Monday, March 31, 2008

10 Ways To Prosper In Bend's Coming Housing Depression

Let's take a short trip in The Way Back Machine, shall we?

It was last November, the air was crisp, Paul-doh was bearish, "TimToe" was not yet "Timothy", and duncan asked an innocent question over on BendBB...

duncan: Did you guys remove that last message or did the writer? Just curious.

TimToe:
Hmm. What was the message? If it was the one about the lesbo strap-on movie, it was probably me. Sorry.

rdc:
It was a long message with writer being a guest with name Becky Breeze
I did not delete it.

bendbb: I removed it. It's okay to post anonymously under a handle or a nickname, but it's not okay to post under someone else's name.

Guest:
That was a very legitimate letter, It was written by Becky I assure you.

bendbb:
Nope, it was clearly written by a troll. If you're that easily fooled, I've got a bridge in Portland to sell you.

not John Melton:
Your heavy handed redaction is getting old. What evidence do you have that the post was not legitimate?

Paul-doh!:
It WAS real. Don't worry, you'll see it again.

bendbb:
Here's a picture of the bridge for sale:

Retail price is $3,000,000, but I have a special deal for you, only $1,999,999.

Paul-doh!:
Say what you want, I know the source... it's legit

TimToe:
Is it posted on your blog, Paul? I didn't get to read it.

Guest:
My mother works for Becky, it was indeed written by her.

bendbb:
Let me get this straight -- are you saying Becky Breeze posted that message on this bulletin board? And are you saying you know Becky Breeze?

frazzled:
Why don't you just put the post back, so we can all judge for ourselves? We don't need BB being our censor. Instead of deleting a post remove the username or any signature.

bendbb:
If you don't like how this bulletin board works, nobody is forcing you to read it and you're free to leave. For those who have trouble remembering the concept of not posting under someone else's name, I've added a reminder in the Welcome topic under the General category.

Guest:
Welcome to the bendeconomy bulletin board… Participation is open to everyone. I'll contribute to the discussions when I have something relevant to say, but my opinion is just one of many here. Everyone's opinion is welcome.
That is, unless your opinion is that censorship isn’t wonderful.



bendbb:
Your opinion that you don't like censorship is fine, but you also need to recognize that there's no absolute right to post anything anyone wants anywhere on the Internet. If someone wants to participate on a bulletin board or blog where there are no rules there are plenty of them out there. That's not how this bulletin board works though, so if you're going to post here you need to follow the rules.

Guest:
What rule did Becky break?

TimToe: The rule is that a person posting under a known name has to be that person. We get people all the time pretending to be other people. I'm sure if Becky signed up, she could post as she likes. It's easy to be skeptical when people post as guests.
Having said all that, WHAT DID THE DAMNED POST SAY? Was it a claim that everything is all fine and dandy? Or an admission that the Plaza is a disaster?


guest:
Are those of us who read it allowed to post a summary here or would that be against the rules? I would never claim to know who wrote it--I have no idea--but I saw what it said.

bendbb:
Posting a summary isn't against the rules.

bendbb:
TimToe is right, if Becky Breeze registers she can post as she likes.

becky breeze:
Know how to do this blog stuff. ADMINISTRATOR Please re post my response that I provided under guest before. My smart systems guy Tarris is standing over me and showed me how register and respond properly. The administer will know @ not worry it was me. Dealing with a possible 'real demise' of Ovarian cancer starting 2 years ago this coming Jan, this all seems weird. Just remember when you are all being tough on each other most people are just like you in a lot of ways. No one in this life gets by on a free pass. Stay healthy and get as much happiness out of each day as you can. Come by and see me anytime you want and I will talk face to face with anyone that wants to. It is always good to meet a new friend. It kind of makes me sad that the guy that posted the blog said 'I told her not to do it' There was only one person that said that to me and he knows who he is. That person was told a million times not to do almost everything in his life and has gotten some success from just trying everyday and has avoided financial demise many times by just persevering. Some people want to get theirs and not want anyone else to get anything. Thanks again for all the nice responses you posted that Tarris showed me. One last thing, if people really want the small developers to fail only the big rich good old boys get the products in the sales. If you dislike a few people running your city now and setting their rules then it will be even worse when only a few big guys own everything. It is bad enough now in this small city. I do not understand why anyone would want failure of all the projects mentioned or anyone. We all reflect on each other financially city wide. If a lot of people loose their homes in an area then everyone is affected. I started real estate when % rates were in the high teens and low 20's. For all of you under 50 you may not remember those dark days of empty store fronts and people loosing everything. Tough times and no one except a few people again with the big pockets get richer during those times. Today rates are low, there is tons of loan products and prices are low. These are the best of times for buyers with decent credit. Do something good for yourself and the economy. Buy a home. You do not even have to buy from me. Just buy a home. In a couple of years you will be glad you did. Thanks for reading Becky

Guest:
Can I get a better deal on that bridge BB?

Guest:
bendbb what in her first post and now second post makes you think it's not Mrs. Breeze?

bendbb:
Primarily the history of people posting under other people's names. I think it's prudent to verify that Becky Breeze is actually the person posting these messages, rather than taking it on faith. Becky, if you're the person who posted the messages in question please respond to the email message I sent this afternoon asking for confirmation.

Guest:
I was really getting to appreciate bb filtering out the comments I don’t need to see, but now my confidence is shattered- he can’t distinguish a troll from a genuine person making heartfelt comments. It almost makes me question the benefits of arbitrary censorship.

becky breeze: Tarris said some of you asked for stats on the MLS sales in affordable housing in Bend. Here it is and I will be happy to talk face to face with anyone that has questions. All of these stats are from our local Multiple Listing Bureau as of about 3 minutes ago.
Today in BEND residential only(no condos, townhomes, businesses, land,lots,or even residential w/acreage is not included. So remember that for the next numbers provided
THESE ARE ALL HOMES STATS ONLY FROM 100K TO 300K
Today 366 homes are for sale in Bend priced from $154,250 to $300,000

Since Jan 1 O7 to today (same price as above only 1K to 3K)
440 homes closed sale and 48 are pending for a total of 488 sold and pending 07
YTD
2006 605 homes closed and 46 went pending 1K to 3K
2005 THE YEAR EVERYONE WAS BUYING HIGH 1675 HOMES SOLD AND 48 PENDING 1k to 3k only

2004 1710 sold and 48 went pending (same 48? no) 1k to 3k only
2003 1471 sold and 48 went pending 1K to 3K only
2002 1266 sold and 44 went pending 1K to 3K only

total dollar volume of each year SOLD
2007 $113,900,514 million CLOSED VOLUME
2006 $161,337,700 million CLOSED VOLUME
2005 $390,093,667 million !!!!!!!!! EVERYONE BUYS WHEN EVERYONE IS BUYING IT IS NOT THE RIGHT TIME. BUY NOW LOOK AT THE STATS

2004 $355,335,929 million CLOSED VOLUME

2003 $283,074,314 million CLOSED VOLUME
2002 $230,599,099 million CLOSED

For the person hoping for 2002 2003 and 2004 prices. DON'T
Look at these stats hard. This is sad stuff for people who want to sell their homes. Forget the developers and builders. Think about yourself owning a home and just being transferred or having to go into an assisted living place. Think about all the guys who want to work in the trades. It is gruesome out the upside is it IS the best BUYERS market I have seen in 28 years. It all has a ripple effect and it can effect you no matter who you are.
I got an email from someone from this site and I told them it was me and to re post that first response. So here we go.
Thanks Becky


Ducnan(sic):
Becky, Out of the last 205 price changes that this bulletin board has listed, 202 were down and only three were up. Why wouldn't a buyer wait? If there is the slightest concern they'll miss an upturn, then need only watch the list and if, let's say 25% go up, THEN start looking.

Paul-doh!:
Agreed. You say "Buy a house now"... are you glad you jumped into the development business when you did? You own 38 "houses"... are you glad? Seriously. "Buy a house, you'll be glad you did." is advice that does not seem to be working. Prices went to levels that are unsustainable, IMO. WHAT IF prices go down 30-40%, and STAY THERE. I'd be happy to BUY at those prices, but I'd be quite upset to buy today & lose so much that I'm underwater. Especially if I HAD TO sell & move. That amount would wipe out many, many people. And why BUY a house for $2500-3000/mo mortgage, when you can rent it for $1,100, and invest the difference? That financial equation will NEVER make sense. I agree that "buying" a house HAS ALWAYS been a dominant investment in the past -- leverage works for you, and prices seemed to steadily inch higher. No more. This thing will be a bloodbath. And not to be facetious or cruel, but honestly, you own 38 residences... are you "glad you do"?

bendbb:
I'm pleased to report that Becky Breeze replied to my email message and confirmed that she registered on the bulletin board earlier today. She requested that I repost the message I deleted earlier in this topic, so here it is.
--------------------------------------------------
The article for my demise is kind of weird. A wonderful guy Tarris Rogers who has been with my company for 12 years told me to look at this BLOG you have on your site. There were some nice things said in yesterdays BLOG and some bad things. You BLOGGERS do NOT know I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer a few months into the Plaza project. Miss Healthy here, who never gets sick ,what was that? Then I learned that prostate and ovarian and breast cancer has nothing to do with diet. AND the PAP smear has nothing to do with diagnosis because the PAP smear is a viral situation and Ovarian cancer is not detectable unless a good doctor like Dr Mary Ellen Coulter is able to find it in an examination or by a pelvic ultrasound. WOW what a bummer that was, and chemo and two major sugeries NOW THAT IS DEMISE! My wonderful husband not only stayed at my side through 2 major surgeries & chemotherapy he had to deal with keeping the Plaza going to be the best built 130,000 sq ft building in Bend. Super guy and I love him more every day. It is strange to me that a Blog Person would hope for my demise in a business deal (no big deal there will be another one if this deal it REALLY does not work out because of our present market. If BLOGS were around when Bill Smith was begging for money from Les Schwab & Matt Day in the original days of his dreaming of an extension of town in the middle of an old abandoned mill site, DEQ disaster, fixed, now known as the Old Mill. Thank goodness Blogs were not around then. He would have been on your hot plate. Blogs were not around to call for Haydens demise for his BLUFFS above the REED MKT round about that has been selling product for 5 years, OTTER RUN on the market for 6 years, OLD MILL QUARTER or any other product. ALL of these projects have their struggles but never had BLOGS to call for their demise. For all of the BLOGGERS, please come by any day of the week to see THE PLAZA. To the Blog that said we had, cheap anything, finishes they are confused with other products on the market. We are all custom, and gorgeous. No plastic inserts or plastic anything. Bathrooms & kitchens are all custom finishes. But only you can see for yourself. Remember if you come by it is the BRICK BLDG on Bluff Drive next to AMERITEL INN not THE BLUFFS above the REED MKT round about. You do NOT have to buy one if you come and see it, I promise, but you should have the real knowledge. By the way, this is my first BLOG so I hope I did it right. I am 58 years old last October 24 and have been working since I was a kid every day for my up keep with no gimmees from anyone. I love my life here in Bend (19 years now) and I love my grandbabies. I love my job and my health which is hopeful. I even like all the bloggers because we are just people trying to get by and live through the day whatever the day gives us. You all take care and stay healthy. BB

TimToe:
And Becky, I know you want people to buy now. But the Case-Shiller S&P housing futures predict a national downturn in house prices until 2011. When you tell people to buy now, you're giving advice that's contrary to some of the smartest people in the world betting big money. The country went from 61% to 69% home ownership. It's obvious that many of those people couldn't really afford the houses they were being shoveled into. Those poor people were done a great disservice and they AREN'T coming back to buy houses soon. We've run out of suckers. You tell people to buy, but there are no more buyers. Sure, investors could buy, but they aren't dumb enough to buy when YOU tell them to buy.

There follows a tedious enumeration of the evils of censorship, but this thread does illustrate 2 things of particular interest:

1) First, that "censorship" in whatever form is inherently BIASED. Is it WRONG? I'm not sure how to define that, or if it's even relevant. But when you CENSOR people, you are typically working from pre-conceived notions that can terribly misplaced, as you can easily see above.

Is BendBB the worst offender around? Hell no! Cascade Business Buttbangers will go down in my book as the most ridiculously biased rag to ever grace our scrub. The Bulletin & KTVZ are a (distant) second.

But unfortunately this thread & another regarding the tracking of IP's for the sake of "banning" marked my quiet departure from BendBB. Again, it wasn't a Virtual Walkout or anything, it just became quite apparent that BendBB had a wholly different philosophy than I did about what gathering opinions, making decisions, and voicing your thoughts on this place. No one really wrong or right, just different philosophies.

You can say whatever you want here, uncensored, and I don't track fuckin' IP's. I don't want to know who you are (unless you're like Dunc, and you want us to know), and know full well that technological attempts to do so are riddled with impossibilities.

2) You see the bias inherent in people's own opinion's with "Becky's" repeated encouragements for you to "buy a house now"! As a quick aside, let's see how this advice works out.

First, NOD's filed:

Nov 07 - 80
Dec 07 - 70
Jan 08 - 91
Feb 08 - 109
Mar 08 - 113 through 3/27 (nine on 3/27 alone)

Or units sold? Again, MST:

2007
Sept. 113
Oct. 112

Nov. 94

Dec. 79

2008
Jan. 72
Feb. 55

OK, so maybe prices are better? Hmmm... from "MST" over on BendBB:

2007
Sept. $330k
Oct. $320k

Nov. $340k

Dec. $339k

2008
Jan. $312k
Feb. $315k

And the latest medians that I am "hearing" are in the high $200's.

Becky's pleas for you to purchase a home last November seem.... uh, wrong. Why? She is an expert in Real Estate right? She & others just like her are interviewed with nauseating regularity in our local media, as Real Estate Experts, right?

The first, and most obvious reason, is a point covered with pendulum-like frequency here: This town employs "three times" the state average in the real estate trade, a figure so laughably low I have to chuckle every time I see it. Real Estate IS Bend. Take away the RE Bubble, and what do you think this town would be? Sleepy little mountain town, no Trader Joe's, no Bend River Promenade (oh God), no STD's... just a little town without many economic prospects.

This town is literally run by RE-slanted Boss Hogg's. You can see it in the predisposition of the COBA-fueled nightmare; they assumed that firing up an onslaught of biased PR was How You Got Things Done. "We'll run real stories, national in scope and negative in opinion, off the local front page, by unleashing a torrent of Good News written by Us". They saw & to this day, see no problem with such tactics. Bias is their tool of choice.

But second, these people literally cannot see any other point of view. I think that Becky, God bless her, in her heart of hearts BELIEVES that real estate is a Great Idea And You Should Buy, and that she will believe that to the bitter end. She believes it at $340K medians, she believes it today at $285K medians, she will believe it in the future at $195K medians. She isn't wearing rose colored glasses; they've been lasik'd to her eyeballs.

Now I just love Becky and think she's a sweet gal, and BendBB is probably a good guy & if I met at a bar, we'd probably be exchanging sweet, sweet man love in the back of his BMW after a six-pack of Abyss, and Costa & Hollern are also probably good guys, too.

But folks, these people DO NOT have your best interests, nor mine, at heart. They do not give a fuck if you live or suck dirt. They are out for themselves, like most, and cramming a fuckin house down your throat AT ALL COSTS is what about 50-60% of Bends economy is geared towards.

When you read something along the lines of "Who could have predicted things would get this bad...", you are reading the thoughts of the SELF-DELUDED. I have now seen this phrase used in virtually EVERY Bend Bulletin issue for months. It's been in the national media even longer. Bernanke says it all the time, this countries top economist, local economists, Economic & Finance professors, Realtors, our President, our Chamber members, and on and on.

This country is STILL deluding itself EN MASSE about just exactly what is going on. This IS NOT like all the other "slowdowns". It is so radically different, this country will NEVER BE THE SAME when it's over. NO ONE wants you to think that; that's like screaming "Fire!" in a crowded movie house... or is it screaming "Movie!" in a crowded fire house? Anyway, NO ONE is going to be "made whole" if Armageddon actually happens. No one, not me, not you. It'll be hell.

Wonder how BAD it'll be & why this is The Big One, and you ain't never seen the Big One before? Ok, ask yourself these questions:

1) Did you ACTUALLY lose money in the 1987 crash? That was a Big One, but I don't know many people who lost a "lot". In fact it was a few short years before the Dow was at new highs. Hell, I actually made money in Eastman Kodak puts!

2) Did you get hurt during the Gulf War fall? Again, this was a short-term up & down affair.

3) What about the Thai baht collapse or Long-Term Capital collapse? Nothing here, and I don't know anyone who personally suffered big losses.

4) What about the collapse of the NASDAQ bubble? I DID have friends who suffered some substantial losses on this one. But nothing permanent. They had other assets, and besides they were young & their future income stream was really their biggest asset.

5) Who do you know that will be negatively affected if their home price is CUT IN HALF?

See, that last one is The End. That's just Game Over, because it affects SO MANY PEOPLE & IT AFFECTS THEM TO A DIRECT FINANCIAL DEGREE UNMATCHED IN THEIR OWN EXPERIENCE AND TO AN EXTENT UNMATCHED IN THE HISTORY OF THIS COUNTRY.

Bend is headed for a 50% off sale. The rest of the US, is probably not going that far.

But is it safe to say that the evaporation of $5-10 TRILLION dollars of wealth from 67% of this countries population is an absolutely unhearlded event that we have never even come close to witnessing?

You're damn right it is.

I don't want it to happen, I just see absolutely no other rational outcome. I keep hearing about this being the unfolding of the worst possible (and most unlikely) scenario unfolding in a serial fashion, each financial event even less likely to recur than the last.

Let me say this: It's NOT done.

We're having a little respite from the Bear Stearns plummet, and everyone seems to be coming out with Rosy forecasts galore, Maria Bartiromo saying ad nauseum that It Is Over, Bear Stearns marked The Bottom, and it's up and away from here.

This is a fundamental MISUNDERSTANDING of what is going on. This is chalking THIS phenomenon up to Business As Usual, and every negative financial event is a reason to Buy Stocks, Cuz Stocks In The U.S. Go Up, and anyone who violates that rule Gets Punished.

Bartiromo attests that each financial setback "rhymes" with all the others in U.S. history, and that the thing to do has always been BUY.

Folks, this one does not RHYME with anything. It is totally unprecedented. NEVER before have SO MANY stood to lose SO MUCH. This is not Wall Street that is losing. It is you & me, and virtually ALL the people we know. People at work, people in your neighborhood, people on this blog, me, Timmy, BendBB, Buster, Becky Breeze, Norma DuBois, Prineville, Sisters, Oregon... this fiasco is literally uncontainable.

The Fed has purchased junk bonds to shore up Friends Of Bush, but it's STILL JUNK. It will still go into default. But instead WE own it, not Bear Stearns exec's. This is our Minsky Moment.

The US is headed toward a fundamental shift in it's economy; the aftermath of this bubble bursting will go on for what amounts to the rest of our adult lives. Japan's bubble is still collapsing, almost 2 decades later. This will not be short, and it won't be pleasant.

What do I want to know?

Is there a way to mitigate losses, and even do well DURING this thing?

Well first, I would avoid purchasing a house at all costs, unless you are prepared to make, in economic terms, nothing for at least 20-30 years. Rent & Invest The Difference is my #1 Investment Thesis... maybe you've heard it before :-)

But Invest where? Well, if I definitively knew that, I wouldn't be writing this, but one idea that people seem to be flocking to seems bothersome to me: US Treasuries. There is massive flight-to-safety buying of treasuries, and yields are incredibly low now.

