, aided by securitisation and collateralised debt obligation (CDO) techniques, said Krugman. A common ratio of judging the severity of housing bubbles is the price:rent ratio, which is the average cost of ownership divided by the rental income the house would fetch as a buy-to-let property. The higher the figure, the worse the bubble. At its peak, the price-to-rent figure was 1.5 in Southern California. In the national market in 2005, it was 2.3, said Krugman.

“The inevitable collapse of the housing bubble has lead to the worst outlook in the housing market since the Great Depression,” said Krugman, pointing out that housing starts have collapsed to their lowest level since 1991.

The housing market was seriously weakened by the sale of sub-standard mortgages, encouraged by securitisation and CDO techniques. Nobody knows the final bill, but Krugman guesses banks may have lost up to $1 trillion on such products. The decline in house prices may wipe $8 trillion off GDP, and much of that will be financed by the financial system (the lender) rather than the borrower, estimates Krugman.

Banks do not appear to be in fatal trouble, says Krugman. But stress in the system is showing up in the shadow banking system, where new institutions have adopted banking functions, such as extending credit, but away from the sharp eye of the regulator. Krugman says that auction rate securities are a good example of how the stress can appear in obscure but important parts of the financial system.
Auction rate securities, with their weekly auctions, appeared to offer liquidity and high yields to investors, but the market froze when investors panicked and headed simultaneously for the exits. As a result, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and certain student loan bodies have seen the rates they are paying on their loans shoot up. Such crises have led to a wave of bankruptcies of shadow banking institutions, which Krugman described as a “stealth banking crisis”.
The only reason the US did not sink into recession last year is because of the export recovery off the back of the drastically weaker dollar, says Krugman. However, further credit bombs will be exploding for a while yet, for example in the commercial real estate market, he estimates.

Krugman was sceptical that interest rate cuts will help get the economy back on track. The Federal Reserve has far less ammunition to cut rates than in previous recessions. The Fed started cutting rates when they were only 5.5% last year. In the last two economic crises, rates were around 8% before the Fed started to cut rates. “The problem is that the economic situation looks worse this time, but there is less scope for interest rates to be cut,” he comments. To cut rates by the same extent as in the last recession, estimates Krugman, rates would have to fall to zero – the same level as they were in Japan for many years after the bubble started to collapse in 1990.

That leaves the Bush administration’s tax rebate checks, being posted to every citizen to stimulate the economy. But Krugman believes this cash did not go to the poorest members of society, who would be sure to spend it. Better off people will simply save it, he estimates. Krugman believes it would have been wiser to spend the money on food stamps and more generous unemployment benefits.

One option could be to carry out a huge infrastructure building programme, which would be another similarity to Japan. But if the Republican Party wins the next election with Senator John McCain becoming president, Krugman believes it is unlikely this would happen.

Some members of the audience asked questions about the threat of inflation in the wake of the interest rate cuts and the weaker dollar. Krugman answered that with the financial system in such trouble, and the real economy also likely to slow, the Fed has decided that inflation is less of a threat than a Japanese-style deflationary spiral. “The Fed is right to disregard inflation. The threat of a deflationary mindset is very serious,” said Krugman.

It was an excellent presentation and did CLSA's tradition of conference doom and gloom proud.

Anonymous said...

Marge said...
Bratton forgot that there are some years that come after 2008..like 2012, possibly 2011, when we will hit bottom.
***

Are you, by any chance, going by the Mayan Calendar, which abruptly ends on Dec. 11, 2012?

This and other things - pyramids, hinduism, etc., predict extreme world destruction at that time -- so might as well live it up until doomsday, right?

Anonymous said...

Marge said...
Bratton forgot that there are some years that come after 2008..like 2012, possibly 2011, when we will hit bottom.
***

Are you, by any chance, going by the Mayan Calendar, which abruptly ends on Dec. 11, 2012?

This and other things - pyramids, hinduism, etc., predict extreme world destruction at that time -- so might as well live it up until doomsday, right?

Anonymous said...

Hey I just did a Google search of the word "fucking". It took me to this blog...just lettin' ya know.

Bewert said...

Re: Google search

Actually, I found www.presidentbushisafuckingmoron.com and the town of Fucking, Austria.

But not this blog, but I only looked through ten pages. Now put in fucking bend oregon and bendblogs and dunc's blog shows up before BB2. And this one, which refers to a Bend, OR individual: http://thecrankyoldbastard.com/thenwo/index.php?m=20050608

Is there a cannibal in our midst?

Put in fucking juniper ridge and my blog claims 4 of the first 5...

Just saying...

Bewert said...

Re: Krugman

From the BULL:
Housing forecast: It’ll only get better; Bend appraiser says market is on the verge of a turnaround

and

Builder puts his faith in diversity

Company strategy is mix of commercial, residential projects

REDMOND — Central Oregon’s real estate market has cooled, but it won’t likely reach the depths of 1986, according to one longtime builder who says a diverse approach will steer his company through the slowdown.

That’s when the city of Redmond issued only a handful of commercial and residential building permits throughout the entire year, according to the city’s building department.

“It was dead, very dead,” said Steve Buettner, president of SunWest Builders Development LLC.

Buettner left the area and started SunWest in New Mexico in 1987, but moved the company back to Central Oregon in 1989.

Since then, SunWest, which started in the high-end custom home building and residential remodeling market, has diversified into commercial construction, he said.

The current housing slowdown will have less of an impact on SunWest than it might have in the 1980s, when residential construction comprised most of the local market, Buettner said.

We’ve diversified ourselves enough between the residential and commercial sectors so that we’re not overcommitted in the residential sector,” he said.

This could be the year that some of the region’s smaller subcontractors — who can’t find enough business — go out of business, he said.

“Some dropoff is OK,” he said. “In the boom times, everyone jumps into it, including some of those who shouldn’t. Those (lower-quality builders) will be the first ones to go.”

SunWest’s largest residential projects are in Prineville and Madras, where sales have not met expectations, Buettner said.

At IronHorse, a 2,900-home development in Prineville that will take 15 to 20 years to build out, three companies have made seven sales since homes went on the market in June, including one sold by SunWest, Buettner said.

At Yarrow, a 900-acre, 1,730-home project in Madras, home sales are just beginning, but demand has been slower, he said.

The region’s retail sector is still catching up with the residential growth it has experienced the past decade, Buettner said.

The company’s projects include Pioneer Crossing in Bend, which will be anchored by Gottschalks, the Fresno, Calif.-based department store chain on the old Jake’s Truck Stop site. Additional projects include The Design Center and Black Bear Square in Redmond, he said.

SunWest also is building Discovery Park Lodge, a three-story, senior affordable apartment project in NorthWest Crossing in Bend, he said.

The 76,000-square-foot project includes 53 apartment units, common areas and an underground parking structure, he said.

It will be similar to the Mountain Laurel Lodge, a senior affordable housing complex that the company completed along Century Drive in Bend in 2006, he said.

Most of the residential market opportunities are 1,100- to 1,400-square-foot homes in the $190,000 to $250,000 range that are more affordable for young families, Buettner said.

“We won’t be building a lot of larger homes in the next 18 months,” he said. “The residential market will stay flat. But I don’t see prices declining much more. I think we’re close to seeing the bottom or have seen the bottom in price reductions except in rare cases where people have to sell.”

Q: Please describe your company history and the types of products and services it offers.

A: We started SunWest Builders in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1987. Moving back to Central Oregon in 1989, we incorporated in Oregon that same year. Originally we started out building high-end custom homes along with residential remodeling. At that time, there were very few commercial projects, if any. As Central Oregon started to grow, we transitioned more into the commercial market, which is currently about 90 percent our business.

We build all types of commercial structures such as medical, mixed use, office, resort, retail and industrial, along with high-end residential homes and planned neighborhoods.

Q: How do you expect the region to change in the next five, 10 and 20 years?

A: In the next five years, I believe we will experience moderate growth, nothing like what we have seen in last five years but good, steady growth. There has been a dramatic increase in population over the last few years. Due to this increase, construction of services and infrastructure will stay strong.

In the next 10 to 20 years, again good, steady growth. How fast we grow will depend on what happens in the rest of the country and how the national economy performs. Central Oregon has become a very desirable place to live and raise a family, if people have the ability and the means to move here they will continue to come.

Q: What are some strategies that you would recommend and how is your company positioned for surviving the current market slowdown?

A: Not getting overextended is key. Being able to weather a slowdown depends on your ability to manage and cover cost with reduced sales or cash flow. Try to diversify, there is (almost) always a sector of the market that will continue to perform, keep an eye on what the latest trends are and the upcoming needs in your community.

Q: What are your major growth areas and what areas do you think will flatten or decline?

A: You should see steady growth in the affordable housing and multifamily markets.

We are also seeing a strong push in the retail sector through 2008. Central Oregon has seen a large population increase over the last few years and there is still room for the service sector to catch up.

Construction of office space in Bend and industrial space in Redmond will be a little flat for a short period time.


The sun shines 300+ days a year in Bend!

Anonymous said...

How bout a contest..
Using the letters b, e, n, d.
Give us an acronym for each letter that best describes the BEND City council.
Too bad the is no F letter.

Anonymous said...

Join COAR today they need your money, "Welcome to the Club".

*** Dana Bratton

People paid good money for these meetings. They're ALL INHERENTLY CHEERLEADERS.

The RE crowd was telling their flock in 2005 that it would 25%/yr APR forever for Bend RE. Then in 2006 it slowed down, and they said it would come back, then in Jan 2007, it really slowed down and they said it would come back in the Spring of 2007. ( It didn't come back )

Now we're sitting just like Last Feb, and they're saying "Its going to come back this spring".

What is coming back?? You can't get money anymore, there is NO jumbo ( bend ), they want 20% now.

A vast number of Bend propertys are speculative, becuase RE insiders could buy four homes legally with nothing down. The bleeding has now gone on for two years.

Two more years just to hit bottom.

They're selling hope, but also all these clubs like COAR, COBA, BEND-NAR, ... they're still clubs, they have membership fees, they want members to renew, they want people to show up for $25 breakfast, and $30 beer, and $75 dinners, and they'll have speakers promise a better day.

There is ONLY one sad element to any of this, and that is the Realtor or MTG broker who is living in his car, that takes his last $20, and gets his clothes cleaned, and gets a bath, and goes to these meetings and prays for "RAIN" just like everyone else there. Its religion pure & simple, and they were all sold "Heaven on Earth".

So here's my prediction during the NEXT two years. People will quit paying dues to these clubs, and people who run these clubs will have to find REAL jobs. Thats goes for the 100's of Bend Clubs COVA,COBA,COAR,...

It always was a CON-GAME, it always was a fraud. Dunc you know, and I know its IMPOSSIBLE for it to come back this spring, for the simple reason the easy-money is GONE.

The easy-money for COMM-RE is GONE, the easy-money for FLIPPING is GONE.

Without easy-money the game is over.

The CLUBS ( COVA,COAR,COBA ) helped make BEND the #1 over-valued RE in America, and now these clubs are going to see the worst RE loss in America. Do you honestly think that many of the faces will stick around for cleaning up the party??

Anonymous said...

If you think the Bend Bulletin serves up KOOl-AID, then try the Corvallis newspaper. Very little is selling here, but there's not an ounce of critical thinking to be found here . . . .


Benton County leads housing price growth
By Matt Neznanski
Gazette-Times reporter
Tumbling real estate values in much of the country have economists and homeowners struggling to predict where the bottom will fall in the coming year.

But a look back at 2007 shows that owning a home in a university town might be the safest bet going.

According to a report by Portland State University’s Center for Real Estate, the median sale price of homes in Benton County, home of Oregon State University, grew 13.6 percent between the fourth quarter of 2006 and the fourth quarter of 2007. Similarly, houses in Lane County, home of the University of Oregon, appreciated by 8.8 percent during the same time period.

The increases in Benton and Lane counties were the highest of any Willamette Valley county.

Comparatively, median home sale prices in Linn County n where the economy is built more on the lumber and wood products industry n grew by 3.4 percent in the same period, compared to 12 percent growth from 2005 to 2006.

In Polk County, home prices dropped 1.7 percent, while Marion County saw a decline of 1.8 percent.

Over the same time period, prices decline by 6.5 percent nationally and 11.2 percent in the West.

Built-in demand in the cities surrounding Oregon’s two largest universities helped keep them largely above the fray.

“We have guaranteed action in university towns; they’re not going anywhere,” said Ann Morgan, a real estate agent with Town & Country Real Estate in Corvallis. “Everybody is listening to the national media who say it’s horrible. It’s not horrible here.”

The PSU report found the median sale price of existing homes in Benton County grew to $267,000 in the last quarter of the year. In the last quarter of 2006, the median price was $235,000.

Part of the recipe for Benton County’s success might be due, in part, to good timing on the part of builders here, who drastically slowed residential construction last year.

The report showed single-family building permits in Corvallis down 43 percent last year compared to 2006, with more than 100 fewer building permits issued by the city last year. That figure was topped statewide only in Bend, which saw permits plunge by 48 percent.

Builders switched their focus to commercial accounts, boosting total spending on new construction in Corvallis to nearly $37 million more than in 2006 with a host of high-dollar projects leading the way.

The multimillion dollar construction of a west tower at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center topped the list with major projects at Oregon State University and new big-box retail among the top five in Corvallis.

Doug Burton, president of the Willamette Valley Association of Realtors, said the existing supply of homes add to the high value of Benton County real estate.

Before the slowdown, he said, new construction in North Albany in the $200,000 price range was snapped up, leaving mid-$300,000 homes the only option for buyers in that part of Benton County.