I do NOT see this being the case in 10 years. We have gone the STAGFLATION route in "solving" this bubble bursting problem, and I see treasuries as one of the WORST investments for the next 1-2 decades.

Of course, debt in general is completely toxic for the moment.

Stocks? This actually looks OK, given the horrible alternatives. Within sectors I would look for stuff as non-cyclical as possible, with ZERO debt. Pharma... Food & Beverages...hell, even take a flyer on commodity inflation & buy some gold stocks.... just a little though.

But real, large scale fortunes will be made in catering to The Great Unwashed, those who finally had to "Walk Away, and Not Pay". There will be MILLIONS of these debt-addled zombies walking the streets in the decades to come. Getting these people into homes, getting them cars, food, and life's other necessities will be Big Business.

"Bad Credit is OK" type businesses. Bartering. Day Laborer outfits. "Work For Food". My God, who knows what people will come up with to accomodate these people just surviving.

And remember: This WILL NOT be some small, insignificant "fringe" group; there will be MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of these people. They will be like blacks & women have been in past millenia: A huge addition to the workforce, that if utilized, will bring untold wealth "back" into our mainstream. Mark my words: There will come a day when broke ass Whitey will be implored by our Goverment (hopefully Obama, for the maximum cruel irony) to "come back to work", after being SOL & marginalized for years.

The stigma of being a deadbeat will eventually mostly go away.

Just remember this when you are reading pieces like the recent "Region's still growing, just not as quickly", from the Bulletin. Wonderful News, yes? We're Top 5 still, and all is well.

Hmmm.... but they buried the fact that we are 17th for the last year measured, which ended LAST SUMMER. A more recent survey of movers show a recent reversal and a VAST OUTFLOW from Central Oregon.

What's happened? Right, THEY went ELIZABETH TAYLOR on us, and smeared the lense with vaseline on some OLD ASS DATA. They want you to NOT PANIC, ALL IS WELL.

What's TRAGIC, is this strategy is backfiring; people are buying this line of BS and refusing to lower their asking prices. So no homes sell. Because there is no money. But Costa & Co do NOT understand that, and are relying on the past rhyming with the future.

"We did this last time & got the greatest explosion of local wealth EVER... we'll by God, do it again!".

Costa, you fuckin idiot, it is DIFFERENT NOW. The money is gone. Your pie-in-the-sky bullshit is burying this place. Nothing will sell until prices COME WAY DOWN. Why? Again, THERE IS NO MONEY left. Read about the money multiplier if you do not understand why.

Do people want to buy? Yes.

Can they buy at these prices? OF COURSE NOT!

Until the vast Bend RE complex REALIZES this Fundamental Truth, we are headed for an economic quagmire. We will NOT ESCAPE until there is some balance between INCOMES & HOME PRICES, AND we have built a diversified economy not utterly dependent on the extreme cyclicality of RE.

I know you have Good Intentions Becky, Norma, Pam, Hollern & the Rest, but Pollyanna scenarios cannot & will not happen here AGAIN. We had our shot, and instead of bringing sustainable industry of some sort, we doubled down on REd, and now we're screwed. OK, we're in the shits, and there's nothing to do about that.

BUT, we can End This Thing as quickly as possible. Stop trying to convince everyone that Bend is different. You are convincing sellers TOO, and they will NOT lower their expectations OR prices, and hence the quagmire continues.

Be straight. Stop REDACTING reality. We Can Take It. Your LIES only make things worse and they make it last LONGER. Stop saying there is ALWAYS A SILVER LINING in Bend, there is NOT. COBA is NOT going to change the fact that NO ONE can borrow ANY MONEY, no matter whether this is the Best Buyers Market in 20 Years, or 1,000 YEARS, and no matter whether rates are 5% or 0%. None of this matters anymore.

THE MONEY IS GONE, THE DREAM IS OVER. GET FUCKING REAL.

Well, Buster complains I'm not "local" enough... too much video... so here's what I thought was the most forward-looking piece I could find about the future of Cent OR:

Back to the farm for jobs

Laid-off workers line up for limited number of spots

By Lauren Dake / The Bulletin

Published: March 29. 2008 4:00AM PST


MADRASIn two weeks, the water will come.

Sucked up from the irrigation canal, it will spew out through the wheel-line irrigation system on Martin Richards’ Fox Hollow Ranch in Madras, softening the cracked soil.

Thirty-year-old Madras resident Walter Rivera will make sure the thirsty land on Richards’ farm receives the necessary water. Rivera was hired to help during the irrigation season on Richards’ farm this year. A laid-off Bright Wood worker, he was one of many searching for farm jobs this spring but one of the few who has actually found one.

Recent layoffs — at Bright Wood Corp., Contact Lumber in Prineville and the wood products manufacturer in Warm Springs, to name a few — are hitting the Jefferson County economy especially hard. The county also saw the indefinite postponement of the 1,223-bed, medium-security portion of the Deer Ridge Correctional Institution and the jobs that would have come with it. And last year, the Culver operation of the boat manufacturing company Seaswirl Boats Inc. closed, eliminating around 170 jobs.

For farmers, that has translated into an inundation of laborers looking for work.

“Two years ago, if I said I need 14 people by Monday, it took me two weeks to drum up bodies,” said Rob Gallyen, co-owner of Williams Land and Livestock in Madras. “And right now, heck, if I wanted 20 people I could probably have them here by this afternoon.”

At Bright Wood, Rivera earned $12.25 an hour, plus benefits. Now, he’ll be working longer hours, for $10 an hour, and without benefits.

“Ag jobs are at the bottom rung of the ladder,” Richards said. “Industry jobs are preferable, construction or Bright Wood, that pays better and it’s easier work. ... Farm work is dusty and dirty, and people look at it as menial. You use your brain at Bright Wood a little more.”

Farming in Jefferson County

The county’s climate is ideal for high-value seed crops — carrot, radish, garlic and grass seeds do well in the High Desert’s sunny days.

In the Willamette Valley, farmers fight the weather. The rain can hinder both the harvest and planting season. But in Central Oregon, the cloudless days lead to longer hours spent irrigating.

It depends on the farmer, the acreage and the crop, but most farmers prefer to hire seasonal labor to plant their crops and oversee irrigation to relying on machinery, Richards said.

“You have more quality control,” he said.

Mike Macy, of Culver, has around 1,600 acres of carrot seed, bluegrass seed, peppermint, wheat and potato crops. In past years, he’s replaced some manual labor with machinery.

“Two years ago, we bought some machines to help plant carrot seed; it requires one-fifth of the people we used to need,” he said. “And the main reason we did that was because two years ago we had a rough time finding people. Now, there are people everywhere.”

Long lists

Macy, of Macy Farms, Stan Sullivan, Kip Light, Jack Ickler and Phil Fines all have something more in common than being farmers in Jefferson County.

Each of them has a waiting list of farmworker hopefuls who stop by their property on a daily basis looking for work.

“They drive around, it’s been that way since I was a young kid,” Light said. “They knock on the door, or they see you out working and ask if you have any work.”

Gallyen said he has a list of around 70 people. And most farmers say they have two or three people stop by on a daily basis.

“Unfortunately, I can’t hire 240 people,” Gallyen said.

Many of the farmers, such as Gallyen, may eventually hire a few extra people when carrot seed planting goes into full force. But, for the most part, they keep the same crew they’ve had for the past 10 or 15 years.

Jefferson County has a short growing season and less labor-intensive crops than other areas, said Bart Eleveld, a professor at Oregon State University in the Agricultural & Resource Economics Department. That could translate into a tougher time finding farm jobs than other places in the state.

“I think people looking for jobs in that sector, well, there isn’t a huge backlog or a number of unfilled jobs,” Eleveld said. “In the Willamette Valley, or some places in Central California or orchard areas like Hood River or The Dalles, there is more hand labor required in agriculture, but I’m not sure if Central Oregon is bleeding in this area.”

Lucky break

There is one area, Eleveld said, where he has heard that Jefferson County farmers consistently need seasonal labor.

“One thing farmers use shorter-term labor on is irrigation,” Eleveld said. “Moving pipes and whatnot, but there isn’t a shortage of people in those positions.”

And Rivera had a connection.

His brother-in-law is Richards’ only full-time employee. On Feb. 25, Rivera received his last paycheck from Bright Wood, his employer of two years. With it came a pink slip. For two weeks, Rivera spent his days driving from farm to farm.

He applied for jobs online. He drove to Terrebonne, Redmond, Bend and Prineville. His name was one of the 70 or so on Gallyen’s list.

Rivera said he’s more relaxed now that he has an income again.

“As long as I’m making money,” Rivera said. “It’s not as big of a problem.”

But with a $500 truck payment, $900-a-month mortgage, two kids and an unemployed wife, money is tight.

At the Rivera residence, Sami Rivera, 36, explained how she hurt her back working at Contact Lumber in Prineville. Once she felt better and tried to get her job back, there was no job to get back.

“I had good credit,” she said, “but it’s taken a nose dive. I’m worried about the house. If we sell it, will we be able to get another one? We could lose everything. I’ve heard of people losing everything.”

The phone rang in the Rivera household, interrupting Sami.

“Not today,” Sami tells the creditor. “I’m not able to pay it today.”

She paused.

“Not for a while,” she said.

Still looking

Since most agricultural work is seasonal, farmers can’t afford to offer their employees benefits and therefore don’t report numbers to the employment office. So finding data on agricultural jobs is difficult and leads to mainly anecdotal information.

“Every shoe store, every dry cleaner, every staffing agency reports their employees to us,” said Mary Lewis, a monitor advocate for farmworker services with the Oregon Employment Department. “But federal unemployment insurance law doesn’t require every agricultural employer to participate in the unemployed system. Therefore, they don’t report to us. From the data perspective, it makes the data in agriculture different.”

Employment numbers for the county, however, are far from anecdotal.

The county saw a 9.9 percent unemployment rate for February, the highest February unemployment rate since 2001. The Bright Wood layoffs have not yet been factored into the unemployment rate.

Francisco Espinoza, 35, of Madras, said his job search has brought him face to face with the competition. On his job-seeking trips to Redmond and Prineville, he often runs into others who are doing the same.

“There are so many people who don’t have work,” Espinoza said.

Necanor Sanchez, 27, also of Madras, was out looking for work when it started to slow down at Mid-Columbia Lumber Products in Madras, and his days were reduced. Now, business has picked up again, and he’s working four days a week, which is keeping him afloat. But like Rivera, his name is on Gallyen’s wait list, just in case.

“Farm work is less skilled, and it’s lower pay,” Richards said. “Everyone wants to better themselves. And initially, when workers come, if they don’t speak English, they take these jobs. And as they learn English, it’s easier to get jobs at Bright Wood. If I was in their shoes, I think I would do the same thing.”

Richards said if he had enough work, he would keep Rivera year round — Rivera has already proven himself a capable, hard worker.

“It’s hard to find that kind of quality. If Bright Wood hired him back, he would probably go back,” Richards said. “We do see a higher quality of labor to choose from. I guess that’s the plus side of it.”

Lauren Dake can be reached at 419-8074 or at ldake@bendbulletin.com.

The high unemployment in Madras is the shape of things to come in Bend. But it's happening there now, instead of later like it will in Bend, because:

1) Brightwood is a "centralized" decision maker about whether half that town working or not, not a lot of individuals, like Bend's RE industry... so we keep hanging on by our 401K's.

2) Most of the people in Bend RE piled it up for at least a few years, unlike Madras, and believe it'll turn around soon, and are burning through their cash

But once the reality DOES sink in, this piece will illustrate what will happen in Bend: EVERYONE in the industry will be "kicked down a notch" in their employment skill set. It's called Underemployment. You make less, you do grunge work, your life sucks.

Yup, even in the shadow of an outdoor wonderland, your life still sucks.

You think we won't hit that 9.9% unemployment rate like Madras? Hell yes, we will! Not this year, but probably next. Sometime within the next 4-5 years we'll probably see the highest unemployment rates we've had in 20 years in Cent OR. We're at 8.3% right now! It was at 5.7% last Feburary! Hell, 10% unemployment for Bend is a slam dunk in the next few years.

All those $120K/yr Realtors will be working at coffee huts. All those mortgage brokers will be working at ski shops. All the "assistants" to these people will be working at Bachelor... and unemployed the rest of the year.

The INCOME is going away folks. And our esteemed Bend Mass Media is STILL trying to talk this thing up again.

People are leaving. Why? Hell, it's fun making money in Xanadu! But once the novelty has worn off, Xanadu ain't so hot anymore.

Stop trying to "convince" people that this place is a paradise & hence, All Will Be OK. It is a paradise, but that don't mean dink. But no force on Earth will stop Bend from imploding on itself, certainly no PR or Marketing crap. There's not enough money to save this town. We'll be littered with the Walking Dead, just like Madras, in a few years.

What will work?

1) Property Manager - rental numbers aren't going anywhere but up, and all the foreclosures will ultimately get bought by someone... and turned into rentals

2) Lawyer (legal asst) - Again, foreclosures galore, and scumbag vulture lawyers will be there to suck us dry.

3) Move out cleaners & painters - Residential mobility going UP, and you gotta clean the place each time.

4) Used stuff - Consignment shops might make a comeback when the money gets tight

5) Used RV's - People will need to live in something once their life in wrecked, typically a "one-payment" domicile.

6) Moving & storage - I think there's even a piece in todays paper about the ever increasing need to store stuff.

7) Cut rate Realtors - I think 6% is going bye-bye, and pay-for-service & cut-rate guys will take over the market. This is already big & getting bigger.

8) Car repair - We'll be fixing what we have, not buying new.

9) Ebay, etc - Since Bend's economy is a one-trick pony (Buy this overpriced house, PLEASE!), people will need to start to diversify their own economics geographically, if they actually do decide to stay here.

10) Gas station, Les Schwab - Hey, it's state mandated that someone fill our tank. And spike tires are just a given around here.

So there you have it! I ended on an upnote, even.

10 ways to make cash in the collapse of Bend.

270 comments:

«Oldest   ‹Older   1 – 200 of 270   Newer›   Newest»
Anonymous said...

This is at best tangentially related to the Bubble, but ...

People in Bend are insane. I mean, they are stark barking mad. How else can you explain more than 100 idiots standing outside in the cold and snow before 9 am on a Saturday waiting for the opening of Trader Joe's? According to the Bulletin some morons actually waited overnight in their cars, fer chrissakes.

Well, I guess here in "paradise" you have to take your "fun" when and where you can find it. And thanks to our tanking economy Two-Buck Chuck might soon be the only wine anybody can afford.

tim said...

All I can figure is they were debuting Star Wars VII at the Bend Trader Joes.

Good news. Sunday's Bulletin has EDCO's plan for jobs.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

I'm sure Roger Lee has a totally unbiased estimate. Cessna will employ 50,000 people, completely making up for the closure of Brightwood, Seaswirl, Contact Ind, Oregon Woodworking and the rest

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Oh right... and Cessna will NEVER leave Central Oregon.

I mean, that's a dead lock there.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

This is at best tangentially related to the Bubble, but ...

People in Bend are insane....


Actually dude, this sort of insane bullshit is front & center.

This place has been transformed into a consumerist-fueled nightmare by Equity-locusts from South of our border. This is exactly the sort of idiocy that simply would not exist in this town without The Bubble.

You'd think Trader Joe's would be more "in tune" with what the hell is going on here & know that opening stores on the West Coast is probably a Bad Idea... but it's own by the hyper-wealthy Albrecht family in Germany, and those buggers could burn a bonfire of $100 bills everyday & not come to the bottom of their money in 100 years.

I think Trader Joe's will probably do better than most imbecilic new retailers opening here, but that's not saying much. We're massively over-retailed in this town. The top 10% make money, the next 10% break even, and the rest lose. And that's during "normal" times.

tim said...

Trader Joes will do GREAT here because they are cheap. We're going to need cheap here like fish need water.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

And just a "close to final" update of inventory numbers:

ALL residential subtypes (Doug Farmer):

Jan 2007 - 1,610
Feb 2007 - 1,635
Mar 2007 - 1,790

Jan 2008 - 1,881 (+17%)
Feb 2007 - 1,827 (+12%)
Mar 2007 - 1,989 (+11%)

We might see 10-20 or so extra listings tomorrow for Mar, but not a big deal.

For Bend homes on lots:

Jan 2007 - 1,173
Feb 2007 - 1,168
Mar 2007 - 1,238

Jan 2008 - 1,257 (+7%)
Feb 2008 - 1,271 (+9%)
Mar 2008 - 1,410 (+14%)

Again, Mar will probably creep up a little tomorrow, not much though.

Bewert said...

Re: EDCO's jobs list, which is in my hand

Expanding into Redmond

Moving to Redmond from Bend

Moving from Bend to Redmond

Expanding in Redmond

Moving from Bend to Prineville

At my count, only 420 of those "estimated 1351 jobs" are going to be in Bend.

Here's one for you, Timmy--just upgraded the server from Redhat 7.3 to Ubuntu 6.04, as it was such a pain to upgrade that old Redhat any more. Exciting times ;)

Bewert said...

BTW, on that question about online brokers, I use Scottrade. I'm not much of a trader, more of a buy and hold kind of guy. Never had a problem with them and the price is right.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Here's more interesting "predictions" from Bend 2006:

Big home builders slow construction
Local economy appears unscathed so far
By David Fisher / The Bulletin
Published: October 29. 2006 4:00AM PST


The slowdown may have some silver linings.

With better sales tracking and tighter business management, builders appear to be reacting quickly to the unusually sudden slowdown in sales, apparently avoiding their propensity through past drawdowns to keep building until inventories reached disastrous levels, said Harold Guthrie, an owner of Bend-based electrical contractor THT Electric.


I think I will do a little photo drive-thru of Bend, and see how many SRD-laden subdiv's are sitting empty, or nearly so, a full year & a half of this so-called proclamation of "Builder Discipline".

I touted the fact long ago that Game Theory ALWAYS predicts that people in these situations do what is Best For Them, IGNORING ALL ELSE. And that outcome meant an onslaught of development & building, which is exactly what we STILL have today. There are thousands upon thousands of empty lots ready to have a house spring up the second conditions "turn".

The Dark Matter, in all it's various phases of completion, is almost unending here.

Bewert said...

Actually, Ubuntu 7.04

Re: EBay, etc.

Selling online is a beautiful thing. Especially when you have a good reputation.

tim said...

Bruce,

I've considered converting my Subversion server from XP to Ubuntu. I have a huge backlog of non-critical stuff like that to do. But my "critical" to do is downright scary. I'm just about to work through most of Sunday on a deadline.

I like Ubuntu as a server (quite a bit). Can't get excited about it as a desktop, though. Makes me cuss even more than XP and OSX do (but still less than Vista does, of course).

It's not Ubuntu's fault, really, it's all the software I want that has horrible installation procedures. There should be ONE way to install software in Linux, and it should be called "click on it." There's no excuse to require Python JUST to install something. There's no excuse to complain that I have the wrong version of GNU tools, JUST for an install. Etc. Etc. Ubuntu's popular enough that I should just be able to download and double-click anything I want.

Wish I had time to hit some open houses today and make some Realtors cry. Oh well. Maybe next week.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

SRD-laden - STD-laden

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

I like Ubuntu as a server (quite a bit). Can't get excited about it as a desktop, though.