“If you’re going to live in North Albany, you’re going to pay $300,000,” he said.

New starts there — while not as brisk as in previous years — remain in that price range.

The most extreme end of the housing market is the hardest hit, Morgan said. High-end homes over $500,000, which represent the top 10 percent of the Corvallis market, represent the slowest-moving properties and those most likely to depreciate.

“That was so inflated that there’s bound to be a correction,” Morgan said.

Matt Neznanski can be reached at 758-9518 or matt.neznanski@lee.net

Median sales price and annual appreciation

Percent change in housing prices from the fourth quarter of 2006 to the fourth quarter of 2007:

Benton County $267,000 +13.6 percent

Lane County $190,000 +8.8 percent

Linn County $154,000 +3.4 percent

Polk County $175,950 -1.7 percent

Marion County $186,600 -1.8 percent

Source: PSU Center for Real Estate Quarterly

Anonymous said...

I mean, I thought, just let his talk sit there like a big turd, and be proved wrong.

But people believe the big lie if it's repeated enough.

*

Everyone there PAID for the lie. In BEND, the land of fairy tales, lies work.

Trouble is it took REAL MONEY to inflate the BEND-BUBBLE. It took real money to pay for the Sushi, Cocaine, Wine, Tents@Drake-Park, Bend-Film ( more cocaine ), ...

Bubbles can be filled with Hope ( MONEY ).

Now the money is gone, so the last few dollars will be harvested by those that RUN COAR,COBA,COVA,...EDCO,..

Over the next two years this City will be scrapped to the bone of stupid money.

Folks right NOW hold on to your money.

No amount of 'positive thinking' can bring back 2005, cuz the cocaine money is gone, the city of bend can no longer fund the party's that brought the beautiful people here that made Bend into a CONDO Flipper's paradise.

Now the only thing a Tourist will see is poverty, begging, ... and they'll RUN, they'll NOT stop to buy a condo time-share.

Let's say 200 people paid $25 to hear 'HOPE", that's $5,000, not a bad haul, no different than telling a client that BEND RE will gross you 25% APR forever.

BEND is all about FRAUD ( & drugs & wine ), paying for lies & liars, is SOOOO BEND.

Anonymous said...

That eyeball is freaking me out -- I can't wait for the next blog, so I don't have to see it anymore.

I don't mind fuck, but I hate fucking creepy images.

Anonymous said...

No amount of 'positive thinking' can bring back 2005, cuz the cocaine money is gone, the city of bend can no longer fund the party's that brought the beautiful people here that made Bend into a CONDO Flipper's paradise.

***

Have they had a party in awhile?

What one of those parties need is a massive group of homeless to crash the gates!

Anonymous said...

HEY PAUL DOH - HOW ABOUT SOME PICTURES FOR THIS NEXT WEEK. YOU KNOW, WHERE YOU DRIVE AROUND AND TAKE SOME. LIKE THE FUNNY ONES YOU DID LAST SUMMER.

Bewert said...

Re: Taking pics

Let's all take a few of our surrounding empty houses. Paul can pick the best. Email them to me and I'll put them up somewhere. Maybe we can find an STD that is already pummeled by the homeless...

Anonymous said...

4th Quarter Home Prices Felt Deepest Cut in 20 Years
http://www.ccrmag.net/article.html?id=20080226GQQS7F9E&from=creditandcollectionnews
Single-family home prices dropped 8.9% during the fourth quarter of 2007, compared with the same 2006 period, and is the largest decline in 20 years, according to Standard & Poor‚s, which released its S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices on Tuesday.

January‚s Foreclosure Activity Up 57% Year Over Year
http://www.ccrmag.net/article.html?id=20080226YQLRJVZJ&from=creditandcollectionnews
RealtyTrac‚s January 2008 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report shows foreclosure filings ˆdefault notices, auction sales notices and bank repossessions ˆ were reported on 233,001 properties during the month, rising 8% from December and nearly 57% from January 2007.

Anonymous said...

bruce said...
Re: Taking pics

YES - do it! Sounds fun!

Anonymous said...

Dana Bratton says better buy now, because the market is gonna take off like a rocket in two months! Bend is gonna lead the whole country out of the real estate bust! Ya just gotta BE-LEEEVE! BE-LEEEEVE! BE-LEEEEVE! Puh-raise Jeebus!

Anonymous said...

There seems to be a full court press on the local blogs to try to hold a positive light to the real estate situation in Bend. - duncan

*

Can you give some examples of this assertion? I haven't seem them.

Can anyone here give examples of the press reacting to these blogs??

There seems to be 1 or 2 realtors on BENDBB defending the status-quo, is that what your talking about??

Anonymous said...


Utah announces that they are no Bend, Oregon. Bruce, tell us this isn't true!

A housing slump hits the Mountain West

By David Brewster
Utah, normally immune to slumps, is feeling the effects, and a survey story in The New York Times sheds some interesting light on the changing Mountain West.

In the past, the Rocky Mountain West's economy has been driven by commodity prices for oil and copper and gold, notoriously cyclical, and military spending, also fickle. More recently the economy has been dominated by real estate and construction, as well as recreation. The storybook West of ranching now plays only a small part; manufacturing never has been much of a factor.

Another big part of the West's boom has been affluent retirees, who bring non-wage income to spend and have swelled the economies of places like Coeur d'Alene, Idaho and many other picturesque, once-backwater towns now undergoing "Aspenization." Bend, Oregon and Walla Walla, Washington are two classic examples. These new arrivals may be changing towns too fast and driving prices way beyond what locals can afford, but they do have an economic advantage: Retirees keep on spending during a downturn, since they are living off savings.

But aside from Utah's southwest corner, the Beehive state hasn't been getting much of the retiree market. So now Utah is being clobbered by a decline in housing construction, with new-housing starts expected to fall 60 percent in this year.

Still, Utah has some distinct advantages: a young, healthy population; high education levels; hard working citizens; a Mormon Church that spends a lot on development and is recession-proof; and high fertility rates that produce a giant wave of 20-somethings (a kind of delayed Baby Boom) that fuels the new-housing market and starts up a lot of new companies.

Duncan McGeary said...

Yes,

Full court 'press' as in a sport analogy.

Bewert said...

Re: CO RE blogs

http://www.centraloregonbuzz.com/blog/
"January 2008 - Buyers Are Starting To Take Advantage Of The Buyer’s Market" posted 2/23

http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/blogs/dd5957/4479/show/
"Affordable Housing In Bend Oregon?" Posted 2/23 To quote:
"Buy now or wait?

I've heard many people lately talking about waiting to by a Central Oregon property. Hmmm... Interest rates are hovering around 5.5% and there is a supply of affordable homes in Bend. The inventory of homes has been declining, and interest rates won't get much lower if at all. Why wait? I remember when buyers had no options, and homes sold quick. It was hard to buy an affordable Home in Bend because there wasn't much inventory. Any decent deal had multiple offers on it, and usually got swallowed up by investors.

Now is a great time to buy. Most buyers who wait for the bottom will miss it."

http://www.woodhillhomes.net/blog/
"Bend Home Sales Are Picking Up"

And this one you simply have to read, including the one comment :)
http://buyinbend.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/best-buyers-market-in-20-years/

Anonymous said...

Go over to Seattlebubble.com and have a look at the Case-Schiller graph - the one with PDX and SEA offset 18 months. Folks, Bend is doomed. Doomed.

Y'all who said it was back to the '80s: You're RIGHT. Hang on.

Anonymous said...

That is one ugly assed graph.

Anonymous said...

Go over to Seattlebubble.com and have a look at the Case-Schiller graph

*

Yep, BEND is Las-Vegas+San-Diego, just wait one more year, 2009 in Feb they'll be saying at $160k medians, "BEND Can't Go Any Lower"


Yep, it can lower.

Anonymous said...


City of Bend Poisons PIG TROUGH ( CORP-WELFARE ) Knife-River ( Hap-Taylor ) First to Implode


Knife River laying off 20 percent of workforce

Posted: Feb 26, 2008 04:48 PM
Central Oregon Division of Knife River Corp. is eliminating about 20 percent of its jobs as real estate slowdown hits home

Central Oregon Division of Knife River Corp. is eliminating about 20 percent of its jobs as real estate slowdown hits home

About 80 positions gone until business picks up

By Barney Lerten, KTVZ.COM

Contractor Hap Taylor has seen lots of ups and downs over his decades in the Central Oregon construction business, but he said Tuesday his company's decision to lay off dozens of workers "just breaks my heart," even if the writing was on the wall for the slumping housing market.

Taylor is the president of the Bend division of Knife River Corp., which acquired Hap Taylor and Sons years ago.

A week ago, he sent a one-page letter to employees, noting "a decline in bids being offered and many more companies bidding on the same project that before."

"As a large, successful company, we can weather the storm, but must make some very difficult decisions," the letter said.

"It is unfortunate, but many faithful, long-term employees ... will have to be released over the next month in order that a more efficient, cost-effective operation be established," the letter said. "This is expected to be permanent until business increases."

Taylor told KTVZ.COM, "We're always been a very up-front company," in keeping workers informed - good or bad.

"If they had a chance for another job (this spring), we wanted them to take that," he said.

As of last year, Economic Development for Central Oregon ranked Knife River's Central Oregon Division as the region's 14th-largest employer, with 450 workers.

The layoff count "is a moving target right now," Taylor said Tuesday. "It's probably going to be in the 20 percent range, but it's changing on a daily basis. The market dictates" what will happen.

"If you check with all the other companies that are like us, I'm sure they are going through the same thing," he said.

"We don't work on seniority," he added. "We work on capabilities, what they can do. Unfortunately, all of our people are good people. It just breaks my heart."

"Some of the people (being let go) might have been there quite some time, but they couldn't do a multitude of things," Taylor explained. "We need people who can run equipment, do labor."
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Anonymous said...

Hey kids, I appreciate the blog and the comments. You guys crack me up. I live in the Methow Valley in North Central Washington.

Reading about the RE trainwreck in Bend has been an interesting point of comparison/contrast. We are a small recreation/second home market. Building homes for rich people from other places is basically the economy here. So far the Methow market is holding up better most places in the country, but we're probably just behind the curve.

Anyway, since yall amuze me, I thot I'd share something I wrote about RE back in 2006 for our weekly rag...

Surreal estate
by Patrick Hannigan
(Methow Valley News, Oct. 2006)

“The best investment on Earth is earth,” said Marshall Field (1834-1906).

Clearly, Field lived and died long before the recent speculative frenzy in real estate. Today, most nobody can afford to buy, sell, own, or rent real estate.

But thanks to innovations in the mortgage lending industry, it’s now easier than ever to negotiate yourself into a black hole of debt in pursuit of that perfect property.

The present state of real estate is a bit unreal, but there is a solution: surreal estate. There’s a piece out there for everyone!

Riverfront serenity ~ Fall asleep to the soothing sounds of water as it pours through the first floor of this spectacular new floodplain home. During high water, there is great fishing in the living room. House comes equipped with PFDs and inner tubes handy for fun or evacuation.

Fixer upper ~ Three of the four walls of this 1912 chicken coop are still standing. With a little tender loving care, this place has potential as a nice starter home.

Wildlife abounds ~ Live in harmony with rodents in this charming three bedroom, two-bath Winthrop cabin. There are squirrels in the attic, packrats in the walls, and mice everywhere. Purchaser may qualify for low-interest loans, as structure is certified as an official Hantavirus research facility.

Sustainable statement ~ This 6,800 square foot home is a model of green design. Built of old growth logs cut from the Amazon jungle, river rock trucked in from Colorado, and steel imported from China, this elegant eco-estate features energy efficient light bulbs. Besides a green roof, this earth-friendly property also has a private nine-hole golf course through a pristine riparian area. A perfect second or third home for affluent environmentalists.

Fire sale ~ Motivated sellers want to move quickly on this beautiful wooden house located on a steep, heavily treed slope before the large wildfire burning in the area reduces the property to ashes. EZ terms.

Romantic getaway ~ Go back to the 19th century in this rural cabin with no electricity, bathroom, telephone or running water. An excellent learning experience for couples who are considering marriage.

Litigator’s dream ~ Due to vague zoning regulations, unclear property boundaries, complex easements, uncertain water rights and hostile neighborly disputes, this property is a great opportunity for buyers who want to spent lots of money paying lawyers to engage in mortal legal combat.

Silent spring ~ Pick an apple, play in the dirt, or grow a garden on this old orchard property near Carlton. Land was doused with thousands of tons of herbicides and pesticides each year for the past 80 years, but since when did a little DDT for dinner hurt anybody?

High and dry ~ Smell the invigorating scent of sage on this 20-acre upland parcel. Drink in the panoramic views. Drill for water. Find none. Die of thirst.

Homefront Security ~ Enjoy luxurious insularity in this exclusive gated community near Mazama. To keep our families safe in today’s scary world, we must build prisons – and live in them. Modeled on the fortresses popular during the Dark Ages, this development is surrounded by a ten-foot electric fence, irrigation ditches that double as moats, and tall guard towers.

Made in the shade ~ Stay cool in this yurt located in the “Little Siberia” neighborhood of the Methow. On subzero nights, snuggling up with your sweetie is not just a pleasure; it’s a matter of survival.

Unibomber special ~ Enjoy remote seclusion on this rural homestead located a day’s walk from the nearest road. Play solitaire, lose your mind, or scribble an insane manifesto in complete privacy. Not recommended for those susceptible to cabin fever.

Affordable riverfront ~ This newly remodeled cardboard box under the bridge in Twisp comes with a brand new roof consisting of an 8 x 10 foot blue tarp. It’s easy to add onto this little gem -- additional cardboard boxes are available free at the recycling center.

Caveat emptor is Latin for ‘let the buyer beware.’ When it comes to investing in surreal estate, it’s sound advice.

Bewert said...

Re: Fixer upper ~ Three of the four walls of this 1912 chicken coop are still standing. With a little tender loving care, this place has potential as a nice starter home.

Hey, that sounds like some of the remodels on the West Side!

Anonymous said...

Where do we go to complain about pot holes? And what's with the jerk offs wanting to put a meridian in the south end of Redmond? You want another disaster like the North side of Bend? These people can't spend our tax dollars fast enough... yet we still have millions of pot holes everywhere...

Oh... and why don't the roads in Bend have lines on them? Wtf?

Anonymous said...

Big News in todays WSJ, Big News.

1.) Home Prices are in a free fall nationally.

2.) Government MUST buy all homes ASAP, and demolish them ( I have said this was coming ).

3.) The fault of the entire housing-bubble, was Bill Clinton.

#3 is the most fascinating, we have been told here for long that politics doesn't matter, and now the WSJ is telling is that DUMBYA never existed.

The WSJ is trying to accelerate the process, Hoover-Ville is the solution maximimize PAIN, so the debate has started. My personal guess is the vultures simply can't wait long enough to buy home homes for penny's on a dollar.

Anonymous said...

You guys crack me up. I live in the Methow Valley in North Central Washington.

*

Bend, Oregon is NO Methow Valley, Methow is Paradise. Bend Oregon, is San Jose, California.

Methow Valley is like Yosemite Valley, a true Shangri-La, Protect it, and don't let the BASTARDS 'BEND' METHOW VALLEY.

tim said...

Demolishing is an interesting idea. I've been to cities in the midwest where that's the _only_ solution in certain areas. No one goes to Detroit or Youngstown and sees the abandoned holes (including whole commercial blocks) and _doesn't_ think, say, that'd be better as a nice green park. It's not even squatters in those places anymore--it's feral people in a couple houses and the others so cold and ruined even the feral people snub them.

But it only makes sense, to me, in those very places--where houses are $2000 because no one wants them. Our problem now is not that people don't want the house--it's that people can't afford the houses because the prices ratcheted up beyond rationality.

The disenfranchised lower rungs don't have a say about their slums. It'll be interesting, though, to see if the middle class scratchers stand my while ill-advised and poorly-built $400k McMansions are torn down in from of their very eyes rather than let go by the banks for the $200,000 they should go for and the people can afford.

I'll read that article. I haven't had my coffee and WSJ yet.

Anonymous said...

Tim,

It is already happening all over, and I have written about it, and I'll write about it again.

Look at inner downtown Bend or the STD's with NO YARD.

You tear down the new crap-shack ( government buys wholesale at auction for NOTHING, and demolishes ), then nieghbor buys the nice little lot, and gets a full yard once again, ...

Deja-vu, this is how its already playing out everywhere, especially where NOBODY is ever going to buy some of these crap-shacks, like the Newport Moderns, ... They can't sit forever,

Easy Money, made morons pay top-dollar for Bend lots, and build crap-shacks, now nobody has a yard, .. Soon all this un-sellable RE will be bought for the single purpose of a yard.

Yes, 'green space' will be the highest and best value of real estate.


In Bend I can see buying whole buildings like Newport-Moderns and tearing them down, just for the few or the solar, this again is the highest and best value.

Bend is of course two years behind the curve, where there are 1,000's of mosquito pools, the solution is to demolish the home, and fill the pool today, because its a health-issue. Soon in Bend, with MORE meth houses, there will be health-issues, and emergency demolitions.

Anonymous said...


Norma DuBois begs bloggers to BUY now, and stop the free fall COLLAPSE of Oregon RE


2/26/2008 1:06:00
Realtors promote buyer's market
The Sister's (slut) Nugget
By Joseph Duerrmeyer

Central Oregon Association of Realtors (COAR) last week held a roundtable discussion at their offices in Bend. The organization invited a broad spectrum of speakers to discuss the current state of the local housing market.

A new marketing strategy calling the current real estate situation the "best buyers market in 20 years" was brought to the table for discussion.

Representatives from Madras, Redmond, Prineville and Bend were present, all discussing the vagaries of the market and the ups and downs. The local representative from Sisters did not attend, so there was no firsthand information offered beyond COAR statistics for the Sisters area.

Of the different Central Oregon markets represented, Prineville had the strongest connection to Sisters, in a very backhanded way.

"Our market is still moving well. We are picking up buyers from Sisters and also from Bend, people who like the small town atmosphere where people stop when you walk across the street. The high prices in Sisters and Bend have brought a lot of people to us," said Shauna Zinn, of Brooks Resources in Prineville.

Tara Donaca of Compass Commercial agreed that continuing high prices are the main cause of stagnation in the area in general and in Sisters in particular.

"The biggest challenge that I and other Realtors are facing is trying to get sellers to consider listing at an appropriate price for this market. If the properties are priced correctly, they will sell. They will not sell if priced too high," she said.

No amount of hype will help in the sale of an overpriced property, according to Ron Ross of RE/MAX Equity Group in Bend.

"A property has to make sense and stand on its own. Many Realtors don't understand that," he said.

Norma DuBois of Coldwell Banker Morris in Bend agreed.

"If prices are not too high, we get offers. But when prices are set too high, the buyers won't even make an offer if they feel that the listing price and a fair market price are light years apart.

"However, in the million-dollar-plus market things are still going very well. In that price range we are having a lot of cash buyers who don't require financing," demonstrating that the economic pinch is yet to be felt by the very wealthy," said DuBois.

Many of those wealthy purchasers are from foreign countries as far away as Hong Kong.

The puzzle is in figuring out how to attract these cash-rich foreigners.

The more global perspective is of interest to many of the real estate agents who are convinced that the new advertising campaign, the "best buyers market in 20 years" is falling on deaf ears.

"There are a lot of people who are sitting on the fence and are not convinced that the market has bottomed. They think this marketing plan is just driven by Realtors wanting to make some sales. Those are the people that we need to convince. If they buy now and the market still hasn't bottomed, they think they could lose money," said DuBois.

tim said...

>>Easy Money, made morons pay top-dollar for Bend lots, and build crap-shacks, now nobody has a yard, .. Soon all this un-sellable RE will be bought for the single purpose of a yard.

Yeah, that's right. Giant houses on small lots are stupid. Small lots are OK--but you put a small classy house on it, not a behemoth.

New Bend just doesn't know what the hell it is. It's tried to be a resort, California, and Portland all rolled into one. It's ended up being a mess no one quite knows what to do with it. If you tear it down you can at least start over.

Anonymous said...

[quote="Dunc"]Interesting that they think they are [i]managing[/i] this mess. That all it takes is the right message. The horse is out of the barn, and halfway down the highway.[/quote]

Not true dunc, they did manage the UPSIDE.

Bend is #1 over-valued for three reasons.

1.) The best PR&Marketing that money can buy with tax payer finance.
2.) Easy money provided by DUMBYA
3.) Perpetual SDC's deferral's or out right exemptions, brought builders from all over the country.

Given that the WHOLE runup was orchestrated by this CLUB/TEAM, there is NO doubt that they still feel in charge, they have long led the morons who could borrow around by the leash, why should they now think that people are rational?

The easy-money is OVER, but the SDC's are still deferred and almost FREE if NOT subsidized, and deferred, and the CITY-TREASURY is still being used to market RE by COVA, and bring tourists to town. The whole campaign fall has been to tell RETIREES nationally that Bend is now a deal.

Thus given that 1&3 are alive well, yes this crowd is still driving. Given that #2 is still-born & DOA. It simply means that the working poor will not be arriving. Its clear that the RE CLUB is targetting retirees in who live in areas where they can still sell their homes for more than Bend homes cost. The big lie of course is that Bend is NOT a retirement mecca, but that is another story.

As long as the city of Bend, and the county, and the region give these people millions a year in taxpayer money, they'll continue to do the PR&Marketing that, if anyone becomes tired of this dog&pony show, this is the solution.

Anonymous said...

Bruce,

Read the above on Knife-River, the end is here.

They own 100's of brand new heavy equipment all bought with the JR cash-flow, and the Tetherow cash-flow,

There are now no more new big projects, and NO way in hell that knife-river can continue to pay the payments on the equipment,

I expect the finest heavy-equipment auction very, soon.

The WHOLE deal in Bend has been to keep this company busy, as the city-of-bend, only exists to fund the Knife-River ( capell ) machine. Which in turn feeds the PAPE machine.

The WHOLE Juniper-Ridge deal was always a farce, as it costs $20sq-ft just to clear the rock, Knife-River would have made Billions on excavation of JR, with that project dead Knife-River is now dead.

There will be no more golf-courses in Central Oregon, no more Tetherows. Knife-River will implode.

The NEXT big project is the I-97 FWY from Reno to Madras, but funding is not expected until 2025. Thus Knife-River will have to wait 12 years for the next big big-trough corporate-welfare boondoggle.

Anonymous said...

FYI,

All the recent suicides in the Bend area, have been RE related, thus even though admonished by BENDBB to bring up the issue, its most likely a safe assumption that the 51 yr-old that leaped at st-charles, was a housing/stress related issue.

There will be storys like this daily in the years to come.

Anonymous said...

"However, in the million-dollar-plus market things are still going very well. ... the economic pinch is yet to be felt by the very wealthy," said DuBois.

Many of those wealthy purchasers are from foreign countries as far away as Hong Kong.

The puzzle is in figuring out how to attract these cash-rich foreigners.


**

Norma,

The Chinese care about TWO things PUSSY&GAMBLING. All you got to do is BUY Tetherow at auction, and get a bunch of MILF condo REHO's, and a few card-tables, and you can sell RE to Chinese all day long.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Nothing, Timmy?

And what's with the jerk offs wanting to put a meridian in the south end of Redmond?

A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.

Jebediah Springfield

Duncan McGeary said...

I disagree that they managed the upside, or will be able to manage the downside. No one manages a bubble.

I've had this argument constantly, when something like Pokemon takes off it's because the the T.V. show, or the marketing concept, or whatever.

Bullshit. Hundreds, thousands of ideas equally valid are thrown at the wall every year and most don't stick.

It's a mystery.

The really funny thing to me, is that obviously THINK they managed the upside. DuBois really THINKS she created all this housing demand.

No, lady, you were just surfing the wave, you AREN'T the wave.

And hoping that foreigners will bail us out? That just sounds pathetic.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Giant houses on small lots are stupid.

Then we got a whole lot of stupid for sale here...

Duncan McGeary said...

I think if they try to 'manage' the downside, they'll be crushed. The best thing to do is to get out of the way, the way I think Brooks Resources is doing.

Catch falling knives, indeed. Standing under the iron safe as if falls through the floors.

Get out of the way, horde your pennies, and buy at the bottom.

And you'll KNOW when it's bottom. There won't be any doubt. And it will stay there for awhile, take your time.

There is some ultra rich guy who tried to manage the stock market crash in 1929. After all, J.P. Morgan had done it, the same guy had done it (or thought he'd done it) a few weeks before.

He got crushed.

Don't be so arrogant to think you can 'manage' a force of economic nature....

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Tara Donaca of Compass Commercial agreed that continuing high prices are the main cause of stagnation in the area in general and in Sisters in particular.

Ummmm... 2 years ago we were told that HIGH PRICES were good, cuz making 25% in perpetuity on Big Money, was MUCH BETTER than 25%/yr on nothing.

No amount of hype will help in the sale of an overpriced property, according to Ron Ross of RE/MAX Equity Group in Bend.

"A property has to make sense and stand on its own. Many Realtors don't understand that," he said.


Talk to COBA.

They think this marketing plan is just driven by Realtors wanting to make some sales. Those are the people that we need to convince.

See, thing is, IT IS A MARKETING PLAN DRIVEN BY REALTORS WANTING TO MAKE SOME SALES. That's ALL it is.

This piece, is nothing but a laughable illustration of the utter contempt that the RE behemoth has for ALMOST EVERYONE'S INTELLIGENCE.

"Those people" you want to convince are ONCE BURNED, TWICE SHY types who may have bought your load of shit THE FIRST TIME. You've lost credibility here, FOLKS. You're trying to sel to people who ALREADY OWN 3-4 HOMES THEY ARE ABOUT TO LOSE TO FORECLOSURE, and you want them to buy more? WAKE THE FUCK UP! NO ONE HAS ANYMORE MONEY.

RE-READ THE PIECE. You're right, people are NOT BUYING because they KNOW if they buy at the KOOL-AID FUELED prices YOU CONVINCED THEM to sell at, that they, as new owners, will suffer the same fate.

WE'RE NOT BUYING CUZ PRICES ARE TOO HIGH AND WILL FALL.

Remember... you wanted this. You wanted it no matter the cost. Welp, here's the cost. The absolute destruction of your industry.

Good call. Have fun.

Anonymous said...

He got crushed.

Don't be so arrogant to think you can 'manage' a force of economic nature....

*

These people 'managed' the UPSIDE with taxpayer dollars just fine. This is WHY I have been demanding in this forum FOREVER to end the COVA taxpayers subsidy, and all city-bend subsidy's to PR&Marketing, whose only purpose is to draw retirees, and separate them from their 401k's.

Bend is a Fraud, and ran by frauds, and eventually if we the citizenry don't put a stop to it, not only will we get the bill, but we also be named in the fraud. Just like the 'innocent' Nazi's that didn't "SPEAK UP".