What!?!?! Synaptic Package Manager IS ONE CLICK! It's dead easy! I have hundreds if not THOUSANDS of programs installed with zero problem.

My God, I love Ubuntu. Easiest OS I've ever used, fun as hell, and it's all DEAD FREE!

tim said...

>>What!?!?! Synaptic Package Manager IS ONE CLICK! It's dead easy! I have hundreds if not THOUSANDS of programs installed with zero problem.

And if it's not in there as the VERY FIRST TWO apps I needed weren't...

Anonymous said...

Paul D'oh,

I like your badass style, but I HOPE you are mostly wrong. Not about RE going down (it will), but about the sheer disaster of the "end-days."

Anonymous said...

Ubuntu??

Is that what 17 yr olds do to 14 yr olds?


What is going on with this blog?


What about Bend?

.... and capstone personal generators?


..... and Exec Session complaints?


..... and National Freestyle mogul competition? Just finished in Park City.... were you there?


Dude, who killed the ICAN'TBELIEVEIT'SNOTBUTTER Blog?

I deserve better than this blog!!

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

I HOPE you are mostly wrong. Not about RE going down (it will), but about the sheer disaster of the "end-days."

Hey, me too. But I ALWAYS hope for the best & prepare for the worst. ALWAYS.

I deserve better than this blog!!

You do! BELIEVE it's butter! You deserve BUTTER! We all do! I'm tired of not believing it's butter!

"The politics of failure have failed. We need to make them work again."

Citizen Kang, The Simpsons

Anonymous said...

Since day-one around here I have said its going to be like the 'best of days' circa 1983.

HW stores downtown, dive bars, I-97 will be k-mart, hell what is TJ's?? Its Newport market on a kmart budget.

In the day dudes there were more single wides in Sisters, La-Pines, ... than anything else.

In MY HUMBLE opinion HOMER is being TIMID in todays estimate. All you newbie foreigners to Bend, may not like what is coming, but for old timers, it will be pure comfort. Less traffic, ...

I think that today homer was 'gentle' I didn't see one single 'negative' nasty image of Bend, just pure hard reality.

BEND never was the city that the newbie electorate of HOLLERN post 1998 put together and sold to NY REIT's. All of you that came post 1998 got sold a bill of goods whether you rent or own. If what you came for really was mountains, and you don't need a job, I would like at Baker City, Joseph, John Day, there are some real nice places.

Bend 25 years ago was trailer park, surrounded by a perimeter of trailer parks. Sisters and La-Pines were trailer parks.

What's going to happen to all those empty lots?? They're going to get rented out, and like HOMER says, people will be living in whatever non-running RV they can tow, and we'll see a WHOLE new ocean of Central-Oregon living, just like its always been here in the desert.

For those that still have cash, and want mountains, .... I still say Jospeph/Enterprise check it out.

What is Bend today?? Walmart, Lowes, Traffic, and corrupt politicans and a town owned by one man. Citizen Kane, our Hollern-ville aka Hoover-Ville.

Homer didn't mention CRIME today, I think homer was generous, someday when I'm bored I'll write a few pages on what this town is really going to be like in 2-3 years.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

For those that still have cash, and want mountains, .... I still say Jospeph/Enterprise check it out.

Yeah... if I had lottery-type money dumped on me, that is where I'd go. Big acreage spread where getting "Bent" will not happen for at least 20 years, if ever.

That is unspoiled, undiseased paradise out there. But again, you need Big Money. Go to Halfway, OR & tell me how to make it there without a huge slug of cash in the bank. Can't do it.

Anonymous said...

I think its taboo to discuss tech here, but I have good luck with SUSE 64 AMD, thats what I use on my servers, I have dozens of computers.

I use mac's for client work, no crashes, no viruses.

You can get SUSE 10.x for free also, and its faster than hell on a good amd64 system built from FRYS.

I can't stand RedHat, I have used it from 1.0 to 9.x. I wasn't impressed with Ubuntu. In general I have found almost all client software apps ( KDE, ... ) to be unreliable ( random crashes ).

I guess if we can talk stock-broker online accounts, servers is fair.

Homer says diversify, but you can't sell RE ( some of us do own RE homer ), foreign cash accounts are great. I was re-reading the new Rogers book and he said it was better to have an offshore account opened offshore, than opened on the USA, imagine that I have been saying that for over 20 years. Next time on vacation, open a bank account, once its setup then you can do the online shit from anywhere.

I would still liked to have seen Homer compare CACB to FREMONT ( going down ), CACB will go down for the same reason.

Bend RE is now down about 30% ( in reality ), another 20% to go, so next summer we'll be down -50% ( if you want to sell ). Stagnation for a long time.

Those that don't enjoy Madras today, in its worst areas should really get out of Bend before its like that here. Once everything closes down, our downtown gets ugly quick. A lot of the Walmart homeless will move downtown, once shop-owners aren't around to hose the sidewalks every night.

That's how I used to keep my commercial property clear, I would wet it all down at dusk, and nobody setup up a bed in front of my property. I had to do it, otherwise there were piles of shit every AM, to deal with, they also shit & piss where they sleep. So instead of hosing in the AM, I hosed in the PM, instead of running them off in the AM, I ran them off in the PM.

WHY am I mentioning this?? Because most likely no matter where you live, if your close to downtown, this is how it will be. Come this summer, Drake Park should be a major homeless camp. A few tourists get raped and/or robbed, that will be good for COVA.

Team HOMER all have CCL's right?

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

I think that today homer was 'gentle' I didn't see one single 'negative' nasty image of Bend, just pure hard reality.

Given the predisposed idea's many RE-types have of this blog, and their idea that the media is only an expression of the biases of those who control it, I'm really just trying to get SOMEONE to understand that Business As Usual (ir PR & Market Our Way To Prosperity) is no longer possible.

I don't really have a "financial" agenda; I don't make a dime on this blog, never have, never will. So my motivations are "pure" in that respect. I actually think we're so far gone that I will in all probability never OWN a home in Bend. I have little to gain or lose in that regard, no matter the outcome.

But "talking up" the Bend housing market is 100% COUNTER PRODUCTIVE now. It's actually MAKING THINGS WORSE.

But like Maria Bartiromo, Bend's Powers That Be *think* that worked Last Time, Will Work This Time. It won't.

In 1974, 1991, 1998, and 2001, I hardly knew anyone in my "general vicinity" who was financially destroyed by those slowdowns.

But I could walk outside right now, throw 10 rocks & hit people who are already down $1,000,000. And what's worse, THEY OWE ALL of that $1,000,000!

This thing isn't "like" the past... it doesn't even "rhyme" with the past.

It's EVERYWHERE affecting ALMOST EVERYONE. I am effectively as "delta neutral" on this Bubble Bursting as a guy can get, and I have no illusions that it'll ultimately hurt me at least a little. I may ultimately have to move out of Bend, when things become sufficiently depressed. Maybe not due to job necessity, but just due to depressed Quality of Life... crime, deferred maintenance (City going bust), just general dismal despair. It'll be Flint, MI syndrome.

Anonymous said...

Don't get me wrong on DrakePark and downtown, it will still be the best place to be, that's why the homeless will come for safety.

The siberian Burbs of Bend, now they'll be fucking evil, with RV's in front of every meth house.

You know they bulldoze the house, after they find a methlab, this is how most Bend homes will be destroyed, to clear inventory.

Like the Atlantic Monthly said last month, and DELETED by that DOG-FUCKER BENDBB "US subdivisions will become the new barrios". The worst fucking place to be.

The old areas of old homes +20 years, those folks are all armed, nobody will fucking with those hoods, but those siberians, they'll get their gas syphoned every night.

HOMER missed #11 on getting rich in BEND.

Security: locks, gas-locks, guns, security-guards, dogs, ... anything that locks, bites, and kills will sell BIG in Bend.

Gated-Communitys, ... now if they could just keep them operational. Given all the unemployed technology will be out, I think you'll see lots of private cops on bikes in the coming years, if I were young, and wanted to make money the above would be how to do it.

All these old fearful geezers with just a little bit of 401k left, stuck in Bend, they'll spend every last cent to be safe.

Separate it from them while you can.

Anonymous said...

Yes, in 1983 I saw homes go from $70k to $35k WOW -50%, and in two years back, but still JUST a $30k loss, which was one year pay, so fucking what!

Now we have BT $2M homes going to sub-jumbo $400k, that by $1600k loss, and its NOT coming back, because the the baby-boom is over.

In the past there were NO big mcMansions, just like the DEPRESSION, little homes held fine, BIG homes folks walked away, they couldn't pay maintenance.

Now we had baby-boomers buy 10X house with the idea of moving smaller later, now they're $1M under-water, game-plan fucked.

I know lots of people that LOST money in 1987 in the stock-market, were going to buy a house, couldn't wait. Had to sell during the crash, and lost 40% of their principal. Lots of people I know this happened to them. For ME, this period was when I hated the stock market. I wasn't in, I was making money doing venture capital deals, with OPM.

Bend is #1, and we have explained why. The WWII baby-boom, make their home their piggy-bank, and too many suckers played the game. They all bought-up, and they all bought in BEND. Now they'll ALL lose, and bigtime.

It's NOT mentioned, but I do mention it every once in awhile, the mantra of BEND post 1998 Hollern-Ville ( think hoover ), was bring your dead and dying to BEND to buy RE. Soon we'll be stuck with 10's of 1,000's of dead and dying broke old people begging for assistance, ... HOW in the hell is HOLLERN going to pay for what he has created?

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Soon we'll be stuck with 10's of 1,000's of dead and dying broke old people begging for assistance...

Like the Rajneesh stuffed Antelope with bussed in homeless to win local elections. Once it was over, Cent OR was overrun with abandoned homeless.

Hollern is Bend's Rajneesh.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

“Farm work is less skilled, and it’s lower pay,” Richards said. “Everyone wants to better themselves. And initially, when workers come, if they don’t speak English, they take these jobs. And as they learn English, it’s easier to get jobs at Bright Wood. If I was in their shoes, I think I would do the same thing.”

This illustrates another trend I see coming: Anti-Illegal Immigrant.

THEY will be taking OUR jobs. We'll be up in arms over that shit, Texas Minutemen mowing those fuckers down with AK-47's. It'll be a literal & political killing field for illegals.

Anonymous said...

I blame Buster!

Why didn't you old-timers stop this RE BS from happening? Were you sleeping on the job?

Anonymous said...

I am not a huge fan of Mike Hollern, but why do so many of you seem to blame him individually and solely for the RE bubble and bust? He's just one of many players. A big player, yes, but just one.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

why do so many of you seem to blame him individually and solely for the RE bubble and bust?

1) We're stupid
2) He's like Bush, easy to blame for stuff he's only partially responsible for.
3) We wanted it, he's a figurehead, and he deserves to fry.
4) We're sad, pathetic losers

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

>>3) We wanted it, he's a figurehead, and he deserves to fry.

3 He wanted it, he's a figurehead, and he deserves to fry.

Anonymous said...

Besides, he ruined some of the best deer hunting in Bend, by building houses on the Butte. Now those deer are just a bunch of pets that get their antlers stuck in backyard hammocks and eat flowers all day.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Hey marge,

Heard any good RE stats recently?

I know, I'm using you. You shouldn't tell me! NEVER!

Anonymous said...

He's just one of many players. A big player, yes, but just one.

*

Jeeeeebus fucking CHRIST this is a BRUCE-PUSSY question.


So hillary ain't coming, her advance team caught a wiff of bruce's pussy, and the decided that the town was too small so they're sending Bill-Pussy instead of the BIG KAHUNA Hilly-Cunt, aka CheneyInDrag.

Mike Hollern, FUCK-YOU, mike hollern owns this town, mike hollern built the bubble, owns the fucking town owns all the fucking resorts. Mike Hollern has been running this town as a hobby-farm since the 1960's, and now he's going to finally lose it all.

GO FUCKING read the last 1-1/2 years of this fucking blog asshole, before you ask about Mike Hollern.

p.s. 90% of the people here like our HOMER ( god ), are just like fucking bruce-pussy, they just got off the bus in bend, they're fucking renters, and hell yes, to them Hollern is just a guy like them that came in on a earlier bus.

Hollern is the wizard behind the curtain that runs this fucking town.

Nobody 'has' it for the asshole, this blog is about the bend-bubble, you can't discuss the bend-bubble, without discussing the man who engineered the bend-bubble.

Anonymous said...

I blame Buster!

Why didn't you old-timers stop this RE BS from happening? Were you sleeping on the jo

*

That's an excellent point. My recollection is about 1996 the last environmentalists packed up the bags and left this fucking shithole. Mike Hollern brought in the best PR WHORE bunny's that money could buy 1996-1998, and won the debate "no-growth" versus "smart-growth", the real people moved back to the valley like Eugene or Corvallis, only stuck old folk like myself that can't leave stayed, or the "Wise Use" people like Hollern took over. 1998 to 2008 they built the town you see today, and it was over-sold, and a house of sand & debt. Now its all going down.

First & Foremost Bend used to be a place to hang out, hippys, vw vans, climbers, ... now its like Sedona a fucking TOURIST-TRAP.

MOST people left by 1996. I have said many times here that Bend went to shit in 1986, I think marge was fond of prior to 1992.

I fought my wars back in the 70's & 80's by 90's I quit fighting. Assholes always win. Hollern Won, he out spent everyone on PR&Marketing. Well he got his wish, her turned all three county's into his image. HOLLERN-VILLE ( think hooverville ).

These are all old debates, its been said before, and I'll say again, newbies MUST get off their lazy fucking ass and read all prior posts back to day-one, its really fucking STUPID for us to have to give fucking newbies a history listen every fucking week.

Go to bendbubble.blogspot.com, and fucking read, you read all that you'll get a damn good historical picture of Oregon from 1950 to present. Hell just read a Hobbits story of Bend, and you'll get the picture.

Calis are locust, and HOLLERN is the king cali, with infinite money to destroy all, and he has destroyed all, the question is, "Is he happy yet?"

It's like the picture of the clearcut forest, and this old fucker with a chainsaw, has cut every fucking tree in the horizon down, and the wife says. "Are you happy yet?" HOLLERN tried to cover all of central oregon with crap-shacks, is he happy yet??

Anonymous said...

Bruce-Pussy has a press pass. If he goes to see ClitorisB, will our pussy be admitted??

I mean these MAN-TWATS have GAY-DAR, they can see another coming for miles. I think this will be the big fucking story.

Perhaps BILL & Bruce will run off together??

I wonder who is strong bruces wife, or bills?

The Clintons are the best Repubicans that the repubs ever had. Thus the Clintons are VERY much Bend, as Clintons are essentially BEND (cali) kind of people.

Anonymous said...

why do so many of you seem to blame him individually and solely for the RE bubble and bust?

*

Its a company town.

Hollern is the company, its called 'Brooks Resources'

They own the company paper, called the BULL.

They're the biggest employer, if you integrate all 1200 of their LLC's all designed to be below 50 to escape EEOC laws.

They engineered the 'Bend Brand' going back to the late 1990's.

They control, own, all politics in this town.

Sure there's a few other players like Hap Taylor, and Bill Smith, and Lietz, and Homer Williams, and lots of other old players.

But HOLLERN is the biggest in all three county's. Hollern's going down, there is NO way in hell he can survive this cycle, unless he sells all for dirt, but then that would only accelerate the whole town down to -90% or less.

He's almost 90, hell he'll work until he'll die. He knows he'll not see high prices again in his life.

Hitler was a good guy to the Germans, so what if 6M Jews didn't get it?? Hollern was a good guy for construction and RE, and public jobs ( growth ). Trouble is non-real people came, and non-real children. There never were any jobs.

Personally Hollerns story is a lot like Duncan or any other businessman that fell in love with Bend, HOLLERN built a FUCKING EMPIRE in a bottle, just like a fucking ship, every stick has to come over the cascades and nail, and they just never thought about sailing the bost. They never thought about real jobs.

Remember HOLLERN came here from cali in the 60's, because he inherited BEND from his family in Minnesoto who were the owner of Shevlin-Hixson ( old bend mill ). Fresh with a cali-MBA, Hollern built black-butte ranch and never quit building, and he owned tens of thousands of acres, he could build for ever all over central Oregon and he did.

He almost lost it all in the 1980's.

In late 1990's I think they really thought with the 'telecommuter' that everyone in Bend would be working from their crap-shack. Hollerns a fucking idiot, the first thing he should have done is built a fucking 'standford univ' here, and then he would have something.

Intelligent people aren't going to live in the desert, oh want to be palm-springs have golf courses.

In high tech its about youth, I sure as hell can't write FORTRAN 18hrs/day anymore like I could in my 20's.

What I'm trying to say here people come to Bend, and try to create their own gig, for HOLLERN it was HUGE, his dream was a Disneyland the size of Central-Oregon.

I came here to build a base-camp, make my money other places, and always come back here for R&R.

For a long time we all here have written how these ASSHOLES with money come here and try to start a business. Most fail, Hollern did it a huge scale, but it wasn't sustainable, its just that with his wealth, control of the political levers of power, luck, he could survive.

Now it all implodes for all these people

Home said a few cycles ago 'DIVERSIFY'.

Yes, have an ETF in Latin, or Asia, a ETN in YUAN, or EURO, don't have all your eggs in Bend, cuz its all going to evaporate. A lots of these people are going to do what ever it takes to postpone the inevitable. Just like now with a bank collapse, and dollar collapse, now with 2% discount Bernanke has no more levers to pull.

Soon HOLLERN will have no more levers to pull.

Anonymous said...

Why do you have to pick on Hollern? There are lots of other gay-blades in Bend just as active in 'wise-use' development ( 'smart-growth' in Bend ).

*

Who owns the BULL? WHO provided the land for the BULL building??
Who is the biggest building in Central Oregon? Who owns the most resorts?? Who owns the most LLC's??

Who paid for the 'smart-growth' pony shows out at the high-desert museum? Who designed the entire deferred SDC game where nobody ever has to pay for anything, and all development is PURE profit??

There is NOBODY like HOLLERN in BEND, other than HOLLERN.

It's a company town, with a company town paper, and a company town city-hall,, and company town city-staff.

That company be Brooks-Resources, and the man that controls it all is Mike Hollern, and NOBODY else in the region come close to him in power. ( well maybe jd-gray or homer-williams, but they're quite old these days )

Bewert said...

Best fucking rant I've read in a long time.

Bewert said...

Keep it coming, as much as you feel necessary. Some of us are newbies, it's just the way it is. Doesn't mean we're stupid or bad people. We just didn't get here 40 years ago.

And some of us like hearing the voice of history. We are in a shitload of hurt.

Duncan McGeary said...

Funny thing is, I suspect Hollern is well aware of what's really happening. Brooks was the first company to bail out on a development in Bend, last spring on the river. I feel almost guilty that I pointed that out, because Bilbo has been after his ass ever since.

Still, he's the one big developer who really was here before, during and after the last boom and bust, so I think he's probably made some contingencies.

When he's been quoted in the paper, his statements resemble reality, unlike any other real estate person I've heard. Maybe a little rosy, but you can't blame him.

Brooks divested itself of the old mill and kept the land, and you can't fault that decision. He developed the West Hills, which was my old stomping grounds, but again, it was prime property and why wouldn't he?

I don't think his company has been one of the crazy gonzo companies that seems intent on building on every square inch of land.

As to why development got out of control? Again, you had to have been here in the 1980's. We badly needed something....and most people wanted something to happen.

It developed into a nationwide bubble, and here in Bend it really got out of control.