The same people who RAN-UP the bubble are still running this town, with taxpayer money, and now they're running the DOWN-SIDE/Bubble-Implosion with taxpayer money.

Forget the 'safe' analogy DUNCAN, these people are floating on a parachute, while everyone else in Bend is getting pink-slips.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

That Nugget piece is comical it's so idiotic. Talking to a Realtor about the emptiness of marketing in the current environment, is like talking to a door-to-door Mormon without invoking "The Bible" every sentence. It's imbued their thinking to such an extent, they can't understand the World without it.

It's really funny... I feel like I'm listening to a religious zealot when I read these RE-Get Together pieces. These people are so deluded they don't even understand Normal People anymore.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

"If prices are not too high, we get offers. But when prices are set too high, the buyers won't even make an offer if they feel that the listing price and a fair market price are light years apart.

DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT!

You just keep dropping $100/mo on price every month & you'll be just fine. SOMEONE will see the light, and scoop your property right up.

In 2039.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

I ran thru the Forum Meadows disaster recently, and for every vacant home with a for sale sign, there are 3 without.

Listing on MLS is expensive, and it really is ridiculous to list 50 identical homes, when 10 will get the job done.

But MAN, there is Dark Matter galore in this town. 5,000 homes waiting in the shadows can't be far off the mark.

Duncan McGeary said...

Take a big pot of central Oregon, throw in a dash of publicity here, a pinch of marketing there, government subsidies there....and we manage a boom?

EVERY town in a America does this! Every town thinks it's special. Every T.V. show hopes to be a hit. Every cereal that hits the market had marketing. We just happened to have a bubble inflate here through chaos and natural wonder.

But you don't create bubbles.....

Anonymous said...

I've had this argument constantly, when something like Pokemon takes off it's because the the T.V. show, or the marketing concept, or whatever.

*

Dunc, from everything you have told us about yourself, you were a writer, you bought a comic book store at a young age, which you have managed for 30 years,

Dunc, I have worked for the biggest big corporate company's all my life, I have been around corporate PR&MARKETING.

There are NO accidents, Beanie-Baby, .. Pokemon, they're NOT accidents, sure NOT all campaigns stick, but they're not all accidents either.

The BEND BUBBLE was NO FUCKING accident DUNCAN, it was a planned fraud.

1.) City of Bend treasury used to sell the BEND-BRAND, and its STILL THERE on the city website today, they have NOT yet deleted this shit. The Bend-Brand is a myth that Bend is retirement perpetual youth paradise, where nobody ever ages. The Bend-Brand is a fairy-tale.

2.) Easy Money from DUMBYA.

3.) Exempt, deferred SDC's, $12k, instead of $60k, builders came from everywhere. Every builder got rich in Bend, because here they didn't have to front the SDC like elsewhere, BEND is-was a designed PONZI scheme.

Norma at all her clubs like COVA,COBA,COAR, .. they are the wizard behind the curtain, your saying that BEND being #1 over-valued in the USA is just fucking accident, like POKEMON, NO duncan it wasn't an accident it was an organized planned FRAUD.

The same people WHO blew up the bubble are now trying to deflate bubble with OUR money.

Very little happens in the business world by accident duncan, for you to suggest such, simply tells me that you have NOT spent any years in Corporate Board Rooms, we already know you don't belong to any of these clubs ( COAR, COBA, COVA, EDOC); It's always the same people, and they do run Bend, and they do manage the BUBBLE, and follks at the SORE & BULL also belong to these clubs.

tim said...

>>meridian

I'm all for a meridian in Redmond. What better way to connect Redmond with the north and south poles?

Full speed ahead on that! How much do you think it costs to bribe all the globe and map makers?

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

The BEND BUBBLE was NO FUCKING accident DUNCAN, it was a planned fraud.

I'd say that they certainly wanted a bubble, if they could get one... but they weren't Solely Responsible For It's Creation. If they were, they would manufacture another, right now.

That said, they sure as hell want the one we had to be re-flated, and kept alive no matter the cost.

The dinks running this town can barely flush a toilet... I don't think they could manifest billions out of mid-air.

They're like that Around The World airplane... it needed an expendable motor to get off the ground, but after that it took far less energy to keep it aloft. Same here... the bubble was largely created by exterior forces, but has been frantically kept alive by the meager intellectual forces of the local RE industry.

Anonymous said...

It is NO accident that BEND is the #1 over-valued RE in the entire USA, even now its STILL 70% over-valued today!!! This is NO accident, other city's didn't defer the SDC's, other city's didn't squander tax-payer treasure on PR bunny's and cocaine whores.

NO DUNCAN BEND is NOT NORMAL.

Duncan McGeary said...

We really disagree about this, dude. I think MOST of it's accident.

You can 'manage' growth perhaps. But you can't manage a bubble.

It's a difference of degree.

It's like knowing the mind of the public....

I've seen hundreds of gaming concept come down the pike, and they all look good. But you put them in front of the public, and some sell and some don't and some sell with lots of marketing and some don't and some sell without any marketing.

It's only after the fact that people go back and say, such and such took off because....blah, blah, blah.

Why does my THE TRUTH ABOUT CHUCK NORRIS book sell like crazy? You going to tell me that someone knew that was a hit?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

I'm telling you. It's a mystery.

Otherwise every movie would be a hit. Every book. Every T.V. show. Every product.

BUBBLES are another whole order of magnitude than a hit. On a scale of one to 10, a 'hit' is a 10. A bubble is 100 or 1000.

That's what Bend just went through....

Anonymous said...

We really disagree about this, dude. I think MOST of it's accident.

*

Are you saying that it's just an 'accident' that Bend does PR & Marketing??

Are you saying there are other city's like Bend that ran by Mike Hollern, with his 'smart growth' theme-park, and loaded city-hall??

No, Duncan BEND is an exception.

Hollern came from a PR&marketing background back in the 1960's, everything that has happened to Bend, has been according to plan.

It was NOT an accident, perhaps the implosion is an accident, but blowing up the bubble was NOT an accident.

It was an orchestrated, and planned Fraud.

I like you dunc, so don't get me wrong. I just think that given you have spent your entire working life in a retail bookstore, that you have no idea how the REAL corporate world works.

I think you take this min-wage thing to far, and assume to often that everything is small and simple, like your life and business.

Bend is a BILLION-BILLION dollar fraud.

It is no simple accident that Bend Oregon is the #1 MOST over-valued RE in the USA.

Sure they 'tossed' in a little PR for spice, and lowered the SDC's for flavor, and DUMBYA tossed unlimited CASH to anyone with a breath. But ALL things being equal that could be TRUE in MOST places.

BEND didn't toss a little PR, it PUT down the WHOLE FUCKING BET, which is WHY we'll GO BK, BRUCE knows, this and so does HOMER, we're going down BK.

1.) We put do OUR WHOLE was on the PR BET, we didn't toss a little.

2.) We deferred ALL our SDC's, we're NOW $3Billion in the whole on SDC deferral, nobody else did this.

Duncan, Guys like Hollern, Hap-Taylor, Pape, have been running this town forever for their personal enrichment, this isn't NORMAL.

BEND city-hall, and city-staff, put every ONCE of city-treasure and city-effort in the last ten years to blow up the bubble, and they bet it all, and we became #1 in the nation, and we doubled our bets, and doubled our bets. Now we'll FALL the hardest than any city in the nation, because of the law of action & reaction.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Those are the people that we need to convince. If they buy now and the market still hasn't bottomed, they think they could lose money," said DuBois.

NORMA: They don't THINK they'll lose money, THEY WILL LOSE MONEY.

My God.

tim said...

When your house is paying you $50k a year to own it, McMansions and SUVs and boats and skis seem a fine idea. All it takes is a flattening (not the pounding that showed up yesterday in the S&P Case-Shiller numbers) to kill those ideas. When people say, "prics are hanging on," I don't think they realize that that's the same as saying, "what was holding this town together just curled up in your jacuzzi and died."

The ideas of the good life disappear overnight in some people (the people that had a nagging feeling all along that something was off kilter). In other people, the memories of the high life never go away--only the money does.

This whole "live on the retirees money" is bullshit because all the easy fruit's been picked. All those people in California that REALLY wanted to move to Bend? They did. The people that kinda wanted to move have a lot less equity than they did, so their odds of moving are smaller.

There's not a huge tidal wave of rich retirees in the US--there's a bunch of baby boomers who undersaved and overspent.

Yes, there is a small, small trickle of richies, but they are fickle as hell. If Bend has the smell of death on it, you can up your PR tenfold and not snag them.

All these optimistic Realtors and builders forget one thing--if Bend is so hot, why are there so many houses for sale? We've ALREADY failed.

You don't revive fads or fashion for 20 years. Bend is like bell bottoms, which disappeared almost completely for 15 years before a few trendy people wore them again. It was another 5 years before the masses decided that chicks looked hot in them again.

You want to bring back Bend? Save your PR money. try again in 15 or 20 years.

As I said before, if you want to get people now, they have to be people who have never heard of Bend. People for whom Bend is not "last year's hotness."

They are in Manhattan and Asia. PR just got way more expensive, because you need a Clockwork Orange kind of education to teach those people about a city that's in a state that most of them can't locate on a map.

Anonymous said...

Duncan,

The reason that you got my GOAT today, is that your using the same essential argument that Harold Jenkins is using today in the WSJ. That the BUBBLE was an accident, caused by Clinton, years ago, ...

Nothing to do with Bend, nothing to do with BUSH, all just an ACCIDENT.

Well a BIG FUCK-YOU to all that say this shit.

The RE bubble was NOT an accident, well established fact it was orchestrated by ROVE to get BUSH a second term.

BUSH visited BEND in his first term, with ALL the good old-boyz, and its a well established fact that everyone in 2002 knew that BEND was destined for greatness. This is WHY Sebastian came over form the valley. This is why city-hall held the SDC's down to almost zero, BEND Republican's had planned this bubble since DAY-ONE.

NOW TODAY ALL YOU APOLOGISTS ARE SAYING IT WAS ALL A 'POKEMON' ACCIDENT. BULLSHIT.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

My stock broker said:

If you buy now, and the price goes down, I think you'll lose money.

Discuss.

tim said...

Clinton's bubble was the Nasdaq. It rose and fell on his watch. It certainly set up Bush for his bubble.

These two jokers can claim that they created more wealth than anyone before them, but all these "wealth creation" bubbles are really only useful to build infrastructure.

That's why the case of Bend is so sad. The only decent usefulness of a bubble is to build infrastructure. So where's ours?

I want a TShirt that says, "I survived the bubble, but buster tells me my shit won't flow uphill."

Anonymous said...

This whole "live on the retirees money" is bullshit because all the easy fruit's been picked. All those people in California that REALLY wanted to move to Bend? They did.

*

Thanks, tim, always the rational voice from the Wilderness.

Worse than that the retirees were picked to the bone, during dot-com, then picked on the RE-BUBBLE, most retiree's today are BROKE.

The entire baby-boom generation has been fleeced on a level never before seen, the result?? A whole new social-security to take care of dependents.

One more element, county's and state's pay for elder-care, BEND has said "BRING US YOUR DEAD AND DYING", well we got them, and they're broke, HOW in the hell are you going to pay the meds, and housing for all these dead & dying???

HOW??

Yes, the WHOLE Bilking of the retiree was always a FRAUD, a perfect, orchestrated BEND FRAUD.

BUY a second home in Bend, whether you need it or not, and own some paradise.

EVERY FUCKING SUCKER that could bite, has bitten, now its game-over.

COVA endlessly squanders our MONEY bringing them to this town, as tourists to BUY fucking CONDO's from DuBois, and/or Breeze, ... Nothing that happens in this town is an accident, its all a planned Fraud to legally ROB RETIREES.

Some fucking day there is going to be a class-action lawsuit against this CITY!!!

Anonymous said...

My stock broker said:

If you buy now, and the price goes down, I think you'll lose money.

Discuss.

*

My CPA said I made too much money, that I need to BUY something that loses money, so I can show a loss, and net my income to zero, and thereby defer taxes.

Any ideas on what to buy in Bend, that can lose money??

"Come to Bend, Oregon, Best Place in 20 years for a Tax Loss".

Duncan McGeary said...

Bilbo, we seem to reach the same conclusions -- maybe because we can see what's in front of us -- but we arrive from two different directions.

In a way, you're view is a more optimistic one. We have our fate in our hands --even if it is a fucked up fate.

I think it's all one big friggin pokemon sized accident.

Some guy posts a "Chuck Norris eats coal and shits diamonds" meme on the internet and it takes OFF. Who knew? How many millions of memes are posted on the internet every day that go nowhere?

In a broader scheme, money protects money. I believe that. But as I said, every town has marketing, there are Hollerns and DuBois and Bauhofers all over the place, man. Not every graduate of Stanford moves to Bend.

So, yeah, I think these things take on a life of their own. Chaos theory at work.

Our ATTITUDES toward these events, that we can control, and in that Bend has failed big time. No friggin ethics, no perspective, no balance.

We got overwhelmed...

Anonymous said...

There's a lot of hullabaloo this morning on the bleeding layoffs. Knife River slashes 20% and Palicsh Homes cuts 30%. I've been in Bend since 2000. And to me it seems like these companies are just going back to the size they were prior to the bubble. In fact was Palicsh homes even around pre-bubble?

Anonymous said...

Hey you guys this real estate stuff isn't funny. I've had to prostitute my chihuahua just to feed myself. This is no joke you guys! Some of us ex real estate brokers a serial! I'm serial!

tim said...

In a couple months, those layoffs will turn into more houses for sale. This is a shitty town job-wise. The whole state of Oregon is not much better, Portland being the only dependable job town in the whole state. The university towns are not great but have a certain floor on employment.