Hollern as the spider behind it all? Well, I'm sure he's got influence, but many of the connections Bilbo plays up aren't evidence of anything but that he's got lots of land.

As Bilbo is fond of pointing out; it's just dry, rocky desert land, good for nothing if it can't be developed. Using it to create influence doesn't seem out of bounds.

If the Bulletin got a good deal, I blame them if it swayed their coverage, not Hollern for trying to establish a going West Side.

I don't really know the guy; but he's a familiar figure since as long as I can remember.

But he does make a good Machiavellian villain I suppose.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

It’s a (house) renters’ market
Slow sales forcing more owners to rent homes; inventory growing and rents falling
By Andrew Moore / The Bulletin
Published: March 31. 2008 4:00AM PST


Home sales in Bend are down, but several local residential property management companies say business is up.

More renters are in the market, and there are more houses to choose from, said Regan Scott, principal broker of Deschutes Property Management in Bend. That means falling rents for single-family homes and move-in incentives in some cases, Scott said.

“We’re having a good year and expecting it to be a phenomenal summer,” said Scott, who’s adding staff.

Scott’s firm manages roughly 800 housing units, an increase of more than 100 units compared with the same time last year, he said. Scott said the influx of rental homes is primarily due to a soft housing market that is forcing investors who purchased homes for a quick profit to rent them in order not to lose them. Scott said many of the homeowners who hired his company never intended to rent their properties.

“This is unique in our market because this hasn’t happened in the past,” Scott said. “We’re dealing with a new clientele, that (leasing) was not their goal. We have a new clientele that is doing this out of necessity to react to the market.”

Developers also are hiring Scott to find renters, for new homes that aren’t selling, he said.

Because of the inventory buildup, houses are staying unrented for longer — four to six weeks, Scott said. He’s optimistic, however, that the market can bear it.

“I think we are going to be able to absorb extra inventory because people are still moving to Bend,” Scott said. “We get lots of people looking at property.”

Scott said the higher demand is for multifamily housing, such as apartments and condos. Those units are rented almost immediately, and rents for those units are rising, he said.

Scott said a reasonable rent for a three-bedroom, two-bath, 1,500-square-foot single-family home is approximately $1,000 per month, but can vary depending on location. Rents for multifamily units, such as a two-bedroom, 1.5-bath apartment, usually begin around $650 per month, he said.

Stephanie Kramer, owner of Austin Property Management in Bend, has roughly 350 housing units — mostly single-family homes — under management, including a number of single-family homes that were added within the last six months, she said. Kramer said her inventory is down from last year because a number of apartments she previously had rented were converted into condos. Kramer expects to have 450 units under management by summer, partly fueled by homes that aren’t selling.

Rental demand is keeping up, she said. With more houses on the market, rents are dropping and, as a result, Kramer said her vacancy rates are low. People are upgrading to larger homes that are suddenly affordable, she said. She also sees many new arrivals to the area who are choosing to rent instead of buy, betting housing prices will fall. There are also more potential home buyers who can’t line up loans, she said.

“The housing market, because it’s so difficult to buy right now in terms of credit, the rental market is very strong,” Kramer said.

Valerie Hunter, owner of H&H Real Estate in Bend and a broker who specializes in foreclosures, said owners who lease a home usually have some equity in it. Otherwise, they are forced to sell, but in the current market, it takes a “fire sale” to unload a property, Hunter said. As a result, owners with properties in jeopardy usually list their homes for sale and for rent simultaneously, “just trying to get anybody to come to the table,” Hunter said.

The Bend market had 1,262 single-family homes for sale in February, according to this month’s Bratton Report from the Bratton Appraisal Group in Bend. The median number of days a house was on the market rose to 189 last month, the highest since at least January 2005, according to the report. The report listed 45 single-family home sales in February, the lowest since January 2005.

Incentives

The competition to get renters into homes also can mean more incentives for would-be tenants.

Traci Platiro, operations manager for Windermere Property Management in Bend, said her company can offer — with the homeowner’s approval — half-off discounts on the first month’s rent or, in some cases, a first month’s rent of $99.

“People are taking a lot harder look in today’s market, in order to not have a vacancy, to see what they can do — so reasonable rates and move-in incentives always help,” Platiro said.

Owners also can agree to a month-to-month or a six-month lease instead of the traditional 12-month lease, she added.

Windermere has roughly 700 units under management in Bend and Redmond, Platiro said.

Like Scott and Kramer, Platiro said rental activity is up at her company, adding that its current turnover rate is unseasonably high, equaling rates usually seen in the traditionally busy months of June and July.

“There’s lots of inventory and lots of renters, but at the same time, there’s lots of competition,” Platiro said. “Times are good, but you have to be competitive.”


Andrew Moore can be reached at 617-7820 or amoore@bendbulletin.com.

Note that this piece is strangely in contrast to the "Tight Rental Market" pieces we've seen MANY times in the past from the Bulletin.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Scott’s firm manages roughly 800 housing units, an increase of more than 100 units compared with the same time last year, he said.

“The housing market, because it’s so difficult to buy right now in terms of credit, the rental market is very strong,” Kramer said.


I'm tellin ya... property mgmt is going to be pretty damn big around here...

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Here are some other Bulletin pieces about how "tight" the rental market is. These are bought & paid for PR pieces by COBA et al, to get YOU to buy a house now & (maybe) rent it.


(Most are by subscription...)

Feb 12, 2008
Higher rents, fewer choices

June 24, 2007
Rent rates edging up as vacancies fill in the region

July 9, 2006
Region's rental market hot

Each one is, of course, complete bullshit. Rental market in Bend tight? Of course it never has been... not since I've lived here. While home prices tripled since I've lived here, I am paying EXACTLY 10% more in rent than I did 7 1/2 yrs ago for a larger house than I had back then.

Rentals will NEVER be tight again here. There is an ocean of sq footage for rent, and more coming each day. People are leaving. Methers are your best bet for renting. Just make sure you are insured cuz they will explode your STD meth shack rental about half the time.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Look at that idiotic Feb 12 piece. Printed 6 WEEKS AGO about how TIGHT the rental market is here.

Today?

The competition to get renters into homes also can mean more incentives for would-be tenants.

Traci Platiro, operations manager for Windermere Property Management in Bend, said her company can offer — with the homeowner’s approval — half-off discounts on the first month’s rent or, in some cases, a first month’s rent of $99.


This is what happens when you WHORE OUT the paper to local RE interests. They write PR/Marketing bullshit (Best Buttbangers Market in 20 Years, etc), that is 100% at odds with reality. Then you send out someone INTO THE WORLD and they end up writing a piece that is a 100% contradiction to the earlier PR/Marketing BS.

It's hard to keep the lies straight when you're a lying whore.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

As a result, owners with properties in jeopardy usually list their homes for sale and for rent simultaneously...

Yup, that ALWAYS makes a property more attractive. That is the Ultimate Whiff Of Desperation. If you see "For Sale or Rent", you walk up & give a brain-tumor inducing lowball.

"I will give you $500 cash, and a swift kick in the balls, that's my final offer."

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

What happens when you rent out a 4,300 sf Bend mansion to methers?

You end up with a $56/sf mega shack that'll probably have to be destroyed.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

It's time to rein in the Fed

In yet another example of the central bank's failed bailout-after-bailout strategy, it's now on the hook for Bear Stearns' losses. We need to clarify the Fed governors' mandate -- or even send them packing.

By Bill Fleckenstein

Last week, those who believe in perpetually higher stock prices continued to play their favorite game -- "This is bullish because . . ." -- in which they slap that label on any and all news.

Thus they ignored the weakest reading on consumer confidence since 1973, when a particularly brutal recession was in its early days. After all, when more than a handful of people react by uttering the word "recession," you have to get ready for the recovery -- because we all know that recessions don't last for more than the blink of an eye. (Or so their logic goes.)

Of course, we saw another incarnation of the game Wednesday. That's when the crowd sent Bear Stearns (BSC, news, msgs) spiking 8% in 10 minutes on the news that Sen. Christopher Dodd would hold hearings this week to probe the role of the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission in Bear's sale. What that implied to the bullish community: the potential for an ever-higher stock price for BSC.

It apparently never occurred to them that if the Fed were to drop its financial guarantee (and though it's now willing to lend money to brokers), Bear Stearns could still be headed for the trash heap. In the bailout nation, every financial problem must always resolve itself positively, right?
System collapsing? Buy stocks, of course
Taking a step back, we recently witnessed the same response to the near demise of Bear Stearns and the financial system. That was deemed to be bullish because financial crises always mean you should buy stocks.

However, the important yet subtle point in the current saga is that the "system" has devolved to the point where Bear Stearns, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, was in effect able to tell the Fed: You can't hurt us anymore, but we can hurt you if the deal collapses, so we demand more money. (Which Bear got a week ago, when JPMorgan Chase (JPM, news, msgs) raised its takeover bid.) Meanwhile, the bondholders (lenders) were made whole -- as the Fed, through its assumption of debt, coughed up roughly $250 per BSC share.

Obviously, folks are depending on a continuation of the Greenspan put. During the roughly two decades of former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's watch, bailouts became bigger and bigger -- as the Fed tried to solve the problems created by too much easy money with more easy money. All of these "lessons" have been absorbed by current Fed chief Ben Bernanke. Perhaps he is even more outrageous, given his apparent intent on taking to the nth-degree a policy "perfected" by his predecessor: trying to target the right interest rate to run the world and then bailing out whatever trouble ensues.
Fed LLC
Under the current Fed chairman, the central bank's modus operandi has changed. Not only has the Bernanke Fed strayed far from its long history of supplying liquidity to just AAA government credits, but, via JPMorgan, it is basically setting up an LLC (a limited-liability corporation, similar to a special-purpose investment vehicle) to hold the dreck that almost ruined Bear Stearns.

It's a structure similar to the off-balance-sheet financial instruments that caused so much pain for so many other financial institutions in the first place.

tim said...

I'd like to know the typical ratio of the rent to the mortgage payment that these unintentional landlords who bought their houses for nothing down at the top.

There's a world of difference between the landlords who are intentional and those who are unintentional. Often, being an unintentional landlord meas bleeding to death slowly, or picking up a night job. Or maxing out your credit cards and then exploding.

Those houses, they're coming to market. Maybe not all this summer, like I've been expecting. But they'll come.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

From The Sisters Nugget:

3/25/2008 1:41:00 PM
Sisters rated "distressed community"

By Joseph Duerrmeyer

Sisters has received the dubious honor of having its name appear on the Oregon Economic and Community Development Department's (OECDD) list of distressed communities. The city is labeled "severely distressed," beaten out only by La Pine for the title of the most distressed community in Central Oregon.

The silver lining to the economic storm clouds is that the "severely distressed" designation has positive implications for economic development projects, loans and grants.

"There is an elephant in the room, and no one seems to have noticed it," said Lisa Clausen, owner of Sisters Movie House.

The designation is not a surprise to many of those who have attempted to bring businesses to Sisters.

"I am not surprised at all. We tried to provide a foundation for growth by creating a business park that could house the kinds of businesses that would provide a decent wage in the community. Peter Hall, (the developer of Three Sisters Business Park) tried the same thing, and we were both frustrated at every turn," said Shane Lundgren, developer of the empty property called Sun Ranch Business Park.

The problems for Sisters go beyond the opinions of local developers.

"The biggest problem that I see in Sisters is that no one is on the same page. A vision statement for Sisters growth is not providing any unifying vision. We would like to help, but until everyone is on the same page there is not a lot that we can do," said Eric Strobel, business development manager for EDCO (Economic Development for Central Oregon).

There has always been disagreement in Sisters over the key to prosperity.

"Some say the answer is affordable housing. We don't need affordable housing here as much as we really need jobs that will pay enough so that people can afford all the empty houses that are for sale everywhere in the community. We must bring in jobs here that will pay decent wages for the work force who lives here," said Lundgren.

And economic growth is not considered the brass ring by everyone in Sisters.

"I know there are a lot of people who are not very excited about seeing Sisters have strong growth and would rather see things remain as they are," said Strobel.

EDCO believes that the lack of industrial space is a key issue for Sisters.

"Until there is leasable space in Sisters that can accommodate startup manufacturing or tech businesses, they will continue to find homes elsewhere. That is the biggest single problem in Sisters right now and why some new businesses have started in Redmond or at the Sisters airport, rather than in the town," said Strobel.

The Sisters Area Chamber of Commerce sees the need a little differently.

"The (Sisters) vision statement is great, but the biggest problem is that we have no strategy to get from point A to Point B. Everyone is on a different page. We need somehow to become more unified and develop a strategy to get to our goals," said Michael Robillard, president of the Sisters Area Chamber of Commerce.

Solutions are not easy to come by.

"Some people want the city to step in. Others want the developers to do the work. Some want the chamber to take the burden. All those positions are wrong. We need to do this together, or it will not succeed. We need to get on the same page and develop a unified plan with everyone on board," said Robillard.

The city council is aware of a need, but it's not clear what course might be best to pursue.

"There are not a lot of good tools for a city of this size to encourage economic development," said mayor Brad Boyd. "If we could find some that would make sense and not put the existing local businesses at a disadvantage, the whole council would be on board."


That town is dead meat.

You can see it in the piece, the place is overrun by bickering, selfish idiots. Realtors run that craphole, and don't care about anything except selling homes.

That's why Peter Storton wants to "Aspenize" the place. You don't Aspenize a freakin trailer park.

Go one block off the main drag & you see endless rows of ramshackle, dumpy, rusting out trailers. Sisters is an economic Superfund site, that should just be demolished.

Realtors are the problem. A flood from the moraine lake up in the Sister is the solution.

The Sisters School District OVER estimated the enrollment numbers by something like 80 children this year. People are leaving that squalid turdhole faster than they are leaving Bend.

To see The Absolute Ultimate Collapse of a Town by this Bubble Mega-Burst, watch Sisters. If -90% happens anywhere, it'll happen there.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

I'd like to know the typical ratio of the rent to the mortgage payment that these unintentional landlords who bought their houses for nothing down at the top.

If it's 2:1 (mortgage to rent), I consider that pretty good. I'm in a neighborhood of 2.5:1 - 3:1. I lived on an acreage property that was closer to 8:1 - 10:1 at the top.

I'm not real interested in tripling my housing expense just to be an "owner". I don't attach that much cachet to owning.

Rent & Invest:Squander:Burn:Whatever The Difference

Bewert said...

RE: The Bend market had 1,262 single-family homes for sale in February, according to this month’s Bratton Report from the Bratton Appraisal Group in Bend. The median number of days a house was on the market rose to 189 last month, the highest since at least January 2005, according to the report. The report listed 45 single-family home sales in February, the lowest since January 2005.

That rounds out to about 28 months...


Got to love this from the Remingtin Ranch developer in today's BULL"
He does not feel a sluggish housing market will slow development. "were in the high-end market, which has been least affected in the (slowing) real estate market," Pippin said. "Those folks (who would buy lots) have money. There's been incredible interest in the project the last six months without much marketing."

He also states that 35-40 lots are already reserved.

Kind of funny, someone with access will have to post the whole thing.

Re: $56 sq ft mega-shack

That's only two blocks from one of my wife's best friends house. I'll have to stop by and take a peek and see what "major remodeling" means.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

"I am not surprised at all. We tried to provide a foundation for growth by creating a business park that could house the kinds of businesses that would provide a decent wage in the community. Peter Hall, (the developer of Three Sisters Business Park) tried the same thing, and we were both frustrated at every turn," said Shane Lundgren, developer of the empty property called Sun Ranch Business Park.

"Some people want the city to step in. Others want the developers to do the work. Some want the chamber to take the burden. All those positions are wrong. We need to do this together, or it will not succeed. We need to get on the same page and develop a unified plan with everyone on board," said Robillard.


Right in these 2 quotes, it's easy to see the problem: EVeryone is so OVERWHELMINGLY SELFISH in Sisters, they can't see anything beyond their own INCREDIBLY SELFISH INTERESTS.

Lundgren owns a business park, so selling chunks of it is The Only Solution to him.

Doing what Robillard wants "is the Only Solution" to him.

This is how EVERYONE in Sisters thinks & operates.

Realtors want you to buy homes and THAT "is The Only Solution".

Developers want you to buy homes in their subdiv's and THAT "is The Only Solution".

Everyone's own SELFISH INTEREST is The Only Solution.

Sit back & watch The Horror, boys. Sisters is a town literally tearing itself apart.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

He does not feel a sluggish housing market will slow development. "were in the high-end market, which has been least affected in the (slowing) real estate market," Pippin said. "Those folks (who would buy lots) have money. There's been incredible interest in the project the last six months without much marketing."

That there is good old fashioned Kool-Aid poisoning. Exempt from reality, won't affect us cuz we are better than the rest of the US & better than anyone else in Bend.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

If you keep in touch with Sisters BS at all, you know that the Cyrus family is going to try to convert Aspen Lakes to a destination resort to the dismay of all the people living there now.

You know that horse-rider vs biking trail users are literally ready to HURT each other on the trails when they cross paths. Each wants the other outlawed.

It is 100% SCREW YOU in Sisters. No one cares about anyone else there, no matter the financial or any other impact. Cyrus' are ready to SCREW every single person who has bought a house or lot from them... they don't care.

Of course, this will NOT CHANGE. It's about pigs fighting over increasingly scarce scraps in the trough. No one cares about anyone but themselves, and all this was carefully cultivated by the local RE interests, aka Peter Storton, et al.

The Complete Economic Demise of Sisters is 100% Inevitable.

News Junkie said...

Look at that idiotic Feb 12 piece. Printed 6 WEEKS AGO about how TIGHT the rental market is here.

He was writing about multi-family housing. Apartment complexes. That market IS tight.

Anonymous said...

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...
Hey marge,

Heard any good RE stats recently?

I know, I'm using you. You shouldn't tell me! NEVER!

I'll get back later today on some stats.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

He was writing about multi-family housing. Apartment complexes. That market IS tight.

Maybe. Strolling thru Purcell Meth Acres tells different. Everything is for rent. I've never seen so much for rent.

tim said...

>>He was writing about multi-family housing. Apartment complexes. That market IS tight.

Good reason for it. Everyone's broke. When you are young and poor or old and poor, you move into an apartment.

Anonymous said...

AA Step-1 "Admit you have a problem" [Yep, Bend's got problems]

*

BEM,

When I first got active in these blogs over a year ago, thats where I started on the AA quote. I saw that people were in complete denial.

I was raised by AA, so I know it well, while I myself never wanted to go down that hole. That said I known the 12 steps well.

For over a year I have begged our community ( BB2 bloggers ) to change the subject from re-tread bend-is-doomed to let's fix Bend.

The past year in my humble opinion has been teaching all these renters about Jumbos, CDO's, ... Everything that has transpired I predicted long ago. Having been here forty years I know only too well what Bend looks like at bottom, and I'm quite comfortable. Will the carpet baggers leave? Hell yes, will they return? Hell yes.

The inherent problem that still not resolved even with you list, and the fact that the first step is about there "To admit you have problem and our powerless". That said "God grant me the power to accept the things I cannot change, and wisdom to change the things I can".

We need to change the way business is DONE in post 1998 Bend.

1.) No more deferred SDC's, make HOLLERN&CO pay actual, that BEM will solve your #1, its NOT the little GUY that has to pay taxes, its that the BIG-GUY became a paper-billionaire on SDC deferral.