People who need jobs will be moving from Bend to Portland, or back to CA, or to Eugene, Salem, and Portland. Or to the southeast US to one of the cities that has jobs.

Hard times coming, so y'all reread Hard Times.

tim said...

>>I've had to prostitute my chihuahua just to feed myself.

Please post your dog's web page.

Anonymous said...

Some guy posts a "Chuck Norris eats coal and shits diamonds" meme on the internet and it takes OFF. Who knew? How many millions of memes are posted on the internet every day that go nowhere?

*

Dunc, A relative has a JEEBUS freak hubby who is a minister, and he teaches this and believes it to be true, I knew Norris Karate back in the 1960's, and he was a con-man then.

The JEEBUS-FREAKS because of 'TEXAS-WALKER-RANGER' think that Chuck Norris is the second coming. FACT. I kid you not, thus if JEEBUS can turn water into wine, why can't NORRIS shit diamonds?? The TV show 'texas-ranger' has a CULT-FOLLOWING for jeebus freaks I have known this for years, they think this TV show is sacred shit.

My point is that the memo took off cuz there is a grain of truth ( biblical truth ), but the public JEEBUS FREAKS already did believe that NORRIS walked on water, before the memo.

You only see the MEMO, I see other things.

Everything is like the blind man and the elephant so fucking what.

I maintain that the BEND-BUBBLE was NO fucking accident.

Planned orchestrated FRAUD.

You own a small retail comic-book store, I'm a Petroleum Geo-Physicist. We have different world views.

Like the elephant; The blind-man on the leg thinks it a tree, the one with the trunk thinks it a snake, they're all partially correct, but ALL totally wrong.

This BLIND-MAN will argue to his dying day, that the BEND-BUBBLE was an orchestrated, planned, and carefully executed FRAUD. It's NO accident that to this DAY Bend is the #1 over-valued RE in the USA.

Anonymous said...

Not every graduate of Stanford moves to Bend.

*

Not every stanford graduate moves to a town where he just happens by birth to own Shevlin-Hixon ( company town ), a silver-spoon, cuz some big MINN company had years earlier bought that little company town.

Hollern came to Bend late 1960's, post Stanford MBA with the explicit plan of marketing worthless land that had been clear cut.

His first big project was Black-Butte.

Not every small town that you never heard of had a TV newsman anchorman loser ( Montana dropout ) go back to college, on silver spoon trust-fund, and was given his own town to play with upon graduation.

Bend is special, special indeed.

Anonymous said...

In a couple months, those layoffs will turn into more houses for sale. This is a shitty town job-wise. The whole state of Oregon is not much better, Portland being the only dependable job town in the whole state.

*

In my 40+ years here this is BEND, people come here for ONE JOB, and it when it doesn't work out, they leave, ...

Always been this way, always will be this way, ...

At least in PDX for every career, there may be a dozen or more places to work, in Bend, other than min-wage each field only has ONE SHOP.

Oh, and I might add that they have always made people work 24/7 cuz, there is NO competition, don't get a job in Bend, if you have like to do outdoor stuff. Only live in Bend, if your financially 'comfortable'.

Bewert said...

Whoa, some turbulence here this morning :)

My feelings are the bubble was hoped for, was orchestrated to a great extent, but getting us to #1 in appreciation was a success bigger than the wildest dreams of Hollern, et al. They would have been very happy to be #10, which still would have resulted in a bubble.

The biggest issue for the rest of us is infrastructure. We need it, and we have no money. I'm going to sit down with Sonia in the very near future and talk about things like this. Along with what the hell is the thinking on JR's next 50 acres. I get the feeling she isn't drinking Russell's kool-aid no more.

Got some errands to run, so I'm taking my digital camera looking for meth STD's. Maybe I'll find something interesting...

Anonymous said...

... the bubble was largely created by exterior forces, but has been frantically kept alive by the meager intellectual forces of the local RE industry.

- HOMER,

***

Thanks, homer now lets continue your logic,

ALL they can do now is spend MORE taxpayer money on PR&MARKETING and DROP the SDC's lower, as these are the only TWO Tools INTERNALLY they have ever had.

The external TOOL "EASY-MONEY", is OVER.

The trouble with making SDC's ZERO, its that muni-bonds are NOW dead, as the bond-auction market it dead, can't borrow SDC, then you can't build.

The ONLY game in town is to use city-treasury cash-flow for PR&MARKETING, this is the only tool they have to RE-FLATE the bubble.

They'll BK this city trying.

YOU KNOW this to be true HOMER.

Quimby said...

Now this is the kind of Mayor we need in Bend:

http://www.katu.com/news/local/15979777.html

Poses in racy outfit on firetruck, check!
Fires two city golf leeches, check!
Pisses off golfers, check!

Only problem was that she was recalled. Well boys, maybe we can get her to move to Bend and run for Mayor!

tim said...

For what a median is worth in RE, the Commerce Dept reported that we are back to Sept 2004 nationally. Only a 3 1/2 year rewind so far but this is a big fucking deal.

Just wait until we're back to Jan 2003. That will absolutely punch the economy in the gut and the RE and construction industries in the nads.

Just winding medians back another year and a half beyond where they are now will bring any surviving sellers and banks to capitulation.

Anonymous said...

The trouble with making SDC's ZERO, its that muni-bonds are NOW dead, as the bond-auction market it dead, can't borrow SDC, then you can't build.

*

THIS is why KNIFE-RIVER is NOW dead.

The primary source of all their projects were local public funded corp-welfare.

Now the ONLY projects left are federal road projects, and they'll have to GOTO the jobs.

Homer, did you hear they're moving all their toys to Baker City to build some roads!

Anonymous said...

Only a 3 1/2 year rewind so far but this is a big fucking deal.

*

Given that ALL RE in BEND, was BOUGHT by REHO's for NUTTIN down, its safe to say that right now over 50% of BEND is under-water.

Folks these days walk when they're under water, anybody want to bet how many will walk??

Anonymous said...

Wow, that article in the Bend Bulletin Biz yesterday was AH-mazing. That pump speech given by an appraiser. What was more amazing was the 700 who cheered him. Baffling!

tim said...

In the Cascade Business News, Kate O'Higgin says that despite the bust people will keep donating to the arts around here.

She believe that? Or just happy talk trying to guilt people into coming through for her as much as possible?

Are donations to the arts going to be a priority while the big guys are laying off people and selling jets?

Duncan McGeary said...

They've got it exactly backward. Not only aren't we going to come out of this before the rest of country, we have even further to fall.

Instead of comparing to the rest of the country, we should be looking at Florida and California if we want to see what's six months to a year down the road.

We were included in the same category as Naples, Florida on the way up, and eventually we'll look like them on the way down.

Anonymous said...

Nothing that happens in this town is an accident, its all a planned Fraud to legally ROB RETIREES.

Some fucking day there is going to be a class-action lawsuit against this CITY!!!

***

Any robbed retirees in Bend complaining anywhere yet? I'd like to hear from them.

Duncan McGeary said...

The Naples News reports from Florida. “The Cape Coral-Fort Myers area had the highest rate of foreclosures in the nation in January, a mortgage research firm said. Charlie Green, the Lee County Clerk of Courts, said there were 2,297 foreclosures in the county during January. During the first four months of fiscal 2008 — from October through January — there were 7,766 foreclosures.”

“‘For the first third of the year foreclosures were up 2,100 percent,’ Green said. ‘It’s insane.’”

“Tom Moss admits buying a condo in Estero was an ill-advised investment. The Naples resident bought the property two years ago with thoughts of turning a profit. He paid $232,000 for the two bedroom, two bath, 1,416 sq. ft. unit with a third-floor view of the sunsets. Now, Moss will be ‘happy’ if he can sell for $180,000.”

“‘I got caught,’ Moss said. ‘After years of complaining about the growth, I decided to buy into it. But I got in too late and now I’m getting smoked.’”

“He listed his condo on Craig’s List, and wants to limit his losses to just over $50,000. ‘I don’t want to pay someone else money that I’m already losing,’ said Moss about resisting to list the property with a Realtor.”

“You could hear the despair about the market in Ray Garvey’s voice. The Realtor/investor has two homes in the foreclosure process and is trying to salvage a condo investment. Garvey admits the $239,000 asking price on his South Fort Myers condo might need some adjustment.”

“But having plunked down $220,000 for it a year ago, he’s faced with a losing proposition.”

“‘I’d take any reasonable offer but I’m not getting even that,’ said Garvey. ‘Someone offered $160,000 via e-mail but that means I’m going to have to come up with $55,000 at closing and I don’t have it.’”

“‘I don’t think you can find an enthusiastic Realtor right now,’ said Garvey who moved to Southwest Florida four years ago from New York.”

Quimby said...

>> ‘Someone offered $160,000 via e-mail but that means I’m going to have to come up with $55,000 at closing and I don’t have it.’


I don't care who you are...that hurts to read. I fear that there are hundreds of people in Bend in this exact same situation.

Anonymous said...

HOMER/BEM CACB is now $10,


TEN BIG BUCKS, it will be under $10, within a week.

Anonymous said...

Any robbed retirees in Bend complaining anywhere yet? I'd like to hear from them.

*

To date, they have quietly committed suicide, but eventually, I would say next year, some young enterprising lawyer will enlist those who didn't commit suicide to join a class action lawsuit against the City of Bend.

If you know anything about fraud, you would know that most crimes go up-reported, granny is simply too ashamed of having been a dupe. Gramps may just pipe carbon-monoxide into the room while the sleep. The right person goes down, it just takes one bruce who happens to be a lawyer, and then you get a class action moving, then they'll all come out of the wood-work, this is how this stuff plays.

All BUBBLES in this way.

Anonymous said...

Ok,

New idea for today, a WHOLE new blog site called.

"BendsAngryRetirees.blogspot.com"

The call will go out, don't ever ask for anything, because you will get it.

Anonymous said...

They've got it exactly backward. Not only aren't we going to come out of this before the rest of country, we have even further to fall.

Instead of comparing to the rest of the country, we should be looking at Florida and California if we want to see what's six months to a year down the road.

*

Dunc,

You ONLY have to study TWO-CHARTS "TOL", and "CACB".

TOL is the bellwether for national, and peaked JULY05, CACB is the BELLWETHER for CENTRAL-OREGON and peaked Jan 07,

18 months LAG, PURE & SIMPLE, why ??

Because OREGON is no-where when the all the other markets had peaked they look for new plays, and then they found OREGON, its always the last to go up, and the last to recover, ALL bubbles here work this way.

How far will we GO DOWN CACB is 100% correct, we'll go -70%, or Homer 2/3, or busters 1/e ( natural number ), ...

Summer of 2008 will be absolute PANIC here, then BEND will be toxic for a few years, and it will take until 2012 to clear the REPO's, then its going to be inflation until 2025, which is something between 4-6%, there's a real good article in todays WSJ about real-inflation. Gov says 4%, but experts say 6%.

For Bend $400k medians at say $160k in 2010, will take until past 2020 to get back to $320k.

Anonymous said...

How, When, & WHY: Bend, Oregon went to HELL.

***

The last of Bend’s five lumber mills closed in 1994, and as real estate development exploded, there was a backlash against further growth.

Along about this time, West Bend Property Company was formed to develop a tract of timberland that, as it happened, lay within Bend’s urban growth boundary. As some in the community began to push for a moratorium on further development, the company moved to counter “no growth” sentiment for a campaign for “smart growth.”

As Ken Pirie, an urban designer with the firm that planned NorthWest Crossing has written, “West Bend Property Company partners Mike Hollern, Kirk Schueler and Mike Tennant became moderate brokers of a rigorous public conversation and active proponents of good civic design.” The developers sponsored charrettes to get public input on specific projects, such as a new bridge crossing the Deschutes River, and helped bring national leaders of the smart growth movement to town for a series of lectures on “Building a Better Bend.”

Bewert said...

Looks like Inn7th is going to end up in court.

From http://innowners.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/letter-to-innspired_2_27_08_.pdf

"Gentlemen,

I am disappointed to learn through your legal team that you are no longer interested in negotiations as a way to settle our differences regarding your recent actions at the Inn of the Seventh Mountain..."

This is going to be fun. I can't wait to see Friedman under oath.

Bewert said...

Re: “smart growth.”

NWC isn't the problem. Lava Ridge and the rest of the east side STD's are the problem. Smart growth turned into greed, into a bubble, and into a giant fucking nightmare.

Interestingly, many of the NE side neighborhoods don't look to be in too bad of shape. It's the newest ones out there that are going to get scary. The ones close to bare land, like Palisch's Lava Ridge 4 just north of Empire and Purcell, are ripe for "occupation".

I ran out of camera memory, so if anyone is out by Costco they should cruise the area east and south of 27th and Hwy 20.

That said about the east side, over on the "riche" side Shevlin Ridge is really hurting. I bet almost 1/3 of them are empty, for sale, or lots looking for a builder. And the top of Archie Briggs just off Mt. Washington has 8-10 expensive spec homes and lots that are going nowhere fast.

The banks that financed this stuff are going to be in full panic mode this summer when it doesn't start moving without a 50% haircut.

Bewert said...

Oh, another thought related to SDC;s and infrastructure: the latest plan to build two east side sewer collectors, on on 27th and one on Hamby, is pretty obvious when you see the amount and density of building out there. Unfortunately, those hundreds of McMansions on postage stamp lots paid so little in SDC's it is going to cost Bend taxpayers and arm and a leg to service them.

When the actual cost comes out, when property taxes go through the roof, people are going to start screaming bloody murder. We should be making an effort at education before this happens, maybe suggesting special assessments on the developers if possible. IANAL but it seems fair.