2.) Shutdown PR&MARKETING, Brucey hasn't been around here long enough, and didn't read the old threads. But long ago you agreed with me that the effect of ALL VCB/COVA was to sell condos, that the 'Outside Magazine" Branding of Bend was to get them here to buy condos, NOT rent hotels. The HOTEL money has been robbed, because the second time that tourist returns he has condo-time-share. You know this BEM, and I know this.

3.) All post 1998 BEND-BUBBLE was well orchestrated fraud by HOLLERN&CO.

The 12 steps are the answer, the past year has been education, we have over a dozen good intelligent people here who care.

Another thing I demanded from day one was "Who is going to stay", to this day its Marge, YOU, ME, and Duncan. All else intend to bail.

All these renters came aboard these blogs with the idea of exchanging info to know when the bottom hits to buy a home. Trouble is like me&homer have said, "At bottom you ain't going to want to live here".

I moved here during a bottom long ago, I knew what it was coming in, that's why I'm fond of Bend bottoms. I have seen many bottoms here, they don't bother me in the least.

The majority today here in Bend moved near during the post 1998 Bend-Bubble. "Bend is the next Aspen", buy a home for $500k, and get back $2M in a few years, thats why they'll all came. Now like deer in the road they stand and wait for broken promises from COVA&VCB&COBA.

I'm GLAD your offering hope BEM. I think you need to focus your efforts on FIXING BEND. We need to have this debate. Once the ideas are worked out, it will percolate up to our 'mainstream media', as we have long led the curve.

Anonymous said...

If the Bulletin got a good deal, I blame them if it swayed their coverage, not Hollern for trying to establish a going West Side.
- duncan

*

DUNC, a good deal, the BULL building ( Chandler ), which is appraised for MILLIONS, the land was PASSED from HOLLERN to the BULL in 1998 for FUCKING FREE, coverage, good-deal, ... This is why your Ned Flanders, a fucking meteor could drop on your home, and you would have some rational reason why god did it, probably for gardening, maybe for tourism?

I have been following watching Brooks Resources for a longtime before last year. He's always been the Wizard behind the curtain in this town. Back in the 1970's I used to write about J.D. Gray ( sunriver ) OMARK, but HOLLERN basically took over Gray's position. In PDX Homer-Williams runs the town, and in BEND HOLLERN runs the town.

Bend is a company town DUNCAN, and all the villagers are terrified of pissing off the boss. You are a house-nigger who thinks he's a plantation owner, cuz you own some comic books. Most people in Bend pound nails, or work, and they be field-niggers wishing to be a house-nigger with his own biz.

HOLLERN is the a plantation owner, and in the plantation is Brooks-Resources. There are probably a dozen other minor playing plantation owners in Bend, but HOLLERN is 100X compared to all other.

Yes, HOLLERN via his familys BUY of SHEVLIN-HIXSON passed to him TONS of worthless desert land, and he came here from his cali-mba in the 1960's with the explicit PURPOSE to market & PR that land, and develop it, his first project was Black-Butte, and he's to date he's our 500LB gorilla.

He's a good man, an honest man, a family man. But that just takes us back to the Hitler argument, a lot of people considered Hitler a good man.

Hell I love Hollern's quotes in the BULL they're always right-on, he can say it like it is.

HOLLERN is the invisible hand that guides this town, like Bill Smith, or Les Schwab of distant times.

On the other hand you have COLLECTIVE greed, which I'll call BEND-INSANITY, of which HOMER calls the KOOL-AIDE, I don't know if you all old enough but back in the 60's there were movies about putting LSD into city-water and making everyone go nuts. That's BEND, but folks didn't ingest KOOL-AID, they simply all wanted to get rich, just like the SouthSea Bubble ( grand popular delusions ), fine the little people went nuts, and they lost.

DUNCAN, but HOLLERN owns the SHIPS, HOLLERN owns the materials, the banks, the MTG outfits, there are 100's HOLLERN LLC's all over the region. The little bubble people of the south-sea bubble didn't create the south-sea corp, it was captains of industry, and then common PR&MARKETING people that sold the stock, and then the frenzy started.

Just like TULIP mania, HOLLERN owned the TUPLIPS, and OWNED the TULIP fields, and once tulip-mania ( grand popular delusions ) took over people were trading homes for tulips.

So you could say it wasn't HOLLERN's fault, it was insane citizens.

But that is NOT so

1.) HOLLERN enabled SDC deferral on NWXC, and set the precedent that builders could get rich, by NOT paying actual cost, and copy-cats followed, and city-hall had to give the deal to all.

2.) HOLLERN paid for years ago at the high-desert museum the entire 'smart-growth' racket that destroyed 'anti-growth' in BEND, and changed the debate to 'pro-growth' only. It was ALL paid for by HOLLERN.

3.) Taxpayer money used to create the 'bend brand' ( vcb COVA ), bring in tourists, and sell them condos, or Brooks Crap Shacks.

If it was just HOLLERN fine, but then 100's of developers like Sebastian came in from all over the world and did a 'HOLLERN', and NOW we have a fucking MESS.

Anonymous said...

Everyone's broke. When you are young and poor or old and poor, you move into an apartment.

- tim

*

Let's add another, apts are cheap on elect,gas,water,garbage,

Lets do the numbers.

1.) BEND-HOME 4500sqft crap-shack $1200/mo, garbage($50), water($40), elect($50), gas($200), ( cable/tel same as apt ) - actual cost $1600/mo or MORE

2.) BEND-APT 800sqft $800/mo, elect ($50/mo), - actual cost under $900/mo

Bend-Income wiki 2.3 median $40k/yr, $3k/mo, 1/3 of GROSS is enough for housing, thus the APT, take the HOME case, your talking 2/3 TOO FUCKING MUCH, especially if your saving to BUY a fucking HOUSE.

People WHO rent HOMES in BEND will NEVER fucking save enough to BUY a home.

Anonymous said...

That's why Peter Storton wants to "Aspenize" the place. You don't Aspenize a freakin trailer park. - homer

*


Then what are we doing Homer?? 25 years ago BEND was a trailer park, the old mill homes were single wides on river-rock, without wheels, and all the rest of town was trailers.

LA-PINE was always trailers, and so was sisters, and so was Redmond.

Hell for the past 40 years Prineville used to be the nicest little town around, albeit not a fucking thing to do. But it had Les Schwab, their were jobs, and thus people lived.

Bend with a 20 mile radius was always a trailer park, except for the nice little homes around Drake Park.

IF your using taxpayer money for PR&MARKETING and creating a BEND-BRAND ( city hall web site ). Then anything is possible, why not take old trailer-parks ( 80% of central oregon ), and turn it all into ASPEN? 99% of the calis never even been to ASPEN, how would they know Bend is not aspen??

When you hear an orchestra, and or see a symphony, look for a conductor. That be OUR HOLLERN.

Anonymous said...

I have been a land lord in Bend for +30 years. So any questions bring them on.

Above I discussed the econ of APT's. Now lets talk flippers stuck with homes.

They can't sit empty, its NOT an option.

Say you got a $500k loan, at zero-down, and thus $2500/mo payment, plus taxes $3,000/yr. That's $30k/yr+$3k/yr = $33K/yr.

Break-Even what we call 'pencil' would be $3k/mo rent. NOT FUCKING possible. What can you get? $1k/mo, if your lucky.

The option is WORSE an empty fucking house.

Now I'll tell you all whats really going on. OUR realtors have nothing to sell, so everyone is getting into the rental brokerage business, which mean 'leases', lets see how that works.

First YOU need a cali sucker, new to town. They lease ( I'm NO longer going to use the word rent ). They lease at say $1500/mo. It's a 3yr lease, thats $54k, our realtor get 6% for getting a sucker to sign the lease. Thats $3k, thus the realtor gets the first two months 'rent' ( lease money ), and is GONE.

The renter is fucked for three-years, and owner is fucked for three years, but in theory $99k-$51k=$48k, he's only out $48k, and we know that the REALTORS are telling these home-owners that "DONT WORRY in THREE years it will be be back up 25%/yr APR forever", thus you'll get your $48k back, and besides in the short-term its a tax-loss.

Of course if your not a pro, and have to hire folks to maintain, your really going to lose a ton of money.

But the gist is right now with single family crap-shacks is realtors can make a quick and easy $3k off deals.

This is what's going on.

Now what is better apartments or STD leases?

I myself rent nice little homes month-to-month, for under $1k/mo near drake park, and my folks never leave, but MY shit is paid for.

This is where the ignorance factor comes in, a smart person finds a private party, avoids a lease, or a property-mgt company. Gets a good deal, with NO FUCKING lease.

Then there is the owner who is fucked, three years may be bottom in BEND, but LIKE KING BOSSHOGG HOLLERN says, it ain't coming back for twenty years.

Anonymous said...

In my opinion Bend won't be affordable until we hit '99 prices. I was shocked when we moved here from the east at Bend prices. We paid 149K for a 1700 brand new saphire Sqft house and thought that was a lot of dough. We made it work on a 50K income, but there is NO WAY I could or would pay any more for that today on a 50K income. It will be intersting to see wher this whole mess lands...

LavaBear said...

>>"Who is going to stay", to this day its Marge, YOU, ME, and Duncan. All else intend to bail.

I'm not going anywhere. I'm from here. My family is from here. I'll be here until the kids finish the Hollern MBA program from Stanford which is years away.

Growing up around here we've always gone through every few years of "fuckin californians are ruining things." Back in the day when you'd have to wait for 2 people ahead of you to put the boat in at Cultus...TWO BOATS!!! Fucking Californians. Or hiking up Middle Sister you'd run into three other groups of hikers and one was actually in my favorite bivouac...Fucking Californians. Of course it's gotten exponentially worse over the years. Slowly at first and then this latest explosion.

Home is where your family and friends are and this is home. Am I utterly disgusted by the growth of the last decade? Yup. Have I and many of my friends made more money than any one could imagine growing up in this town? Yup. But now we're about to see who SAVED that money versus who blew it on whores and booze. I know what our City Council has done.

I've said before the early 90's were the best of times. That also means you had to get through the 80's to appreciate them. I've got friends and family and have been burying euro's, yen, and yuan in the backyard looking forward to 2017.

Anonymous said...

In my opinion Bend won't be affordable until we hit '99 prices. I was shocked when we moved here from the east at Bend prices. We paid 149K for a 1700 brand new saphire Sqft house and thought that was a lot of dough.

*

You know, you already been there! The current BEND-BUBBLE started in 1998, that's when HOLLERN put it all together and put The BULLETIN in their FREE new building, thats when the WHOLE package was put together.

Let's say your $149k home went most likely comp in your hood to $450k, which was typical. So long as you didn't take out any home-equity, your fine.

Yes, we have said all along here that prices will go back to $160k median, which is 4X of income, which is $40k/yr.

Your right in the ball-park, and your home is a little bigger for that time that average, and thus is worth a higher median.

What goes up, comes down, that which was OVER-SOLD comes down harder. Toss in the fact that HOLLERN&CO will be dumping 1,000's of homes on the market below cost, and note given ALL his land cost him almost nothing, his cost is LOW. This will cause the biggest crash ever seen in these parts.

So what, in the 1980's I saw homes go from $70k to $30k.

I think what really hurts is for the people who came in 2005, and bought homes like yours for over $400k. Now those people are going to see a 70% haircut, and it ain't coming back for a long time. In the 80's we didn't have the inventory problem. There's just too much over-built crap.

With HOLLERN&CO selling new homes at 1500sqft below cost, for less than $200k, nobody is ever going to buy an old used house for over $200k, unless its next to drake-park, overlooking the water.

In ten years by 2018, things will be back up again, by then we'll be deep in WWIV, and there will be a new baby-boom on the horizon.

Long term BEND RE will be fine.

The only thing I would comment on a 1700sqft is heating-cost, its NOT going down, and this year that would have been $200/mo or more, and most likely in a few years if NAT-GAS goes up like folks think, it might be $500/mo. I really think that 1k-sqft homes with TONS of insulation will be the most popular in the future.

Right now up at HOLLERN-VILLE NWXC they're building new homes on the SE corner, and they're all tiny little low-cost, minimal sq-ft homes.

They know what people will buy in todays market, keep it SMALL, and keep it under $200k.

Income is going to go down, too many people competing for the few low paying wage jobs we have.

Anonymous said...

I've said before the early 90's were the best of times. That also means you had to get through the 80's to appreciate them. - lava

*

Are you sure we're NOT related??

Ok, that's five of us that are staying, still not good, does that mean that all else will leave?

My reflection on your boat line at cultus, is like rock climbing at smith, back in the day you could climb any route anytime, and never a line ever, last time I climbed there, there were six hour lines ( 2 to 3 partys ) at most popular routes.

The sport had gone from all day climbing, to basically 'tailgating' where folks just bullshit and wait, and sit around all day. 90% sit, 10% climb, in the day it was always 100% climb.

I only go to places, where NOBODY else goes, well there is still the Alvord Desert, lots of places out there where you can NEVER see a soul.

buster

LavaBear said...

>>Are you sure we're NOT related??

Shit Buster, it's hard growing up here and NOT being related in some way.

Anonymous said...

Hey, I know of at least 12 other people that were born here or have been here 40+ years. They have all said "NEVER LEAVIN", even my ashes will stay here.

Anonymous said...

Hey, I know of at least 12 other people that were born here or have been here 40+ years. - marge

*

I know marge, but the criteria was BB2 blog-bums. We have no influence on the other 1/2 dozen.

Anonymous said...

The difference in last week's posts and this week's posts is amazing. I almost gave up this site for good last week -- but this week makes it worth putting up all the BS of last week....

Anonymous said...

Like the Rajneesh stuffed Antelope with bussed in homeless to win local elections. Once it was over, Cent OR was overrun with abandoned homeless.

Hollern is Bend's Rajneesh.

*

I was here homer BIG diff,

1.) BaGwa came to PDX and said to all homeless, come to my place, and get pussy, food, and shelter, they packed the buses, after the election ( bagwa bussed them to central-oregon to vote in The-Dalles election ) bagwa said no more pussy, food, or shelter they all drifted away, they left with what they brought. NET LOSS to 'victims' ZERO.

2.) HOLLERN runs INTL PR&MARKETING campaign "BEND BRAND". Come to Bend 25%/yr APR on your home forever. Golf courses, Garden of Eden, like palm-springs with pine trees. Buses of old people came up and viewed crap-shacks and condos 1998+, many bought BT, condo-canyon time-share, ... Many moved to bend to retire. Market busted in 2006, and the infinite 25%/yr APR HELOC honey-pot dried. Now two years of living off 401K, and they're broke. Foreclosure Hollern says get out of the house, if you can't pay. They have no where to go and they're broke. Net Loss? Total, for all that came and played.

So big difference, bagwa took poor, and made them feel rich for a few days, and sent them packing. Hollern took well-off elderly and made them feel rich for a few years, and then sent them packing in peonage, broke, destitute, and suicidal.

Who got the better deal? Who was the bad guy? Bagwa was being fucked by locals, so he over-ran the locals. Hollern was already rich, but wanted to rule the earth. The famous banker said "I rob banks, cuz thats where the money is". Today folks rob elderly, because thats where the money was.

Just another chapter in Oregon history.

Anonymous said...

I almost gave up this site for good last week -- but this week makes it worth putting up all the BS of last week....

*

You shouldn't have said, that I predict in hours, probably after brucey gets Clintons autograph, we'll be bombarded by daily-kos posts.

Anonymous said...

burying euro's, yen, and yuan in the backyard looking forward to 2017.

***

I guess you are not aware that the world is ending Dec 2012 -- according to the Mayan Calendar and other famous predictors.

Anonymous said...

Someone said when the environmentalists left, Bendites were begging for someone to fix the place. I guess Bend is a textbook case of "be careful what you wish for." Hollern was the pied piper, but the citizenry was along for the parade.

Anonymous said...

Talking about the nature being overcrowded with Calis in Central O, on one hand Bendites were a little spoiled having the whole nature playground to themselves. I've been on a lot of hikes and to a lot of lakes and there are typically a lot of people. That's life in the USA today folks.

Course Buster's got some places even cali locusts fear to tread.

Duncan McGeary said...

"....a fucking meteor could drop on your home, and you would have some rational reason why god did it, probably for gardening, maybe for tourism?"


You gave me my belly laugh for the day...

Anonymous said...

Hollern was the pied piper, but the citizenry was along for the parade.

*

Hell YES, HELL YES, from day-one on 'smart-growth' aka 'bend wise use', the wine flowed, down at high-desert museum. Hollern had cracked the liberal back.

Sure as shit manipulating a conservative can take anything from a baseball bat to a IED. All you have to do with a liberal is show him a movie about bambi, and keep his wine glass filled. By 2000, HOLLERN had everyone in BEND that counted in LOVE with NWXC, before it ever existed.

By 2004 COVA/VCB/COBA were pouring wine, and folks were snorting coke in tents all summer at Drake Park and LS Amp, dim were da good years 2004-2006, now its PBR, and the only coke is corn-syrup&water.

Yep, Bends Intellectual Liberals @ the SOuRcE, fell for the dog&pony hook line and sinker. Like BEM said a while back, who wouldn't have? There nubiles running around Bend all summer from out of town, a site that made all LOVE the new Bend.

Bend is a lot like a Dr. Seuss story, or most of the story's. A town of lemmings, all trying to impress one another.

My principal observation about liberals versus conservative it, give a liberal a 'free' glass of wine, you can lead him around like a dog a leash, a conservative you might people to throw a keg party and get a few to show up, but their loyalty will not last.

Liberals I find crave for free stuff, whether it be pussy, wine, or cocaine. You give it to them, you own them. Enough Said. This is how Bend was sold out.

The real liberals that had a job, and didn't have to suck cock to get wine, left back to the valley ( eugene, corvallis ) by 2002, the only ones that stayed were the parasites. Given that city-hall post 2002 had ZERO OPPOSITION those became the anything goes years thereafter.

Today there is no money, so nothing goes, but that is a new story.

Anonymous said...

Hey Holleran -- I got your PR right here!

BEND ON OPRAH THURSDAY!!!

That pregnant dude living "in a normal neighborhood in America..."

ICK! PHWET! GROSS! Not the PR Holleran was hoping for, I'll bet!

Anonymous said...

Re above rant about liberals vs conservatives, free wine, pussy blah blah blah:

You are mindlessly stuck in that false world of red state vs blue state, libs vs conservatives bullshit and don't even know it. Your tone is that you know so much more than these people... but you don't even know you're being absolutely maniplulated and controlled. Evolve my friend, evolve...

Anonymous said...

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...
Hey marge,

Heard any good RE stats recently?

What would you like my dear? Just let me know. I know its the end of the month and quarter. Is that what you want? Ask nice :)

Bewert said...

Marge, can we please get single-homes on lots total and median?

Thank you :)

tim said...

Marge, just tell us whatever is the worst.

Anonymous said...

Anything for you Bruce !!

79 sold as of 4:30 3.31.08
$293k median

and the bonus #'s are>>>>

86 homes over 1 Mil active
4 sold Hummmm many months worth.

And just cuz yer so nice,,

6 over 1 Mil sold for Q-1 (Richie Rich all gone) Hey Dunc, you carry Richie Rich? I have some old 50's comics, you interested?

The bonus ? Med ppsf for March 08
$182.25
Anything else?

tim said...

So we have YEARS of the million dollar stuff, do we? Don't the rich people love us anymore?

Anonymous said...