Anonymous said...

BENDBB site today has realtors arguing that BEND is NOT over-valued.

***

Anonymous wrote:
Charts looking at Deschutes County say I make $40K a year. Yeah, my job locally. My freelance income from out of the area adds another 60K to that. I'm not alone. They also didn't include the fact I won the lottery.


https://www.nationalcity.com/main/micro-site/economics/commentary-analysis/pages/housing-valuation-analysis.asp

Above link is the Jan 2008 report, and the methodology is include, the results are ROCK-SOLID, and all the Kool-Aid WILL NOT CHANGE THE FACTS, ...

The most overvalued market is Bend, OR at
70%. This level of valuation is up 1.9
percentage points from the second quarter. It
was among 117 metro areas which saw their
levels of overvaluation increase. The largest
declines in levels of overvaluation were seen in
Merced, CA (falling 12.3 percentage points)
and Stockton, CA (down 11.3). In our analysis, we have determined that levels
of valuation that fall within ±15% are
considered to be statistically normal. In the
third quarter, there are 201 metro areas that
fall in this range, up from 186 metro areas in
the second quarter.

Anonymous said...

Bruce,

YOUR MISSING THE FUCKING POINT as always on 'smart growth', cuz you weren't fucking here.

HOLLERN changed the debate from NO-GROWTH/CONTROLLED-GROWTH to anything goes GROWTH.

That's the fucking POINT.

Nothing that HOLLERN did was 'smart growth', go to wiki and see, what HOLLERN did was wrap the 'smart growth' rhetoric with PR-BUNNYS around Bend city-hall, and then when he got his NWXC, then the flood gates were opened.

This is why you have the east-side the way it is now, because HOLLERN put a cross through the heart of the NO-GROWTH debate five years before you even moved here.

Bewert said...

Re: Nothing that HOLLERN did was 'smart growth'

Yes, I totally fucking agree. It was very effective PR for a giant bubble. NWX was the showcase, Lava Ridge 4 is the real result.

LavaBear said...

Fuckin A...a guy leaves town for a few days and comes back to see over on BendBB they must of had a kool-aid party recently. Sure seems like some RE office decided to add another angle to the Best Time to Buy ads...which is: "you, you and you go swamp the message boards with positive news. I'm tired of our pent up demand only hearing the negatives."

Frankly it's kind of refreshing. New meat to feed Buster...let him get his rant on.

LavaBear said...

Read the above on Knife-River, the end is here.

***

Well Buster...here is one where I'll have to disagree. I do agree that the easy money pigs trough they've been rolling in the last 5 years is dry. I just don't believe they'll die off. This isn't Hap Taylor's first rodeo. Yes, they've had it easy for a few years now but damn...he's been through hard times as well. I see the layoffs today as a start and a huge change from times past where he kept the denial in place till the bitter end. Perhaps it's the corporate umbrella overhead, perhaps Todd Taylor now is calling the shots and he's not near as nice as his pops.

Anonymous said...

lavabear,

There are a lot of anon here, I don't think I said that KR will go BK, first of all they're now owned by a BIG outfit back East. If you read carefully what was printed today in the BULL its clear that they're packing their bags and leaving Bend for good.

Yes, that was MY point the corp-welfare is over, and its not coming back, and they're not going to wait around.

There are lots of places to put tandem dump trucks to use, and Bend is now not the time nor the place.

buster,

LavaBear said...

There are lots of places to put tandem dump trucks to use, and Bend is now not the time nor the place.

***
How about they use them to haul away all of the empty shit shacks that end up getting torn down in this town?

Even if KR leaves town for good...I doubt the Taylor clan will.

Anonymous said...

Read these numbers and enjoy your kool-aid.

In 2005, Bend's economic profile comprised five industry categories: tourism (7,772 jobs); healthcare and social services (6,062 jobs); professional, scientific and technical services (1,893 jobs); wood products manufacturing (1,798 job

[ source for all of above is wiki ]

How bad is Bend?? We don't know how many contractors, and MTG brokers, and Realtors are out of work in Bend, because they were all contractors, but what we do know is above, if you integrate the above numbers and work backward, you can guesstimate the number of un-employed people today.

Tourism is down by 1/2, so that's 3500, health is fine 6,000, sci is the same at 2k, and wood products is gone. So thats 11,000 people in Bend with good known jobs, figure that 1/2 the people in Bend are employable, that means that 25,000 people in Bend are out of work. If we're to believe that the population is-was 70k,

Add in 5,000 none homeless population, hell make it 10k, which is 70k-10k, so make the population 60k, with 1/2 that employable, so even then not counting the homeless 20k are out of work, that means a rough estimate is that 1/3 of Bend is out of work.

The pain, just wait until summer, when it gets hot, and you'll see the pain.

Anonymous said...

Can't Define 'collapse' in Bend, cuz Bend has removed the word form the city dictionary, thus here we define, the Bend Collapse.

****

You ONLY have to study TWO-CHARTS "TOL", and "CACB". ( Google Business, Finance - http://finance.google.com )

TOL is the bellwether for national, and peaked JULY05, CACB is the BELLWETHER for CENTRAL-OREGON and peaked Jan 07,

18 months LAG, PURE & SIMPLE, why ??

Because OREGON is no-where when the all the other markets had peaked 'they' look for new plays, and then 'they' found OREGON, its always the last to go up, and the last to recover, ALL bubbles here work this way.

How far will we GO DOWN CACB is 100% correct, we'll go -70%, 1/e ( inverse of the natural number ),

Summer of 2008 will be absolute PANIC here, then BEND will be toxic for a few years, and it will take until 2012 to clear the REPO's, then its going to be inflation until 2025, which is something between 4-6%, there's a real good article in todays WSJ about real-inflation. Gov says 4%, but experts say 6%.

For 2006 Bend $400k medians at say $160k in 2010, will take until past 2020 to get back to $320k.

Anonymous said...

What's the deal are you all cut and pasting with bendbb.
I are/were the one that brought up the RE Folk argument not accepting the 70% over valued. My MsFucker came out in me. They really piss me off when they don't heed my words. As I said at BendBB. I guess I will shut up while they suffer.
I am only the master of my own, well defined, well endowed(I have savings), universe.
Don't go there :-)

Anonymous said...

Ya know I am sure there are many RE folks that are tuning into this station. I just wish they would take on a name and say they are RE folks. Just chime in. Or are you afraid the blog hog will delete you. I am sure the boss here will let you say your peace.
Do you believe that our future is unchangeable? Only 25% of our kind will survive..Many of us..even some of the mukey mucks are working at the post office and other less pretigious jobs. Although the public has really never considered us a necessity and and liken us to used car sales people. Why have we been fighting that our whole careers. Could it be true that many of us don't quite live up to the publics expectations? NAR has tried to BS the public into liking us forever. Why do they need to work so hard at that. Cause there are a lot of schmucks out there that are not worthy and don't know shit. That includes those I have tried to counsel as to where the market is going.

The end.

Anonymous said...

Thanks guys and gals for all the interesting stories. Moral of today's session: Be sure to tell your kids to find a career that is needed in good economic times and bad. Hey a government job doesn't sound so bad right now. Or how about insurance industry. Or health care. Or teaching. Low pay, but low risk of layoff?

I'm off to bed now.

P.S. Marge, have you recently had a sex change?

Anonymous said...

I'm thirsty for some KooLaid -- what flabors does it come in?

Anonymous said...

Maybe the city can pay KR to relocate some of the homeless with those trucks. Things are about to go from bad to straight up survival mode for a lot of these people. What do you do when the people you bum change off of run out of money? I hear black dog tastes better than white dog but I can't confirm it.

This sounds harsh I am sure but it's going to be reality pretty soon here in CO. For the last 5 years, I have given $2500-$5000 per year to local causes. I also tend empty my change hole when I see someone in need...not sure how much booze and meth I have paid for but I do feel bad so I give them money. Business is really good today but but I know it's time to hunker down. If we have gross sales that match last year, I will be shocked...I don't expect growth this year. I have been keeping my change lately and I eat out less these days. So if all businesses in CO go into survival mode/life support, what happens to the less fortunate folk?

This post may sound cruel but I am really just pointing out some harsh reality. We are in an industry that will survive the bust but we know that it's time to save our pennies for a rainy day. I am just glad we made it company policy years ago to not get involved with RE. We have had competitors call looking for sub work because their RE clients are broke or MIA.

Anonymous said...

What's the deal are you all cut and pasting with bendbb.
I are/were the one that brought up the RE Folk argument not accepting the 70% over valued.

*

The reason is that MOST of that material origally posted at BENDBB is being deleted by BENDBB, that's the reason for posting it over here.

That which BENDBB can't argue, he simply deletes.

The 70% over-valued is established for jan-2008, BENDBB wants to toss the $60k/yr income figure, but the fact is that is for a family of four, which is a rare bird here. In bad the actual typical household is $40k/yr or lower.

There are about 10,000 good paying non RE/Construction jobs in Bend, and we're told there are almost 70,000 mouths to feed.

Bewert said...

Re: I are/were the one that brought up the RE Folk argument not accepting the 70% over valued. My MsFucker came out in me. They really piss me off when they don't heed my words.

Marge, they are having a Womens Council of Realtors Luncheon today (Thursday) at 11:45 AM at Deschutes Brewery, to "address how to prepare buyers for today's market".

You going to go give them some tough love and report back?

PS Got some pics of extra, mostly empty housing yesterday, but ran out of camera memory before I got all the stuff SE of Barnes and Noble and off Reed Market west of 15th. I'll try to get some up on the Bend Economy Board this morning for your ammo...

Anonymous said...

A new mortgage company opened in Bend:

http://www.predatorylendingassociation.com/

Anonymous said...

Read these numbers and enjoy your kool-aid.

In 2005, Bend's economic profile comprised five industry categories: tourism (7,772 jobs); healthcare and social services (6,062 jobs); professional, scientific and technical services (1,893 jobs); wood products manufacturing (1,798 job

[ source for all of above is wiki ]

How bad is Bend?? We don't know how many builders, and MTG brokers, and Realtors are out of work in Bend, because they were all contractors, but what we do know is above, if you integrate the above numbers and work backward, you can guesstimate the number of un-employed people today.

*

Remember that everyone in a MTG office, Realty Office, or nailing under the SUN was a contractor, most realtors paid for their office, and so did most MTG brokers, they only make money when the their is a close. Most builders only got paid for the work completed.

Now that over 90% of ALL these jobs are GONE, VOLUME down 90% its ALL dark-matter ( invisible ) cuz it NEVER was on the payroll.

Look at the above wiki numbers closely for Bend employment category's even at PEAK it didn't add up to 15k.

Bend is fucked, but nobody has anything fucking idea how fucked it really is.

We can't put a finger on the UNKNOWN ( realtor, mtg brokers, and RE tradesmen ), but we can work with KNOWNS this is how science works, you take the knowns and integrate them, and then subtract that from the population to calculate the unknowns.

Anonymous said...

I maintain that the BEND-BUBBLE was NO fucking accident.

Planned orchestrated FRAUD.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Or are you afraid the blog hog will delete you. I am sure the boss here will let you say your peace.

My Record? Never a Single Deletion!

Never have, never will.

And I agree, there needs to be some Realtor sanity posted. When BS PR is the only outlet for the industry, you guys simply lose more & more credibility.

No one is buying the BS anymore. These blogs ain't here for no reason.

Anymore, since the Bull has essentially stopped bad News, this is the only outlet.

Tara Donaca of Compass Commercial agreed that continuing high prices are the main cause of stagnation in the area in general and in Sisters in particular.

Tell me that ain't amazing? A RE-type actually BLAMING high-prices for the problems the industry is having here. Didn't hear that 2 yrs ago... heard the exact OPPOSITE.

High prices are the problem. Worse is The Kool-Aid Culture, carefully cultivated by 99.9% of the local RE industry. THAT is why NO ONE will take less than Peak Pricing + 30%... you guys convinced them & now it'll overhang this thing forever.

I should say Brattons inane logic, extrapolates stats that aren't going to happen again, and ignores the VAST DARK MATTER out there, that will ONLY show up if it looks like things will recover. Inventory won't go down... it'll only fall momentarily, then Dark Matter in-fill will take it right back up.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Anymore, since the Bull has essentially stopped bad News, this is the only outlet.

Lemme call that STRAIGHT FORWARD BAD NEWS.

Just the facts, without some pie-in-the-sky bullshit about The Sun Will Come Out Tommorow.

Every story laced with Kool-Aid. STOP interviewing "Real Estate Experts" who have a HUGE VESTED INTEREST IN IT GOING UP. That ain't an expert. Back check the validity of RE insider EXPERT predictions from a year ago... VS THIS FUCKIN BLOG.

Almost every Bend bear commenter PREDICTED CORRECTLY... almost EVERY RE INSIDER EXPERT The Bull chose to interview was dead wrong.

That ain't a coincidence.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Bend '07 home sale prices fall nearly 3 percent

Posted: Feb 26, 2008 12:40 PM

Last Updated: Feb 26, 2008 08:35 PM


Appraiser says prices really down 30 percent or more

By Barney Lerten, KTVZ.COM

For much of 2006, Bend had the hottest real estate market in the nation, as measured by price appreciation. Fast-forward to the last quarter of 2007, and Bend tumbled to No. 236 among metro areas, with home sales prices down 1.44 percent in the quarter - that's above the 1.3 percent decline nationwide.

A caveat: The Office of Federal Housing Price Oversight's national figures, released Tuesday, are based only on home purchases, while the metro-area figures also include mortgage refinances.