Year end 2007 median $345k
Q-1 2008 median 308 (so far)
Cry me a river !
Oh, we have a river..it's about 20inches deep in town and in need of 3 Mil in dredging cuz the SDC's don't cover taking care of our # 1 asset in Bend.

foz said...

"fuckin californians are ruining things."

Well you can point the finger at californians, or give them the finger, but the reality is it is us to blame. Us baby boomers grew up with a slash and burn, I want it now mentality and that won't change till we are all dead and buried.

LavaBear said...

>>Well you can point the finger at californians, or give them the finger, but the reality is it is us to blame. -foz

Growing up around here it's really mostly a figure of speech. Hell it could be my brother loading his boat in front of me and I'll blame the fucking californians. It's what we do.

tim said...

Yeah, I don't think Californian means Californian. I've been in California for a total of about 5 days and 2 night of my life, and I've probably been called a Californian twenty times on this blog. Heck, I'm a midwesterner, which is pretty much the opposite of a Californian.

Californian just means Johnny-Come-Lately Fucker Who Ruined Everything.

tim said...

I have a question for you Marge. Has reality sunk in for the sellers around here? Do they finally realize they are screwed?

Anonymous said...

Just a few short years ago, one could hop up to East Lake, hit all your favorite fishing spots, catch a doz or so fish in a few hours. Now..your lucky to hit one spot without getting cussed out. More likely I would be doing the cussing as some newbie would get to close.
Baby Jeebus spite all new fishers to the area.

foz said...

It's those damn Iowians (is that a word?) The pacific Nw is overrun with them.

I wonder if on the East Coast it's those damn New Yorkers.

Anonymous said...

Most sellers are still wearing blinders, by choice, or by omission of a broker not willing (or too stupid to look at reality) to look at the real stats. Thanks BULL. I have alienated most of the people in my office. I want them to know reality. They don't. Now most won't have a conversation with me about "the market" anymore. Their lose. I'll just keep it to myself and survive.
I have one seller that is 35k overpriced and told them to stay and take it off the market. They have owned since 1970 and owe 40% of value.

tim said...

>>I wonder if on the East Coast it's those damn New Yorkers.

Yeah, pretty much. Damn New Yorkers or Damn Yankees.

tim said...

>>It's those damn Iowians (is that a word?) The pacific Nw is overrun with them.

Beats me. I don't think anyone lives in Iowa.

Anonymous said...

It's the Fargans...I represent that.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

79 sold as of 4:30 3.31.08
$293k median


Ahhh ya! marge... ya Goddess!

I feel I'm owed a BURRITO ON some level.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Californian just means Johnny-Come-Lately Fucker Who Ruined Everything.

Is that a JaCkL oF a WhoRe?

Anonymous said...

I think you owe me a burrito...Jack. Or how about a D&D burger...ummmm.
Too bad the ol Cooper Kitchen and Virginia Wolf, the Godmother of the the 3rd wave of whores, in Bend, isn't still around. She could look after all us REwhores. Make sure we don't get beat up in the alley. Anyone remember those days? Dunc? Tim?, Anyone?.Her husband, Jake was a real Hollern type, back in the day. they all played cards together, Hollern, Arnie Swearens, Clyde Purcell, Jake Wolf, and a few millionaire Cali's. Can you imagine the Cali's were infiltrating back in the 70's?

This is so not new.

Any other old timers have insight into the 70's?

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

marge... any theories as to why medians seem to start out low early in the month & climb pretty steadily until the end?

This seems to have happened 2 months in a row.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

D&D burger

I'm sort of afraid of that place. Just cuz of strange rumors... and I suppose Busters take on the place.

LavaBear said...

>>I'm sort of afraid of that place.

The D is a mere sissified version of it's former self. I can remember standing back by the pool table and not being able to see the bar because the place was so thick in smoke. Always good entertainment to toss back some stiff drinks and wait for drunken idiots to start fights and get tossed. Just not the same anymore. Now it's an good place to get decent bar food and hearty breakfasts.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Now it's an good place to get decent bar food and hearty breakfasts.

Jake's, while not a bar-type place, is my new favorite place for MONDO-BIG breakfasts... and it's dang good!

Anonymous said...

marge... any theories as to why medians seem to start out low early in the month & climb pretty steadily until the end?

No clue on the early low medians. I will check on it for other months.

D Burgers Don't know what Buster has to say.. The food is good..the drinks are doubles for less than the price of most bar singles. What you have feathers under you arms? Don't you like bikers, tatoo's, gays(not too out), old people, gamblers, drunks, smokers, real old timers? What's the deal?

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

A July 5, 2007 post by me over on BendBB:

Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 11:35 am Post subject: yup
Square foot prices dropped from $233 in May, to $210/sf in June, or about 11%.

Still pretty bad.

I'm thinking this will be the quarter where a lot of people give up the ghost on prices busting through old highs and going to the moon. There are quite a few people who cling to this belief, that the past 6-8 months is just a pause that refreshes.

I'm betting not. Feels more like the right shoulder in mid-2000, right before the NASDAQ plummeted into oblivion. I think we'll see a month with medians in the $200's before yearend. Maybe after Q3, when I'll bet there is 100% capitulation: The Bulletin will splash an Armageddon Piece on the front page, people will crap their diapers, and the markdowns will come fast & furious.

There are just so many nuts out there who are clinging to the idea that "We'll be OK". Long about October they'll figure out It's Over, and if they want to really sell, they're going to have to choke up everything they've ever made in Bend to stanch the blood.

Prediction: The Bulletin will put up a piece (within 2 wks) that cranks everyone down a notch: True believers will start doubting, and the conflicted will get caught in the headlights. There'll be a graphs, and one will show June cracking to the worst levels in recent months. There ain't enough lipstick to gussy up the pig no more.

Me, Timmy, and BEM will be, as usual, shaking our heads saying, "What the hell did you think was going to happen?"


then bendbb:

I'll take that bet. I don't foresee medians under $300K this year.

I still owe on that bet.

Or maybe he meant one year FROM THAT DATE? Right? Sure! THAT'S what he meant!

LavaBear said...

Jake's, while not a bar-type place, is my new favorite place for MONDO-BIG breakfasts... and it's dang good!

http://jakesdiner.blogspot.com/

My pops used to eat breakfast there damn near daily. Always a favorite.

Anonymous said...

Ah, yes I remember the days when the pool table was in the front room and it wasn't safe after 11 PM. That is when I went to Virginia's down the alley. Although I went flying into the alley one night with some bitch attached to my hair, that used to date the guy I was out with. Ahhhh the good old days. Pour me another bar keep.

The Natives Are Restless said...

"Anyone remember those days? Dunc? Tim?, Anyone?.Her husband, Jake was a real Hollern type, back in the day. they all played cards together, Hollern, Arnie Swearens, Clyde Purcell, Jake Wolf, and a few millionaire Cali's."

I remember those days. The Copper Room, Eddie's Poco Toro, The China Ranch, The 86 Corral...some real hoppin' spots.

Yeah, there was ol' Arnie Swarens, Alva Goodrich, Damn your hide Clyde Purcell, Stub Seems, Slick Fox, Brad Fancher, Pat Metke. These are the guys that old timers remember.

That was back when men were men and Californicators were just plain skeert.

Anonymous said...

Don't know what Buster has to say.

*

Buster is a D&D guy, $5 blow-jobs by ex RE HO's with no teeth, right under the counter, around the world in the head for $10, fights every night, best of times.

Bikers busting heads, folks getting head, blood everywhere, the old Bend is returning.

LavaBear said...

Yeah, there was ol' Arnie Swarens, Alva Goodrich, Damn your hide Clyde Purcell, Stub Seems, Slick Fox, Brad Fancher, Pat Metke. These are the guys that old timers remember.

People often forget ol Jan Ward. He gets left out because he pretty much plays by his own rules damn the results. I'm pretty sure he's in the top 3 landowners in the county to this day even after developing much of the southside of town. I spent more than one summer riding a shovel for the bastard getting through college.

Anonymous said...

The D is a mere sissified version of it's former self. I can remember standing back by the pool table and not being able to see the bar because the place was so thick in smoke.

*

I think in the next few years as our Bend cops turn pussy, once the realize the 'red necks are back', that the dive-bars will return, stiff drinks, hard drinking type will be the survivors.

The pussys that now run Bend will be fucking long gone, best of times are returning.

Gas gets expensive, everyone will pull out the bikes, its going to be like the old days very soon. Downtown biz, would rather have a dive-bar, than a has-been fur franchise with plywood windows.

Shit maybe even good music will come back to Bend, if it gets cheap maybe even young people will want to 'lowbrow' in Bend??

Anonymous said...

Evolve my friend, evolve...

*

I think we have new sucker in Bend, please Realtors track this bitch down and clean his clock, before some other town gets his last penny.

Anonymous said...

Ey, Jez, had many a freind that worked for Ward on his chain gang, he was a dirty dog. Pushed dirt where ever he wanted, with or without permission from the City. Many of the houses he built were never in need of permits and were built to that code. Feel sorry for anyone that put up with his shit.
Fancher was another real work of art..Mr. Attorney that never did any wrong.
So Bend politics haven't changed so much, just changed hands.

Anonymous said...

Let's not get the good old 'working boys' confused with the fancy dans like Hollern with Stanford MBA's from cali, that PR&Marketed Bend as a brand.

Sure there are lots of old timers that by virtue of hard-work did well, but those folks didn't create the Bend bubble, nor do they own city-hall.

LavaBear said...

>>nor do they own city-hall.

Now that I think about it, Jan Ward might literally own city hall after winning that lawsuit with the City over his sewer.

Bewert said...

Eventful night, good reading. Keep going, old timers.

I have to admit I've never been in the D&D, but it sounds like a bar I used to often frequent in my hometown of Eau Claire, WI, called the Oar House. Barrels of free peanuts, freely flowing liquor, just a block away from the college. They called it Water Street. Only place I have ever had a knife held to my neck, by some drunk asshole who refused to stop grabbing the boobs of several friends of mine after I took issue with his loose hands. Drunk and stupid brave. His buddies grabbed him and dragged him away before it got ugly. But still, good times.

Uniroyal Tire was the biggest employer, before they moved out. But it was similar to Bend, 40,000 then, now 70,000, health care center of the region, ditto shopping. But it also had a college of 10,000 or so students, just 10 or 12 blocks from downtown. About the distance the Old Mill is from downtown. And it was right on the river. Part on one side, most on the other, with a footbridge that was fucking freezing in the winter. A college started in the early 1900's as a teaching and nursing school.

Good memories.

I agree with Buster--the best move Bend could make is integrate a four-year college right into that dead space around Mercato and the Plaza. Focus on green energy and health care. It would work.

Bewert said...

BTW, any of you oldtimers remember a guy named Bruce Bishop or Bruce Bischoff? I met him tonight, and it was quite an interesting conversation. He's in his 80's, hates Costa and the publisher, and is a native of Bend who ended up at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, was a reporter for the Manchester Guardian and New York Times, and founded the High Desert Forum back here in Bend. An interesting guy.

LavaBear said...

>>BTW, any of you oldtimers remember a guy named Bruce Bishop

Damn Bruce, you just went old school on us old schoolers. Mr. Bishop is a classic. He's an old school policy wonk that knows answers to questions you wish you were smart enough to ask. I haven't spoken to him in a few years but I know that he cares about this town from his heart. If you want to talk Bend or just politics in general he's the best cup of coffee money can buy.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Where did you meet this Bruce Sr, Bruce?

Bewert said...

Re: If you want to talk Bend or just politics in general he's the best cup of coffee money can buy.

Cool. He wanted to stay in touch, and I bet he would love this blog. I talked a little about Juniper Ridge and gave him the URL (he said he knows nothing about computers, so I told him he should find someone who does) and he was extremely supportive about little guys like us trying fo "fix Bend". Really nice guy, someone you knew was special in some way the minute after you met him.

I told him about the Bulletin getting their land for $0, which seemed to really surprise him. He went off on Costa and the publisher Gordon Black, in some rather salty language.

BTW The BULL has even figured out a way to sell RE in the Sports section. It's online, so I'll cut and paste. But for the full effect you should check it out with the map of NWX.

Bewert said...

Re: Where did you meet this Bruce Sr, Bruce?

In the Press Area at the Clinton event. Googling bruce bishop bend oregon brings back almost 24,000 hits, so I'll have to learn a little more about the guy.

Bewert said...

Racing hotbed
NorthWest Crossing is becoming the place to be for running, cycling events


By Katie Brauns / The Bulletin
Published: April 01. 2008 4:00AM PST

Athletic types in Central Oregon have never had to look far for opportunities to compete. Recently, a neighborhood in Bend has become a hotbed of organized racing activity.

Directors of an expanding assortment of races are situating their start and finish lines in and around NorthWest Crossing, a planned community located in northwest Bend near Summit High School.

For the past four years the Dual in the Desert, a running and biking duathlon, has been staged at Summit High, and for three years a cycling event known as the High Desert Crit Series has been held around the school.

Added to the list this year will be a new distance-running event known as the Cascade Lakes Relay, a race of approximately 200 miles that is planned to start at Diamond Lake in the southern Oregon Cascades and to finish at NorthWest Crossing.

A new weekly running series called NWX is also on tap this summer, as are the NWX Street Scramble — an orienteering competition — and the NWX Criterium bike race.

“A big part of why we are doing this is that our residents are attracted to this type of thing because they have very active lifestyles,” says David Ford, general manager of NorthWest Crossing. “They are attracted to Phil’s Trail and mountain biking and other types of outdoor activities. (Racing events) fit in well with the NorthWest Crossing lifestyle.”

Ford also believes that by holding races in the neighborhood it will give nonresident participants a glimpse at NorthWest Crossing “to see what we are all about,” he says.

While the Dual in the Desert and the High Desert Crit Series are not specifically connected to NorthWest Crossing and its management, the new relay and the NWX races are.

Matt Plummer of Central Oregon Racing, who will head up the NWX series, and Brian Douglass of the Smith Rock Race Group, which is hosting the Cascade Lakes Relay, both separately proposed their event ideas to the NorthWest Crossing management, seeking approval.

Ford recalls: “They both approached us and said, ‘What do you think? Would you be interested in supporting us in something like this?’ And we said, ‘Sure, it sounds like an exciting opportunity to share the lifestyle of NorthWest Crossing.”

The NWX Running Series will take place on the undeveloped land west of Mt. Washington Drive adjacent to NorthWest Crossing. Races will be held weekly beginning May 6 and will include a distance-building rotation each month: three 5-kilometer races, and one 10K race. The runs will be held every Tuesday evening until Sept. 23.

The two other NWX races include a criterium — a timed road-bike race set on a lap course — in the NorthWest Crossing neighborhood on June 27, and a street scramble — a timed adventure running race involving map and compass skills — on June 28.

“Access is very easy,” says Plummer, explaining his choice of NorthWest Crossing as a race location. “It’s close to town, so for people to race after work it’s very convenient. And the course options are pretty extensive as well.

“For the running series it’s a great undeveloped area, that before they start building it will be great for racing. A lot of people are out there running it now … so it’s something that people are fairly familiar with,” Plummer adds. “As far as the crit at the end of June, it’s good because they’re all isolated roads. It’s off of Mt. Washington (Drive) so there are a lot of options for people to still be able to get to their houses, but still have the roads closed for the race.”

Plummer hopes to attract race enthusiasts from throughout Central Oregon and beyond — not merely from the pool of NorthWest Crossing residents — and he envisions the races to be community-building events.

“I’ve seen it in race series that I have held in the past,” he says. “You have the usual crowd — a good solid group that’s there almost every week. And then there’s always people who are showing up just to try it out — see how things go — and are generally welcomed into that circle, so they get that sense of community just within the racers. My hope is that there’s that social aspect (after the) race.”

Douglass estimates that more than 400 participants will take part in the after-race celebration he has planned for the inaugural Cascade Lakes Relay, scheduled for Aug. 1-2.

“We know that the community is in favor of (racing),” says Douglass. “And we are planning our entertainment stage, food catering and beer garden to attract them.”

Douglass also notes that location and the use of Summit High School facilities allow for a large number of participants.

“Being that it is out of the Bend downtown area, the city is very willing to give us the needed permits without the extra expense and problems of being in the core area,” Douglass adds. “We will be using the Summit parking lot and grassy areas … and locker rooms and showers.”

“One thing that is so great about this side of town, is that we are so close to all the trails and biking,” says Shain Logeais NorthWest Crossing resident and co-owner of Riley’s Market located on Northwest Crossing Drive. “We end basically at the forest.

“I think people would be more excited to have activity, rather than not have it, just because a few roads will be blocked off,” Logeais notes of the races. “I think people in the neighborhood would welcome that sort of thing.”

John Sorlie, an organizer for the Dual in the Desert and a west Bend resident, talks about the accessibility of the west-side races, especially the High Desert Crit Series, in which he has competed for several years.

“I could ride (my bike) right to the races,” he says. “It’s great that you can ride to the race. You don’t have to drive your car.

“The NorthWest Crossing area is located next to the Forest Service access for the mountain bike course,” says Sorlie of a portion of the Dual in the Desert race course. “It’s straight open to the Bend Metro (Park and Recreation District) mountain bike trail that goes directly into the forest to Phil’s Trail system.”

The Dual in the Desert will take place May 31. The High Desert Crit Series will begin June 18.

For an active region like Central Oregon, Bend is a close-to-home spot for racing. The community continues to build its race resume, giving area residents plenty of chances to jump right in.

“These races are an opportunity for residents to put their activities to the test, make them measurable and make it easier to set goals for themselves when there are actual numbers involved,” Plummer notes of the timed races. “The courses (for the running series) will be repeated every four weeks, so that’s how they will compare their progress.”

“I think probably the thing that we are most attracted to in holding these events,” Ford notes, “is building a great sense of community.”


The map is not as prominent online as in the print edition. I'm all for more racing, but have to say the slant on how great a neighborhood NWX is just brings back to mind that great land deal: 10 acres with a view, $0.

Bewert said...

Hey oldtimers, where exactly was the Crane Shed? Is that the Mercato land?

The Natives Are Restless said...

Please, let us not forget old Ernie Steinlicht.

Anonymous said...

Directors of an expanding assortment of races are situating their start and finish lines in and around NorthWest Crossing, a planned community located in northwest Bend near Summit High School.

*

This is all part of 'best in 20' TEAM-HOLLERN, GO-HOLLERN,

Get people from all over PNW, especially Seattle & Portland, to Bend, and too NWXC, and let them see all the deals. I wrote about this two weeks ago.

All the banks in PDX have little brochures about peddle,pole,&paddle; and what a great time to buy.

'Best in 20' is about selling BEND condo's and crap-shacks to active yuppies, there is NO long any point to SELLING to geezers, they have been stripped to the bone.

HOLLERN ( boss-hogg ) owns NWXC FYI.

I love the BULL they quoted HOLLERN a month ago that the 'best in 20' wouldn't work, yet he is the wizard behind the program, its simply awesome that these folks can have it both ways, 'heads he wins, tails you lose'.

Anonymous said...

I have to admit I've never been in the D&D, but it sounds like a bar I used to often frequent in my hometown of Eau Claire,

*

My recollection of the D&D was more like the 'star-wars' bar, young people in general were dead meat, a lot of my buddies in the day were afraid to walk by the front door, there were always motorcycles on the side and front.

No bruce, this was not your college bar, this is was a biker bar. No pozer bikers, these be the kind of bikers that say "Want to fuck my wife?", Then you fuck his wife, and he then says, "Now the whole bar is going to fuck you". You should always ask the terms of the deal from these folks before taking their offers. No fucking college bar bruce. Bend was a rough place, you had to be careful where you went.