The national, seasonally adjusted index dropped 1.3 percent, a full percent more than the previous quarter.

The change is even more dramatic in comparison to a year ago, as Bend's sale prices are down 2.84 percent, compared to a drop of just 0.3 percent nationwide from a year ago. They're still up markedly from five years ago, a rise of 84.37 percent.

But real estate appraiser Curt Drahn noted in a KTVZ.COM comment posting that the figures apply only to the average prices for homes that sell.

"I can show you, and I am sure a lot of real estate agents can show you that prices have fallen 30 percent, perhaps more," he said.

Other measures are more dramatic, and more gloomy. Standard & Poor's said Tuesday U.S. home prices dropped 8.9% in the final quarter of 2007, compared with a year earlier - the steepest decline in the 20-year history of its housing index.

OFHEO'S so-called "all-transactions" index, which includes appraisals for refinancing, showed less weakness nationally, up 0.1 percent for the quarter and 0.8 percent for the year.

"Although prices for home purchases in the quarter fell in every state except Maine, only 16 states plus the District of Columbia showed price declines for the full year 2007," said OFHEO Director James Lockhart.

"While the market weakness is most significant in areas that saw the greatest price run-ups during the boom, other states have clearly not been immune to recent declines."

The year 2007 had the first four-quarter decline in home purchase prices since the agency began collecting that data in 1991, Lockhart said. But he noted "relatively greater ... stability" in the purchase-only and all-transactions index, probably reflecting "the greater stability in the prime, conforming mortgage market ... than in other segments."

Oregon actually fared pretty well in the state rankings at No. 17, with a 0.24 percent increase in fourth-quarter home prices and a 3.85 percent rise over the year as a whole.

Anonymous said...

Promoting Sprawl at Juniper Ridge
Written by Jeff Boyer
Wednesday, 27 February 2008

In your Feb. 14 edition regarding Juniper Ridge, you sound like a clone of The Bulletin: “The city also needs a master plan to proceed with the development of Juniper Ridge, and everyone seems to agree that the Cooper Robertson plan is an excellent one.” If you think everyone is on board with this plan, you better get out more and talk to people. Everyone I know thinks the Juniper Ridge plan stinks, would create sprawl, and is a financial sinkhole.

The city did not survey the public on what they wanted for this parcel but instead imposed their idea of what could bring in the most revenue to bail them out of their current financial mess. This financial mess was caused by sprawling development in the first place without charging developers enough system development charges during the boom of the past 20 years. Now with the boom finally busting, the city has increased SDC fees. However, we are in the red for hundreds of million dollars for street, water, sewer, storm drain, and school infrastructure needs, not to mention money for basic maintenance. Yet my property tax bill has money going away from the existing city limits to Juniper Ridge. The original justification for Juniper Ridge was we needed more industrial land, yet very little of this project is planned for industrial uses. Redmond has plenty of industrial sites not far down the road from Juniper Ridge where the current vacancy rate is over 17%. The public strongly opposed sprawl during the Juniper Ridge public comment process, yet this message seems to have gotten lost somehow.

Anonymous said...

Well this is just like a replay of a movie that hasn't been written yet. Anybody wanna write it?

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

...Bend tumbled to No. 236 among metro areas, with home sales prices down 1.44 percent in the quarter - that's above the 1.3 percent decline nationwide.

I believe that's below the nationwide number...

Anonymous said...

"I can show you, and I am sure a lot of real estate agents can show you that prices have fallen 30 percent, perhaps more," he said.

*

Thanks, old buster bought a house last year for -50%, cuz he write low-balls.

Glad to hear a realtor admitting that prices have already fell, those lucky devils that sold last year did so, cuz they accepted low-ball offers.

How fucking low??

Well for a home with an ASK of $400k in 2006, I would offer $250k in 2007, and now I offer $200k.

In 2009 I'll be offering $150k.

Since day-one here I have said "medians don't mean shit".

What matters is that IF the person selling bought the house for 1/2 of what you offer. If a guy is ASKING $400k, but bought the home for $100k, then I offer him $200k, I like to see people double their money.

Given that 1/2 of Bend is NOW under-water or more than 1/2, these people will all walk, which means REPO, I don't do REPO cuz they always trash the home.

I only buy nice home that have been loved.

Right now from the high of 2005 where homes were selling for $500k at the high, they can be had now for $250k, so we're down -50% and that's in nice HOOD where I buy between Newport Market & Drake Park, FUCK THE STD's, I don't even want to talk that shit.

So we're down -50% TODAY, how much farther?? Probably -70% this summer, and then an over-correction, probably down -80%, there will be support at 4X, which is $160k, given that the average income for a BEND family of 2.2 is $42K. ( There are NO family's of FOUR in Bend @ $58k ).

In 1998 you could buy a great home in inner Bend for $120k, that ten years ago, at 5% inflation, that means that about $180k is a fair price. All things in life should be fair.

Now lets get back to those +50% homes in Bend that are under-water.

One more item, any of you try to get money lately?? MTG loans are getting just fucking bizarre, I'll write some shit up soon, on what's going on. Basically they want perfect credit >750, 50% LTV, ... my humble opinion is that less than 10% of the public can qualify, which gets back to the issue, even when homes are affordable, there will be no buyers.

Which is why in 1933 the federal government had to step in and create loans for people. The INVESTORS are gone, NOBODY wants to BUY MTG's anymore.

Then there is COMM-REIT's nobody wants to TOUCH BEND-OREGON, FOREVER.

This is WHY KNIFE-RIVER is LEAVING DODGE for good, cuz its OVER.

Anonymous said...

"I know of Very Few places where you have to "figure out" how to live somewhere. YOU FUCKING WORK. OK, you work."

Well, yeah. But you have to find a job first. If you don't have an outside source of income (pension, trust fund, investments) or are lucky enough to land one of the relatively few professional or managerial jobs available, it's tough to afford to live in Bend, Oregon.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

No amount of hype will help in the sale of an overpriced property, according to Ron Ross of RE/MAX Equity Group in Bend.

Then stop wasting your time & money hyping.

Call COBA, COAR, NAR... tell 'em BS Marketing ain't gonna reflate this soufflé.

Get prices DOWN 50%, and save your industry. DO NOT take overpriced listings... just going to cost you money, NOT SELL, and get you on the sellers shit list.

Stop taking BS listings folks. WASTES TIME & MONEY, and these nitwit sellers actually think you are VALIDATING their insanity. If you take a BS listing YOU are as much to blame for the malaise as anyone.

Anonymous said...

Well this is just like a replay of a movie that hasn't been written yet. Anybody wanna write it?

*

Thanks anyway, we'll wait for BENDBB to censor the movie, before we write the script.

Anonymous said...

"HOLLERN changed the debate from NO-GROWTH/CONTROLLED-GROWTH to anything goes GROWTH."

Take it from somebody who's been here for over 20 years: When it comes to growth, the motto in Bend has ALWAYS been "anything goes."

Anonymous said...

No amount of hype will help in the sale of an overpriced property, according to Ron Ross of RE/MAX Equity Group in Bend.

*

Homer, the problem is that the over-value is 70%, and thus given the turn-over in this market during the past seven years, you have to go back to 2001 to get down 70%. Your talking 70% of the homes since that time being flipped/traded having debt exceeding that amount.

So in effect your demanding that 70% of Bend home-owners that have REFI'd (HELOC) and/or BOUGHT since 2001 to walk-away. This is what you saying.

Now like I have said all along, there are many seller's that have sold -50% even last year, cuz they could cuz they owed nothing or less than $100k. This is the BEND minority.

Short-Sales, Walk-Aways, Repos, or as 'Marge' says, Jingle-Mail. Let's say there are 20,000 homes in the Bend area, and 70% are under-water now and/or during the next two years. That is 14,000 homes. Do these people have the balls to stick it out, and pay the MTG??

Most post 2001 purchasers came to BEND to MAKE MONEY, NOT LOSE money. My bet is they'll walk by the 1,000's.

It's going to be a slow process between NOW & 2012, certainly by 2010 the government will step in and offer loans. I see the entire commercial investor system shutting down this summer, as you probably know the auction BOND market has ground to a HALT and ALL MTG's are in effect BONDS.

Like 1933 depression, all we can do now is wait for a government home-owner program to guarantee loans for $180k ( 4X ) so that real-people can buy real homes.

Given that 70% of Bend owes MORE than $180k on their CRAP-SHACK, these people have two choices bite the bullet and wait it out until 2020 ( when inflation brings them back to AIR ), or WALK.

p.s. Problem with 'walkers' is you'll never get to own a home again.

Anonymous said...

Take it from somebody who's been here for over 20 years: When it comes to growth, the motto in Bend has ALWAYS been "anything goes."

*

Prior to the late 1990's there was a visible and powerful group of people like "Oregon Land Watch", that were involved in enforcing the UGB.

When HOLLERN paid for 'smart growth' dog&pony shows to come to BEND ( high desert museum ), and he wined & dined the Bend elite, with promises, that killed the anti-growth, and slow-growth, and no-growth debate.

My estimate is that about 1998 all the hippies, and protectors of Bend just gave up and walked away.

HOLLERN filled his city-hall with people like Friedman & Capell, and Johnson, people who ALL had a vested interest in HOA's & Excavation, .... Using taxpayer money COVA through giant party's, and anybody that even suggested NO-GROWTH or SLOW-GROWTH was NOT invited to the party.

Since 1998 BEND was taken over by REPUBLICANS that were really of the 'wise-use' school, even though they were wolves with 'smart growth' clothes.

The hippy's all went back to Eugene, or simply left, many of course aged, and like all good hippys decided that they wanted to make some money, hell almost all the OLD Bend Mayors and Councilors hold large real-estate holding NOW, and in the day, they were called Liberals.

Greed & the GOLF Course Cigar Chomping Rush-Limbaugh Republican was the Bend-Icon post 1998. Now that ICON is FUCKED. Now we're back to POVERTY 1983 without the View.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

"I know of Very Few places where you have to "figure out" how to live somewhere. YOU FUCKING WORK. OK, you work."

I guess I meant that Bend is one of those places where MANY people come WITHOUT a pre-existing job waiting for them. It's why there are SO MANY business start ups here... we ain't entrepreneurial... there ain't nothing else to do! It's either roll your own, or die a slow death.

POLL: How many people came here with a pre-existing job lined up?

Not me.

And I have NEVER moved anywhere else in my life without some sort of job/schooling arrangement in place. Bend is the only place I've blue-skied it....

Anonymous said...

If you don't have an outside source of income (pension, trust fund, investments) or are lucky enough to land one of the relatively few professional or managerial jobs available, it's tough to afford to live in Bend, Oregon.

*

It's ALWAYS been this way, other than 2002->2005, when anybody could get a job, or just flip and make $50k/mo flipping.

There's a reason that it used to be called "poverty with a view", we're out in the middle of the desert, on an Island, where everything is brought in, and every business costs more to operate than the real-world. Where dreamer's have always created the new buzz, but never stay. Anybody and everybody that has ever blew his wad the first few years here has left, cuz things didn't work out.

Bend has NOT been a working man's town since the mill's collapsed, and that was over 40 years. That's why the 60's & 70's, and 80's were slow.

The professional jobs in Bend have always been tough, cuz if it doesn't work out, you have to leave, there has always only been one outfit here for each industry, if you don't get along with the boss, then you have to go back to PDX, its always been this way.

I concur, if you don't have a NON-WORK cash-flow, what the fuck are you doing here?

Anonymous said...

POLL: How many people came here with a pre-existing job lined up?

*

Homer,

I need to clarify something here, you have defined ORYGUN.

It's always been that way in ORYGUN.

You come here, and you make your own job. It's always been this way.

PDX at least is competitive, cuz its on I5, its got supply's.

BEND has NEVER been competitive.

The ONLY kind of biz that makes sense in Bend is tele-commuting. Because there are NO physical costs for shipping material. For 40 years I have watched newbies come to this town and start all kinds of biz that involved 'tangibles', and they ALL go belly-up.

It's always been this way, we're OUT IN THE FUCKING DESERT.

A lot of people were SOLD a bill of goods to come to this town.

It's literally impossible to start in Bend. It's best to start in PDX, and get your operation running, and the tele-commute to Bend, as a working owner/manager, that's how I did it in the 60's, 70's, 80's; Even PDX is NOT a working mans town, never was.

Bend in its a day was a MILL-TOWN, but the trees were quickly extracted, and it was a boom-bust town.

Since the late 1960's a few guys like HOLLERN over-sold Bend, first with Sunriver ( john gray ) & Black-butte ( mike hollern ) they sold weekend homes to PDX'rs, then in the 1990's they went National with the Bend Brand.

The easy money of post 911, has completely PUT BEND out of whack, now the easy-money is GONE. Soon the 401k's will be GONE, the HELOC is long-gone.

Next year you'll start seeing the real bend.

Anonymous said...

POLL: How many people came here with a pre-existing job lined up?

Not me.

And I have NEVER moved anywhere else in my life without some sort of job/schooling arrangement in place. Bend is the only place I've blue-skied it....
--------------------------------

I moved to Portland that way in 1994 - wife three months ahead, to look for work, while I stayed behind and sent money. I do manufacturing accounting. There's no way in the world we would have considered - then OR now - moving to BEND without work. PDX still took me 2 months to find a decent job - and my wife still hadn't found one after three months.

Anonymous said...

I have NEVER moved anywhere else in my life without some sort of job/schooling arrangement in place. Bend is the only place I've blue-skied it....

*

Yeh, I quit a great job in the 60's, and loaded a pick-up, and moved to orygun without a job.