I myself was raised around bikers, I learned as a kid, if you treated everyone with respect you could keep your teeth. We always carried pliers in our pocket to do dental working on those who didn't show respect.

Anonymous said...

Now that I think about it, Jan Ward might literally own city hall after winning that lawsuit with the City over his sewer.

*

I think when I say 'owning city hall', I'm talking about owning the politicians and the city-staff in the political sense.

Your right lava, with all these lawsuits plaintiffs will OWN bend in the economic sense.

Anonymous said...

This is what I mean by the 'old bend', when I think economic 'best of times' in Bend, old days, early 1980's, ... I think of tough bars downtown, fights, poverty, people with nothing left to lose.

You look at Bend today, and even the cops are all young blond sissy's. This place is going to turn quick once it goes down. All these fancy dan's, and cali's, and 'beautiful aspen' people are going to go out of their fucking minds.

Sure city-hall will ban pickup's downtown, they'll ban dogs, they'll try to ban panhandling, ... Once nobody has any money even the meter readers ( on contract in Bend ) will not bother, ... no one to FUCK. Todays BEND is all about economic cleansing. Once there is nobody to rob, it will all collapse to the good old days.

Anonymous said...

1,408 Bend homes on lots for sale today

Bewert said...

Re: No pozer bikers, these be the kind of bikers that say "Want to fuck my wife?",

Actually, most of them weren't posers. Everyone came to Water St., from the bikers to the druggies to the college kids and non-college locals. The poser bikers are the guys now, with their shiny new hogs. Back then they were pretty rough. And they definitely liked to fight a lot more than most of us.

Water St. is a three or four block long section of bars, supposedly the highest concentration of bars per block in Wisconsin. And Wisconsinites like to drink. The Oar House was a favorite, because it had two big rooms, the long bar room with it's back room and the big side room full of pool tables. Lot's of action around the pool tables.

Late-70's and early-80's were a far different time, especially when it came to the law. It was so slack back then that a bunch of us were sitting in my custom van one summer in Carson Park, doing bong hits before going to the big summer fair and carnival that every town has. A cop walked up, stuck his head in the window, and said "Smells kind of funny in here--you guys might want to put that stuff away!" And walked off. That would never happen today.

I was a local who went to college, so I hung out with a large number of different types of people. I started going down there at 16, with an altered DL. Bet those days were far different here, too.

And no, I don't remember ever getting offered a biker's wife. They seemed pretty protective of their women. So, yes, maybe your's were more neanderthal than our WI pussy-bikers.

LavaBear said...

Damn....the D&D that is described here is the D&D of the 80's. I haven't thought twice about walking into the joint for 15 years now with my wife. Early 80's..that probably wouldn't of happened but today it's fine. One of these weekends just go have breakfast. You won't regret it. Support you local barkeep.

tim said...

I'm starting to think this D&D has nothing to do with Dungeons and Dragons.

Anonymous said...

I don't remember ever getting offered a biker's wife.

*

It's very old game, I saw it played on many fools.

If you read Hunter Thompsons first book on the Hells Angels he's got a chapter on this game.

He hung out with some of the same groups in Oakland during that time, that I knew floating around.

Hunter Thompson pretty much, tells it the way it was, and the way I remember it.

For instance we would have partys at people homes, and run the bikes through the houses, I remember one AM, the only thing in the house I could find was springs from the mattress in the fireplace, literally everything in the house had been burnt in the fireplace, even the TV had been melted town, an exploded.

People carrying pliers to pull teeth, and screwdrivers to puncture eyes, eye-patches were fairly common, and so were people with lots of missing teeth. I doubt that your WI was that way, or much in Utah.

Nobody cared in the 60's, as long as they beat&fucked each other, and each others property. But one thing was clear, if they did hit a town, not much was left.

Fights, mostly what I remember is chains, most folks used 3/8" chains about 2-3 feet long as belts, and would whip them at partys & bars, many a time I saw human flesh and teeth stuck to walls. Those were the days, you kept your eyes opened all the time, when you saw shit coming down you exited or went towards the the walls, I was always amazed how when shit goes down most people come in to view the fight, and then that chain started whipping on a 6feet radius ( arm+chain) 12 feet diameter and ALL inside that zone, has a bunch of themselves on the wall.

Those were the days, and those were the days I see coming back to Bend, and places like Bend, when its gets ugly.

Anonymous said...

4:20PM 4.1.08

83 homes sold
and the median moved down to $290k.

I think you should get your burrito.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane last night!

Anonymous said...

The above was just March,
Q-1 2008 (s0 far)

213 sold
$305k median
183 DOM
1337 active

Bewert said...

Re: Those were the days, and those were the days I see coming back to Bend, and places like Bend, when its gets ugly

Yeah, that's nasty. Let's try not to let it get that far.

Bewert said...

Re: I'm starting to think this D&D has nothing to do with Dungeons and Dragons.

That's funny.

Anonymous said...

It will never be like that again. It will differnt bad. It may make a community out of this town. People helping people. The haves helping the have nots and all that.
City leaders working the soup kitchen.Yeah. Free housing for the homeless. Who else will live in all the empty houses as people leave them in the middle of the night?

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

I'm starting to think this D&D has nothing to do with Dungeons and Dragons.

Not dragons at least.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

High Desert job-seekers finding fewer openings

Employers swamped with applicants

By Amy Easley, KTVZ.COM

If you've been searching for work, but have had no luck, you're not alone.

But that should be no surprise: With the struggling economy, fewer consumers are shelling out cash, meaning most businesses don't need as full a roster as they used to.

So when a job opening does pop up, it seems everyone and their uncle has applied for it.

Crystal Norris knows the feeling. She works part-time as a receptionist at the Sunriver Resort. But 20 hours a week doesn't pay the bills.

"Just trying to live paycheck to paycheck, it's pretty hard," Norris said Friday.

She said all the "unknowns" are the hardest: "not knowing if you'll have any extra expenses."

Which is why she's been looking for something on the side, since November. But even with some college under her belt, and tons of work experience, even an entry-level position has been impossible to come by.

"I thought for sure the last couple jobs I've applied for, (I'd get) at least an interview, and none" came through, she said.

On the other end of the situation, area businesses are being swamped with applications.

Craig Mooar manages the County Store in Sunriver. He posted a single opening earlier this week, but has already received more applications than he knows what to do with.

"I don't know what a percentage would be, but we are seeing quite a few more people out looking for work," Mooar said.

Professional Air in Bend can relate. Staff there say they recently posted an opening for a front desk position, and within three days, more than 70 people had applied.

If you want an edge on the competition, you may want to check out Central Oregon Worksource. They can help you polish up your resume and teach you how to nail an interview, for free.

Here's the phone numbers for a few of the local offices.

Bend: 388-6070

Prineville 447-8076

Madras 475-2382

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

From a local job market that was tight as a drum....

Employers face a tough hiring season

to this:

High Desert job-seekers finding fewer openings

... in 9 months!

This should tell you how bad The Bottom will be... And it won't really happen for 6-7 years. We're in The Big Cycle Down now...

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Ooop... that first link is subscription req'd. Dang it.

Bewert said...

Seems some shit has hit the fan. Tristan Reisfar, my old neighbor on Baltimore Ave. who does the show Citizen Alert on KPOV, called a little while ago. I saw him at the Clinton event last night and brought him up on my JR stuff and the recent Capell ethics filing. I've kept Tris in the loop all along.

Anyway, he called the Ethics Commission, confirmed they received the complaint, and went to the City office, called Capell, called Pete Schannauer the City lawyer, etc. Things seem to be on red alert.

Tris is booking me for his Thursday show. I going to share my documentation and hopefully he will get and official response from the City by then. Plus the Exec Session complaint will be on it's way by then, as I just received the last bit of Notice I wanted from the City.

Interesting times and all that.

I may need your support going forward. So tell everyone you know.

BTW, I downloaded, Acrobated, and Photoshopped the Brooks/BULL sale record from DIAL. I'll put it up for general sharing as soon as I can.

Anonymous said...

I may need your support going forward. So tell everyone you know.

*

Your on your own brucey, we'll be coming by the city prison daily with milk&cookies, and maybe a pie with a key in it.
Remember the bearer of bad news goes down first.

Just kiddin, CC: a copy to OPB, and the governor, get the shit rocking on the valley, thats the only way in hell you'll get action on the eastside of the cascades.

Anonymous said...

People helping people. The haves helping the have nots and all that.

*

Marge is talking like Duncan tonight. It might be that way, but lets be honest. This is town where no more than 10% ever had a real job.

Your TALKING MAJOR depression here. The vast majority will be hungry and 10-30% might be able to cook extra soup. I worry more about the 10% that doesn't want to wait in line. That wants it NOW, remember we brought them in by the bus-load, and now they're stuck here.

Let's hope your right Marge, but in a town of 50k, and 10% bad nasty desperate apples, that 5k roaming the streets and pillaging.

Smart folk will be organizing block vigilante squads soon, the New Panzi BendCityCops that remind me of RENO-911, sure in the hell are going to run, when the shit gets ugly around here. Writing big dog tickets to yuppies, and looking good along the River all summer is fine. When our cops start looking down double-OO buck shotguns of hungry varmint hunters, its going to get interesting.

Block by Block is the secret, each little area take care of its own, that's how they did it in the Depression.

Again I hope your right, but I don't see two generations of people overnight becoming appreciative for handouts.

We haver imported about 20,000 calis here that want it now and for nothing, and if even 10% go postal, its going to get very fucking ugly.

This is why I have been so hard so long on the PR&MARKETING, they just keep bringing the parasites in, we got to quit bringing in hungry desperate people, OH YEA HOLLERN don't care cuz he knows the FEDS will 'lease' 1,000's of crapshacks for emergency shelter, its almost like 'BAGWA' in reverse, you don't get FED money, until you create a problem, so we keep PR&Marketing BEND as UTOPIA for homeless, and un-employed.

Anonymous said...

I'll just say one more thing on this people helping people 'theory'.

During the depression, prior to that if you didn't work you didn't eat, there was a history of work-ethic, you didn't work you starved.

Let's now look at all post log-boom towns in Oregon since the 1950's its 2nd, and even 3rd generation welfare, been to Crescent, or Willamina? 14yr old girls pushing baby strollers is the NORM.

Now we have a depression, and the 2nd&3rd gen welfare for first time ever doesn't get a check. You think they ain't taking a road trip up to Bend to do some shopping?? Like I have said its a numbers game even if its 1$, that's still a 1,000 people every night driving around looking for gas to siphon, and shit to steal.

It's coming.

Anonymous said...

"...he called the Ethics Commission, confirmed they received the complaint,..."
+ + +

Has hell frozen over?

bruce-pussy actually filed the complaint?

Did you post it online somewhere?

Did you do it individually, or did ya try and smack down the bunch en mass?

WOW. Talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk ... ... ... action.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

WOW. Talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk ... ... ... action.

He beats out most of this blog:

WOW. Talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk ... ... ... talk.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Just kiddin, CC: a copy to OPB, and the governor, get the shit rocking on the valley, thats the only way in hell you'll get action on the eastside of the cascades.

Go forth & kick ass Brucey!

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

He beats out most of this blog:

Let's say, He beats me out....

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Tetherow ownership transferred amid slow lot sales

Huh? Wait... I thought lots were selling like hotcakes. Anyone got access to this article?

CLASSIC BACKFIRING BULLETIN BS.

Printed SO MUCH Tetherow fueled PR BS, that this piece looks completely insane. Good Job Costa.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Interesting piece in the SPORTS section:


Oregon courses now set to open in July
By Zack Hall / The Bulletin
Published: April 02. 2008 4:00AM PST


Central Oregon’s snowy winter has delayed the opening of what will be Bend’s newest golf course.

Tetherow will now open in July, pushing back the initial opening date from June 20, said Caleb Anderson, who was hired last month as the club’s head pro.

“Things were bumped back a little bit due to the winter,” Anderson said Monday. “But having said that, by adding the additional 30 days on for opening, that’s a timeline that both our superintendent and David McLay Kidd, our architect, feel comfortable with.”


Uhhhh... too much snow? Really? Hmmmm... I smell a load in someones diaper.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

City may slash 20 more jobs City pushes tax to fund area transit after budget cuts
Bend budget cuts may also target transit hours, Sunday Dial-A-Ride
By Peter Sachs / The Bulletin
Published: April 02. 2008 4:00AM PST

Roughly 20 more jobs at Bend City Hall could be on the line as officials grapple with making $20 million in budget cuts, a city official said Tuesday. And as part of those cutbacks, Bend Area Transit may also suspend fixed-route and on-demand service for an hour each day.

Interim City Manager Eric King emphasized the job cut numbers are not finalized.

The layoffs will likely be in the city’s building and planning divisions. Those are the same offices that already had 10 positions cut in December as the city responded to declining fees from development applications and building permits.

All told, the city’s community development department, which includes planning and building, presently has 73 employees and an annual budget of about $15 million, according to city documents.

King said Tuesday those departments would see their budgets cut by 30 percent to 40 percent, including the layoffs. “There will be layoffs again, significant numbers of layoffs,” he said.

So far officials have talked broadly about the cuts they will make in the coming months. King said Tuesday maintaining funding for basic services like police, fire and street repair were among his top priorities and that he intends to cut those budgets by no more than 5 percent.

Last month the fire department announced it would intermittently close the Tumalo station and move those firefighters to other fire stations to cut back on overtime. Officials said last month they expected the station to close several days each month.

Transit Manager Heather Ornelas said Tuesday that Bend Area Transit may halt its fixed bus routes and Dial-A-Ride, an on-demand service, for an hour each day and stop Sunday on-demand buses as it looks to trim its budget by nearly 20 percent.

Ornelas said the bus system could cut nearly $670,000 from its budget by reducing service, halting plans to install more bus shelters and benches, and doing away with a marketing consultant.

“We were trying to find ~ where the least impact would be on riders and on the community,” she said.

Richard Etzel, a member of Interfath Action for Justice, a local advocacy group for low-income residents, supports the city’s plans to reduce bus service, but worries about the long-term health of the 18-month-old system.

“Folks will find a way to work around these cuts,” he said. “But they won’t be able to find a way to work around a complete disbanding of the system.”

He fears cuts in future years, especially if voters turn down a property tax for transit that may go on the ballot in November, as they did in 2000 and 2004, could mean an end to BAT.

About half of BAT’s $3.5 million annual budget comes from the city’s general fund, with much of the rest coming from federal and state grants.

“It’s not sustainable to have (the) current level of service given our overtaxed general fund,” King said at Tuesday’s meeting.

Later this month, the City Council will get a complete rundown on what would get cut in various city departments. Cuts in any departments would go into effect July 1.

Before BAT’s service hours could be reduced, a public hearing would have to be held and the City Council would have to OK the plan, Ornelas said.



Good Job, Bend City Council. City workers have to be thrilled with your adept planning & decision making skills.

Next stop: BANKRUPTCY.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

halting plans to install more bus shelters and benches, and doing away with a marketing consultant.

What? Oh no! They're firing a MARKETING CONSULTANT!

That means they're letting go one of their own! Holy Crap! Who will make the decisions about... MARKETING? This sounds serious!

Anonymous said...

OOOUUCCHHH!

Calis, retirees, young and buffs, escalade drivers --- THEY all did NOT see this shit coming. Duck while you can because that monster fan is flinging the shi* bigtime.

It's not a good time to be flaunting all that wealth the newbies accumulated in the past decade in Bend.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Ornelas said the bus system could cut nearly $670,000 from its budget by reducing service, halting plans to install more bus shelters and benches, and doing away with a marketing consultant.

So this will actually get rid of about 1ac of bedrock from Juniper Ridge, right?

Oh man, why did I ever doubt the wisdom of our brilliant City Council?

They'll get that Juniper Ridge project done if they have to shut this City down, those clever buggers!

I hope they sell City Hall, the police buildings, maint. buildings & all the City's other holdings, so we can all bask in the goodness of scrub desert after we're pushed into bankruptcy.

If there's something we're in short supply of, it's desert scrub. It's sad but we are down to our last 50 billion acres of scrub. Look at Christmas Valley... so little scrub left out there that there is a buying frenzy to snap up land for sale out there, before it goes below the psychologically important 98% level.

Yeah, we need precious desert scrub land.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Anyone got anything on that Tetherow sale?

Man, that is one of the biggest news pieces in a long time, and it is, as usual, being marginalized by the PR-Bulletin-Ho.

And you know that was a quasi-bankruptcy. Remember, lo these many moons ago, when Bear Stearns was "sold"?

SOLD = BANKRUPTCY

The Plaza? Right, "sold". Look for the sales of other Big Bend Projects. Mercato will probably be "sold".

Only boneheads like Columbia Air actually make it to BK. You have to be REAL deluded to make it that far.

Also look for FLOWERY LIES surrounding the "sale" of projects.

"{new owner} brings a strategic vision to the project that {original owner} didn't have...", and other such bullshit.

Anonymous said...

Yes, fellow CUNTS, real bad time to flaunt wealth in Bend, this summer as always I'll be peddling around on mee 20 year old MTN bike, enjoying the best of times in 20 years.

Not a good time to have a high end vehicle in the drive-way, or for that matter parked, just going to get keyed, dat said I haven't owned a nice car for +20 years.

Nice clothes, ... fancy watches, ... Your just going to be a target. All those that came to New-Aspen ( Bend-OR ) who have to flaunt are going to be sitting ducks from now on.

Anonymous said...

Printed SO MUCH Tetherow fueled PR BS, that this piece looks completely insane. Good Job Costa.

*

Homer, the bloggers have HIT tetherow so fucking hard below the belt, you would have to be a MORON to have that address.

I note also for ALL the argument, NOT one FUCKING person, I REPEAT after a month of knocking the fucking shit out of Tetherow NOT one fucking person on BENDBB ( SLUT-SITE ) came to its defense.

This means, thats its much more WORSE than we think, it means that even its supporters know its over.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Hyundai franchise changes hands

Thomas said the dealership had planned to build a new showroom for its Dodge and Chrysler lines on an 11.59-acre plot between U.S. Highway 97 and Nels Anderson Road in north Bend. But concerns from the city of Bend and Oregon Department of Transportation about accessibility in the high-traffic neighborhood prevented the dealership from building, he said.

The dealership purchased the plot in 2003 for $1.9 million, according to Deschutes County records. In 2005, it announced that it planned to move its Dodge and Chrysler franchises to the site and then move its Subaru and Hyundai franchises to its facility at 2060 N.E. Highway 20.

“The future is unknown there as far as access,” Thomas said. “It stopped our program dead in its tracks.”

ODOT spokesman Peter Murphy said the site was permitted for use as a car lot and that “it’s not come to my attention that ODOT is an impediment” to Thomas’ efforts to expand.


Awesome. These guys are in the financial shits, and cannot fund that new lot, so they blame it on ODOT. Then ODOT says they can do whatever the hell they want.

Car Dealer caught spewing 100% Grade A bullshit, and the Bulletin actually reported it! Amazing. This actually happens with regularity in most city newspapers....

Here? It's a freakin miracle.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

The Nugget has finally figured out the Yin-Yang of Positive Headline/Dismal News:

Sisters businesses see strong start

Last week, however, was slow at Sisters Drug and Gift, according to clerk Julie Ritchie.