In those days it was to climb mtns, and do smith rocks every weekend. In those days there was NOBODY @ smith-rocks,

Orygun is back water, Orygun isn't even on most people's map, we still don't have decent schools except for Reed College in PDX.

If you came here with nothing, and without a job, your probably a survivor. The people who came to Bend, for a job, in Construction, RE, or MTG, or Title, now they're sitting at home watch oprah, waiting for a call.

Folks that came to Orygun without a job, at least KNOW how fucking hard it is to find a job.

Yes, I too came to Orygun with NOTHING, and prior I had been a research geo-physicist, and I just never thought about the job thing, I only thought about the mountains.

After a year I realized that I would never again do interesting work, unless I started my own companys. This is how Orygun has always been.

I think its virtually impossible to start any kind of company in Bend that involves staff. PDX has diversity. Bend has nothing, unless your idea of a good time is hiking, biking, ... but that is really for people who have money.

Working people have always BEEN fucked in Bend. For as long as I can remember folks in restaurants and bars had to have two jobs to survive.

I think its important to discuss this, cuz we're heading back to the real-bend and quick, and thus folks need to have a real perspective.

In Bend for as long I remember when friends move here with technical degrees and get a job at Bend-Sci or ABT ( micro-semi ), ... when it didn't work out they had to sell their home and move back to the BAY, or PDX, or SEA. It's always been this way in Bend, OR.

Look at Duncan, he's survived 30 years selling comic-books, is he rich? No, but its life-style, and he's survived.

Bend is ONLY about life-style, but honestly if you don't have lots of CASH to burn, its NOT going to be a very good life.


If you love to hike & bike, and that is cheap, and you live in a small home, and never spend money, then yea, bend can be a life-style, even the filthy-rich here that I know, BURN too much money to their liking. Everything here is expensive, look at duncan, driving an old car, paying himself min-wage, this is BEND. Take a long hard look.

Anonymous said...

Todays WSJ two major storys

1.) Tele-commuting is getting axed, and as a I have long said, the tele-commuters are the easiest to let go.

2.) 401k's are dropping like a rock.

The two above stat's are VERY relevant to Bend, OR.

Both story's in todays Money Section B-1.

PopGoesBend said...

Moved here in '99 with $800 and no job. I had to pull a cash advance on my credit card to pay for the deposit on my shit-hole apartment on the corner of Colorado and Wall that has since been bulldozed.

I moved here for the biking, and found a job the first week doing web development for a company that figured in the internet age they could set up anywhere. They found out that since all our clients were in NYC we needed an office there, which then became "the" office and most people here lost their jobs. After a couple years we were bought by a company in Toronto. Now I work at home for the Canadians, where they have lost 20% of their income because the US dollar crapped out.

The newest car our family has is a '98. That's new isn't it? It's only the 2nd car I have had that was built after 1978.

I'm here for the long haul, and so I hope that Bend pulls through somehow.

tim said...

>>1.) Tele-commuting is getting axed, and as a I have long said, the tele-commuters are the easiest to let go.

Absolutely. I first started hearing this about 10 years ago. A telecommuter or satellite office worker has a "face time" problem.

I've seen out-of-house programmers that were twice as good as the in-house guys get cut first.

Not a problem when companies are fattening up.

And if you commute via jet? Heh. All the sudden you look like a crazy extravagant expense.

tim said...

As for jobs, I must be anomaly. I moved to Oregon for a job and then I moved to Bend for a job.

Anonymous said...

I have had an on going argument in my RE office with a few people regarding the 70% over valued deal. I keep explaining how they figure it based on median incomes. The argues say the accountingdoesn't take into account all the people that have second homes here and the retirees living off investments.


MsT ( MARGE ), the link here contains two pdf's and one XLS, the pdf's contain the report, and the 'methodology' that explains exactly HOW&WHY Bend, OR is the #1 over-valued RE in the USA @ 70%. The XLS is for Bendbb.

https://www.nationalcity.com/main/micro-site/economics/commentary-analysis/pages/housing-valuation-analysis.asp

Above link is the Jan 2008 report, and the methodology is included, the results are ROCK-SOLID, and all the Kool-Aid WILL NOT CHANGE THE FACTS, ...

The most overvalued market is Bend, OR at
70%. This level of valuation is up 1.9
percentage points from the second quarter. It
was among 117 metro areas which saw their
levels of overvaluation increase. The largest
declines in levels of overvaluation were seen in
Merced, CA (falling 12.3 percentage points)
and Stockton, CA (down 11.3). In our analysis, we have determined that levels
of valuation that fall within ±15% are
considered to be statistically normal. In the
third quarter, there are 201 metro areas that
fall in this range, up from 186 metro areas in
the second quarter.

Anonymous said...

As for jobs, I must be anomaly. I moved to Oregon for a job and then I moved to Bend for a job.

*

That is the NORMAL path, most DON'T MOVE directly to BEND with a JOB lined up, you generally have always had to KNOW someone to have a job lined up in Bend.

In Bend its not what you know, but who you blow.

Anonymous said...

No amount of hype will help in the sale of an overpriced property, according to Ron Ross of RE/MAX Equity Group in Bend.

Then stop wasting your time & money hyping.


*

PR&MARKETING is BEND, Homer, your telling them to shut-up and/or leave??

HYPE is what blew up the BEND-BUBBLE on taxpayer COVA.

HYPE ( HOT-AIR ) is the only thing that will keep the bubble off the fucking pavement, until all the good all boyz, have liquidated their STD's.

Once NOBODY in this area is HYPING that means that PR is over, that's when you know we have reached bottom, the fact that they're still dumping tons of OUR money into PR, shows that they still believe that the kool-aide works.

Watch the PR&MAKRETING, when I see the city-of-Bend KILL all PR/MARKETING, cuz of bankruptcy, then I'll now this town is serious about recovery.

TODAY also in the WSJ towns all over USA going BK, cuz they can't make their public pension mandate, it turns out they all planned on RE taxes to fund public-employee retirement PIG TROUGH, and now the PIGS have nothing to eat, so you BK your city.

BEND is BK, the only reason it isn't PUBLIC is that city-council are ostriches, and nobody in this town has the balls to pull the city-council heads out of their own ASS.

tim said...

I'm not surprised by the outlays of external (out of city) PR and hype. As is obvious, that's what Bend IS.

I'm dumbfounded by the local advertising, though. Why pay to talk to the locals?

Anonymous said...

Bruce,

Here's one for YOU on JR, and why Knife-River is leaving Dodge for good.

Let's go to JR, where it cost $800k/acre to excavate ( city money ) to build the LS cam-pussy.

Now lets play the big one, OTEK plan was that Knife-River got all 1500 acres, that's $1.2 BILLION, I'll say again OVER A BILLION DOLLARS in excavation to Knife-River. Guess what? It's NOT going to happen now, so they're leaving.

Then the GOLF courses, there will be NO MORE golf courses, knife-river built them all ( tetherow too ), ...

It's OVER Knife-River is going to be pulling out of Bend for GOOD, cuz the gravy train is over.

Juniper-Ridge was always a cluster fuck, there's a reason the county sold it for a DOLLAR, cuz they KNEW that the cost of excavation, exceeded its VALUE.

Then along comes KURATEK, who was going to start his OWN excavation company as part of the privilege of being the master-developer, this is why the GOOD OLD boyz had KURATEK paid OFF with LS money.

NOW NOBODY gets $1.2B for excavating Juniper-Ridge, the result is Knife-River knows that the BIG PIG trough is dry of BOSS-HOGG-FEED, and now they're ALL running away from town.

Anonymous said...

I'm dumbfounded by the local advertising, though. Why pay to talk to the locals?


*

EGO, is the answer, and then everything here is incestuous,

Remember that MOST people that RUN the BULL&SORE also have relatives by marriage or blood at city-hall, and in the PR clubs (COVA,COBA,COAR,... EDCO) ....

Anonymous said...

NOW NOBODY gets $1.2B for excavating Juniper-Ridge, the result is Knife-River knows that the BIG PIG trough is dry of BOSS-HOGG-FEED, and now they're ALL running away from town.


***

Does this mean we'll all starve??

Anonymous said...

Bend Company closing satellite

Carson City's Copeland Lumber closing

Staff report
February 28, 2008, 9:31 AM


Copeland Lumber, which opened in the early 1950s, will be closing, according to the busineness' parent company, Bend, Ore.-based Tum-A-Lum.

About 17 full-time and part-time employees will be affected, the company said. Copeland will liquidate its lumber yard over the next few weeks.

Tum-A-Lum, which bought Copeland in 2002, said Carson City has been a good place to do business, but the slow building market forced the closure.

Tum-A-Lum owns five other lumber yards in Oregon and California.

Anonymous said...

Tum-A-Lum, which bought Copeland in 2002, said Carson City has been a good place to do business, but the slow building market forced the closure.
*

Bend company pays top dollar for a top market in 2002, when everyone in the trade KNEW it was coming, and now they're just shutting it all down. Hmmm,

Anonymous said...

I moved here in 78 with $300 in my pocket, no job and didn't know one person who lived here. I have and will continue to survive Bend.

Anonymous said...

Short-Sales, Walk-Aways, Repos, or as 'Marge' says, Jingle-Mail. Let's say there are 20,000 homes in the Bend area, and 70% are under-water now and/or during the next two years. That is 14,000 homes. Do these people have the balls to stick it out, and pay the MTG??...


Last count in Jan 08 there are 34,790 built and permitted homes in the Bend City limits.

Anonymous said...

Last count in Jan 08 there are 34,790 built and permitted homes in the Bend City limits.

* ( Assuming 70% of Bend is under-water )

Ok, then that's 21,000 homes in Bend that are under-water, with NO hope of AIR, for 2-4 years, now anyone want to guessimate how many will stick it out and pay the MTG on a falling knife MTG, especially given that 90% of our last five year buyers ONLY BOUGHT to MAKE MONEY NOT TO LIVE, and NOT TO LOSE.

These homes can't reduce the price.

If HOMER wants people to reduce the price, then he needs to focus on getting the 30% of 34k, or the 10,000 that have equity to drop their price, but then that would be punishing those who didn't play the game.

ONLY time, REPOS, shorts, ... jingle-mail, ... will reduce the price to afford-ability.

Then there is the PMI issue, which is now astronomic, good article in yesterday WSJ ( Jenkins editorial ), about how its absolutely STUPID for the POOR to buy a home, even at $160k by the time they pay all the MTG Insurance, they're FUCKED. Also note that by definition 20% down is required, and NOBODY by definition has $32K sitting around.

The fact is that ALL stupid enough to BUY RE, did BUY.

Anonymous said...

Last count in Jan 08 there are 34,790 built and permitted homes in the Bend City limits.

*

We need to have both figures Marge, as you know, most of Ironhorse & Yarrow Permitted, but not completely built.

I'm sure lots of NWXC is permitted, and not built, and especially the STD's, so it would be useful to know the # on the city/county tax-rolls that have a certified NOTE of Completion.

This is why I did the conservative estimate of 20k, given a population of less than 70K, and so much high density living, ...

Either way I think we can assume that there are around 15k homes 'under-water' in the Bend area.

That's a lot of REPO's and Shorts, ... coming down the road.

Anonymous said...

I moved here in 78 with $300 in my pocket, no job and didn't know one person who lived here. I have and will continue to survive Bend.

*

Folks that can do that can survive anything, because by definition, they were living in their car when they got here, they know how to survive with nothing, and thus they fear nothing.

I think fear is the biggest problem.

Hell I want Bend to implode in Population, so that I can walk/bike again without the 'fear' of getting ran over.

I think this is the good test of who will survive here, the folks that came to this town with a little money, and the clothes on their back, and have been here for 10+ years will survive.

The folks who came here to a job or bought a home, and flipped, or ran the RE bubble will now be at the end of the road, had never known how to survive BEND on nothing in the first place. I'm thinking of the people who came here to a good job, and now laid off, and can't sell their home, and the family burn rate is liquidating their 401k, and the HELOC is dry. ALL these people will need to leave.

You would think today by response that MOST people in Bend did come here with nothing, and to nothing. It goes to show that most of the people on this blog, are really all quite similar in attitude, and lifestyle.

That said, why would a cigar choming, HELOC golfer want to hang out on this blog on a nice day??

So we haven't heard from one person who got transferred here in the last five years to run a bank for $200k/yr.

All the retired yuppy's I know are burning through their savings quicker than they thought, its those mcMansions that are doing it, up at BT.

This site is much about survival, sounds like most of us just want to survive, then there is HOMER than wants to do more with his life than just 'survive'.

It's hard for most people to leave the east-coast or cali as kids, and back the car, and leave family and head to Oregon, with nothing, no job, just a few bucks, ... Very few people can do this, I think this has always been the foundation of Oregon, back to the migration of the 1800's.

We came to PDX cuz there were people, and then we discovered Bend. It takes a long time create a gig in Bend that lets you live here in comfort with worry, its never been easy.

The easy-money is over, and now its going to get hard again.

tim said...

>>All the retired yuppy's I know are burning through their savings quicker than they thought, its those mcMansions that are doing it, up at BT.

Well, damn. Nat Gas costs a shitload. Water, too. You have to water your lawn every other damned day from spring through fall.

Anonymous said...

"Last count in Jan 08 there are 34,790 BUILT and permitted homes in the Bend City limits."

Notice the word BUILT in the above sentence. Under these circumstances it is not 1/2 built.

Quimby said...

>> Well, damn. Nat Gas costs a shitload.

*

Well, thank goodness for my trusty 372XP. I know Buster's got one...but he's probably a Stihl man.

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