"I think the snow slowed people down, but the week before when California had their spring break there were quite a few, and that Saturday before Easter was really busy," she said.

Mitch Mansfield, who only last month purchased Sisters Olive and Nut Co, found himself pleasantly surprised with his traffic all week.

"It's just been amazing to me. Most days I wake up and think, 'What's the point of even opening the shop. No one's going to be out walking around the town today.' And sure enough they are out there, rain, snow, cold, sleet, hail.... We've had some good days."

Sharon McVay, owner of Silli Chili, is finding her new, larger location at 220 Cascade Avenue an asset to her business.

"There's a lot more window exposure," she said.

She told The Nugget that she has been experiencing both very good and very slow days and that she is finding her new location attracting locals she never saw at her former location.


And finally, the great Hope Springs Eternal line:

"People will spend money while they are on vacation, even if they have to go home and eat beans and hot dogs," he said.

Yes... I know of VAST MASSES of people who dine on pork & beans all Winter, just so they can blow their collective wad in fucking Sisters once a year.

I tell you folks, Sisters is doomed. It is 100% populated by deluded selfish lunatics.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

But surely, the putridly wealthy town of Sisters has no need for helping the hungry, right?

Food Bank faces increasing need


In an economy where stretching the dollar as far as it will go is a necessity, more and more local folks are turning to service agencies for help. One of the main sources of assistance in the Sisters area is the Kiwanis Food Bank.

Sisters Kiwanis provides families with an emergency supply of three to four days of food on a once-a-month basis. According to Steve Murray, food bank coordinator at Central Oregon's NeighborImpact, the number of people coming to the Sisters Kiwanis for help has "...gone up over a year ago and over two years ago. Yes, in your community the needs are going up. Yes, throughout Central Oregon the needs are going up," he said.

Sisters Kiwanis food bank manager Garth Tosello agrees.

"The numbers have been higher all year this year than last year's numbers. We've definitely got new families and larger families," he said.

Currently, the food bank serves an average of between 15 and 18 families a week, Tosello told The Nugget.

"We had a couple of weeks in the 20s.... Last year, we were averaging 10 or 12 families a week, 14 at the most," he said.

One of the big changes the food bank is seeing this year is larger families.

"It's a new factor. Before there were some larger families, but they really stood out. Now, it seems like the majority who come in are four, five, six people," said Tosello. "Sometimes there's four adults and three or four kids all in the same household. They are all living in Sisters and Sisters Country."

It takes a significant amount of food to feed these families even for three or four days, Tosello noted.

The food bank does not specifically track whether or not its clients are newcomers or long-time area residents; however, according to Tosello, casual conversation with patrons suggests that many have come to the area within the last few months or year.

The food bank does not track the ethnicity of its patrons, but, according to Tosello, more Hispanic families are coming through its doors.

One Sisters resident, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Nugget that the food bank is helping his family immeasurably. Currently, the man's brother, wife and two children are living with the man and his family while looking for work.

"Feeding eight mouths not four is difficult. I don't make a lot of money. The food bank saves my life," he said.

Since clients are only allowed to access the food bank once a month, the vast majority use the service as a stopgap measure to get their family through a specific crises or to their next pay check.

"Most of them when they come in start talking to you, and you can tell they've got something going on with their work or (they are) in between jobs or this crisis or that crisis," said Tosello.

The majority also see their need for help from the food bank as temporary.

"I would say that kind of holds true because they tend to disappear after a few months of coming to the food bank and are replaced by somebody else," Tosello said. "It's not real common to see somebody 12 months out of the year."

On occasion families stay away for a year or more and then when they have a need return, Tosello added.

"I don't know if that means they moved or their situation improved and got worse or what," he said.

The Sisters Kiwanis Food Bank is a member of the Oregon Food Bank, an association of more than 900 Oregon and Clark County, Washington agencies that work to eliminate hunger and its root causes.

Almost 80 percent of the food that stocks the Kiwanis food bank's shelves comes from NeighborImpact. Some of it is purchased at good prices. The rest is free through the United States Department of Agriculture. The remaining approximate 20 percent comes from generous community donations. These donations are very important to the project's success and provide items the food bank would not otherwise have, said Tosello.

The food bank is located on the corner of Main Avenue and Oak Street.

tim said...

>>Not a good time to have a high end vehicle in the drive-way, or for that matter parked, just going to get keyed, dat said I haven't owned a nice car for +20 years.

It's glory time for those of us who buy their cars two years depreciated, and then drive them to death.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Read that piece. Then read it again.

Buster sounds like he's spewing bullshit over us going back to the Stone Age. That shit is 100% Dead Real.

Sisters is the Quintessential Mega-Bust Town Of Our Generation. 0% Real Jobs, 1 trillion % cost inflation. The gap between fantasy & reality maxes out in Sisters.

Go there, you'll find selfish pigs fighting over ever scarcer scraps, with Peter Storton trying his damnedest to reflate the RE souffle.

People are so unaccustomed to really dealing with real life, that you have this fantasy World where no one even knows what the fuck to do.

Every business owner in Sisters is living in a dream World, where The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow. The liquor store makes money, and maybe the grocery, and that's it. Everyone makes $8/hr in a town where the medians are $400K.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Another Nugget piece:

Sisters has changing demographics, shrinking middle class

By Joseph Duerrmeyer

The Sisters Country is changing.

Michael Gaston, the Director of the Deschutes County Public Library, described the region's shifting demographics at Sisters Movie House last week. The presentation was hosted by RE/MAX Town & Country Realty.

The information presented was the foundation of a study that was conducted to prepare the library for its growth during the coming years. It included projections of growth and changing demographics.

The fastest growing segment of the population in Deschutes County is the Hispanic segment, according to Gaston.

"However, we don't see them as much, as they tend to keep to themselves and the population growth is not as obvious as it is with some other segments," he said. (See related story, page 9).

Gaston also told the event's attendees that Sisters Country will not see a significant portion of the growth that is projected for Deschutes County. He believes that Bend and Redmond will experience the highest growth during the coming years.

"Sisters will see some growth but certainly not as much as Bend and Redmond," he said.

The greatest changes that Sisters will experience are in the demographies that make up its current population base. Presently, the three main categories that are defined as residents of Sisters Country are labeled "Silver and Gold," "Green Acres" and "Rural Resort Dwellers."

These categories are three of 65 different segments of population that are defined in what is called the "Community Tapestry," according to CIVICTechnologies, the firm that provided the study for the library.

The "Silver and Gold" category is generally defined as married couples with no children at home with an average age of 59.3 years. The "Green Acres" segment are married couples or families with an average age of 40.6 years. "The Rural Resort Dwellers" are generally married with no children at home and have an average age of 46.9 years.

Over the next five years in Sisters Country, the highest growth rate is expected to be among the "Green Acres" segment of the population, which is expected to grow at about four percent per year. The other two segments will grow at a little more than two percent per year.

Other expected changes, according to Gaston, are an increase in those who are living at the poverty level.

"There will be a thinning of the middle class. There will be growth in both the upper income ranges and in the lower income ranges. The middle class will become less a part of the community," he said.

Another expected change is a general plateau in the number of school-age children in spite of the overall increase in population. The plateau will be caused by the general maturing of the local population and the increase in growth of the older segments of the population.


This piece can be summarized as follows:

Sisters Is Turning Into La Pine

Sisters is just a dying town. It's an old folks home that got out of control.

Hispanics are moving there because the Sisters Socialized Babysitting Consortium... errrrr, uh, the school district will take kids from sun up to sun down while Consuello does housekeeping at Best Western. Those kids are literally abandoned to the school system, unable to speak a single word of English, and without a single teacher with the ability to teach it to them.

It really is a great situation for all involved.

tim said...

Last week I had a burger at that Sisters drive in on the North end of town. Sno-Cap? Damn good burger.

The local kids were playing on a sand pile next to the place. Scruffy as hell, but that's OK. Kids are supposed to be scruffy. But you could tell they were poor from looking at the clothes and bikes.

It's like you said. You walk that five blocks along the middle, and it's all rich white women looking at quilts and rich white guys with argyle sweaters and socks looking for the best donut to eat while his boring-ass wife-of-infinite-dullness does her shopping. But at either edge or one block off to the right or three blocks off to the left, it goes to seed fast, not counting the exclusive neighborhoods.

I get the feeling Sisters is half poor and half delusional mock-rich. Those retail businesses sure don't seem too secure. And it has to be tourist/retail, you can't put a real company in Sisters, can you?

There's always one or two storefronts with "going out of business" sales along that drag. Vanity businesses, I guess.

Speaking of vanity businesses, saw in the paper that some little coffee shop on Awbrey, I think up near Merchant, is for sale just six months or so after starting. Expensive espresso equipment and all, for sale. It was notable because my wife and I had looked at the place and tried to figure out how the hell it could make it in such a weird non-commercial location.

Say, do you want to buy a coffee stand that even the original delusional, highly motivated person willing to put a bunch of money and time into couldn't make work? Remember, deluxe whole beans ready for your potential customers' grinders run about $3 for a giant can at the new Trader Joes--that's like a third the price of the great bargain deluxe coffee at Costco.

Uh oh. Might even your hoity-toity Awbrey neighbors be making their own coffee soon, or drink the free stuff at work, or at least wait until they get to work to stroll over to a coffee shop in a commercial part of town? Do they even go to work any more, those builders, Realtors, and Mortgage brokers up there?

Do you really have customers who walk to your coffee shop? Or go through the drive-through and then spill coffee on the leather seats on all the curves driving down Mt. Washington? Or slurp one-handed avoiding the deer jumping across the road?

All this stuff that made sense to the Kool Aid (or Tang) drinkers six months ago, and to 90% of everyone else 2 years ago, seems downright silly and pathetic now.

Hey, we're all optimists here in the US, pretty much. But some ideas are better than others. The iPod? Good idea. The little coffee shop on Awbrey Butte? Come on, people.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Remember, deluxe whole beans ready for your potential customers' grinders run about $3 for a giant can at the new Trader Joes--that's like a third the price of the great bargain deluxe coffee at Costco.

For shame Timmy!

Trader Joes?

Next thing you know, you'll be touting the benefits of new Escalades...

:-)

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Here's that Tetherow piece:

Tetherow ownership transferred amid slow lot sales
By Jeff McDonald / The Bulletin
Published: April 02. 2008 4:00AM PST

Slower than expected lot sales and a tightening credit market forced an early transfer of ownership of Tetherow Golf Club to a Eugene-based group, according to a local developer who has spent several years on the project.

Don Bauhofer, a Bend-based partner in Arrowood Development LLC, said he nixed plans to finance construction of the semi-private golf course and clubhouse with investment capital and proceeds from lot sales at the destination resort on Bend’s west side. Instead, he agreed to transfer ownership and an obligation to complete the project to Spring Capital Group, which already has an ownership stake in the resort, he said.

Arrowood had already sunk about $12 million into the construction of the 18-hole Scottish links-style golf course and clubhouse, about half what it would cost to complete construction and operate the course and the clubhouse for two to three years, Bauhofer said.

"In the current capital markets, it made more sense for Spring Capital Group to come in and take over the last half of completing the course, clubhouse and owning the operations of the golf club,” Bauhofer said. “From Arrowood’s standpoint, it was always our intent to sell the golf course and club to one of our partners.”

Forty-three lots have been sold at Tetherow to date and another 16 are in escrow with prices ranging from $325,000 to $775,000, according to a press release from Spring Capital Group.

“Lot sales were going to give us enough money to fund the golf course and the golf club,” Bauhofer said. “We anticipated a (sales) feeding frenzy five years ago. Two years ago, we knew that wasn’t going to happen, but we’re still way ahead of other resorts on the West Coast during this time frame.”

Spring Capital Group is a diversified private investment group and real estate company which also acquired Salishan Spa & Golf Resort on the Oregon Coast in 2003 and has developed several hotel, loft, apartment and condominium projects in the Western U.S. and Portland for the past 25 years, according to a press release from the company.

“Spring Capital is a strong financial player,” Bauhofer said. “It will be easier for them to get financing put into place. Arrowood would have a lot to worry about in this marketplace.”

The Eugene company already has invested approximately $40 million into Tetherow land purchases and development, according to Tom Connor Jr., a Spring Capital partner. Spring Capital owns and is developing 188 of the 379 homesites at the approximately 700-acre resort, ranging in size from half an acre to 1 acre in size, Connor said.

The course, still slated for a July opening, is designed by David McLay Kidd, who also designed the Bandon Dunes golf course on the southern Oregon Coast and several other renowned courses around the world. Neither the golf course nor the clubhouse, which was designed by Portland-based Ankrom Moisan Architects and will open in mid-August, will change their look or operations under new ownership, Connor said.

“We believe there is going to be a draw to a David McLay-designed golf course,” Connor said. “There’s been a significant amount of interest from people willing to pay to play this course. This is one of the first examples of being able to buy a homesite on one of his golf courses.”

Golf memberships, which will be capped at 375, will be included in the purchase price of certain Tetherow homesites, he said. The course also will extend limited reciprocal rounds to other members of private clubs, such as the Bend Golf and Country Club, until a hotel is built at Tetherow, Connor said.

The decision to transfer ownership leaves Arrowood, which includes Bauhofer and his partner, John Lietz, with Tetherow land holdings that include a mix of 100 lots and future townhome sites, plus 25 acres that will be used to build a 150-room hotel and 150 adjacent lodge cabins for overnight accommodations, Bauhofer said.

Arrowood is working on the $60 million hotel and cabin project, which it plans to begin construction on by 2009 and complete by 2010, with Montvale, N.J.-based Dolce International, Bauhofer said. Dolce, a global hospitality company with 22 properties in the United States, Canada and Europe, also will manage the resort’s spa, fitness center, dining and meeting room space, and cabins.

“Without the golf course and clubhouse, we’ll be able to focus on that,” he said.

Originally, Dutch Pacific Golf LLC, an investment group that included Sisters-based developer Shane Lundgren and former PGA golfer Chris Van Der Velde, had intended to purchase the golf course and club from Arrowood after it was finished. The group had put $1 million into building the golf course and club, with a four-year option to purchase, Lundgren said. But Lundgren and his partners backed out of the deal when it became apparent that slowing lot sales would make it difficult to finance the project, he said.

With the transaction completed, Dutch Pacific will get two lots in return for its investment, Bauhofer said.

“Someone needed to step in to finish up the clubhouse and provide operational funds,” Lundgren said. “Spring (Capital Group) is getting a good deal. It was just bad timing on Don’s part (with the real estate market’s slowdown). Five to 10 years from now, it will look like it was an obvious decision (to purchase the golf course and clubhouse) because the resort has such a great location and will have such great amenities.”

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Franklin Crossing should see another vacancy as they kiss the Tetherow sales office bye-bye...

But, as always, in Bend that is good for all parties involved...

Every commercial vacancy an outlandish opportunity, every bankruptcy a reason for celebration.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Originally, Dutch Pacific Golf LLC, an investment group that included Sisters-based developer Shane Lundgren and former PGA golfer Chris Van Der Velde, had intended to purchase the golf course and club from Arrowood after it was finished. The group had put $1 million into building the golf course and club, with a four-year option to purchase, Lundgren said. But Lundgren and his partners backed out of the deal when it became apparent that slowing lot sales would make it difficult to finance the project, he said.

With the transaction completed, Dutch Pacific will get two lots in return for its investment, Bauhofer said.


BAM! $500K comps.

Reminds me of porno's where the guy grabs the chick by the head & makes her choke on it....

Bewert said...

Re: Did you post it online somewhere?

http://www.juniper-ridge.info/GPSC Complaint_Form-Capell.doc

He may very well get off, as a cousin is probably OK, but we will know the details that no one wants to talk about.

Exec Session complaint up next...

Also, I just update http://juniper-ridge-info.blogspot.com/ with pics of the BULL free land buy records, too.

Feel free to post the info you your blogs so they get put over bendblogs.com more than once.

KEY WORD FOR TODAY: "TRANSPARENCY"

tim said...

>>Trader Joes?

The importance of Trader Joes is it lets people be smug about saving money. Their timing was perfect. It's cheap. Bend needs cheap.Some people will drink themselves to death in bend on 3 buck chuck.

>>Next thing you know, you'll be touting the benefits of new Escalades...

Dude, if you saw my nasty old station wagon... Does YOUR car have duct tape holding pieces on? Mine does. I'm one thrifty SOB.

tim said...

>>Tetherow ownership transferred amid slow lot sales

Again, we show that someone reading the Bulletin can't make head nor tail out of the world. To a Bulletin reader, there is no cause and effect. There is no smoothness because everything happens in fits and starts. It's a world of invisible cliffs. The Bulletin is an effort to build an grand Egyptian pyramid upside-down.

All REAL information in the Bulletin is buried in asides. Promotion is done with a bullhorn and genuine fact-giving is mumbled.

In Bulletin world:

1. We're doing great! We've been doing great all along!
2. Don't worry--the bad times are just now ending.

Every setback is an opportunity, and we sure are lucky to be having so many opportunities.

tim said...

Dear Bulletin,

I want to see a story on all the empty office buildings on Simpson, Century, Galveston, Colorado, Columbia, etc. You know, the former subject of all those exciting "Going Up" sidebars.

Get to know the developers. Tell us what they had in mind when they decided to build. Who they expected to fill the building.

Tell us how they financed the work. Get into the banks and ask the loan officers what magnitude of return is expected.

Tell us about security. Maybe they're at least creating some employment for some watchmen and security firms?

Could be a big Sunday feature spread over maybe 3 pages.

Anonymous said...

"do something good for yourself and the economy." Becky sounds eerily like Team Bush - Here's a stimulus check, now be patriotic and go SPEND it! It's time for everyone to take their medicine and let the economy slow down. All of the stimulus efforts and the work of the Fed over the past few months are just putting off the inevitable and ultimately will make things worse.

On a local level I've seen the same houses for sale in my neighborhood for over 1.5 years. I've spoken with a bunch of other people who have pulled their houses off the market so they can wait for the recovery. Not a bad plan, but you better be willing to wait for a really long time. RE cycles are a LOT longer than the stock market. We won't see 2005 levels for a decade or more. And the recovery won't happen until people face the facts and lower their prices. Let this thing bottom out. Once that happens Bend will again be an attractive place for people to move - beautiful environment, affordable housing, safe, good school system, etc. Presently, housing is not affordable and there are no jobs. Bend is also competing with a number of other attractive second home locations in the NW.

It's a little scary how important the EDCO organization is right now. They desparately need to attract new businesses here to diversify the work force. That will be no easy task given the state of the US economy.

SO glad I rent.

Anonymous said...

This piece can be summarized as follows:

Sisters Is Turning Into La Pine

***

PD -- I like your summations! (it seems you've missed your calling as a columnist for Salon or some honest media)

Bend Economy Man said...

It's tempting to think that now that the "the Bend real estate market is tanking" cat is out of the bag in the local media, we can breathe a sigh of relief and get back to sharing the same collective reality.

But no, that bag still has some cats left in it. The final cat is the "Bend is a good place to live" one.

There's only so much being poor on the High Desert a lot of people are willing to take before they say "let's get the hell out of here," especially if you add a crime epidemic to the mix. Events are accelerating and building momentum, and I would not be surprised to see the "let's move to Bend" sentiment replaced by the "let's get the hell out of Bend" concept within a relatively short period.

And once that happens then for Bend all downside scenarios are possible, up to and including something similar to a Mad Max post-apocalyptic wasteland. I know that sounds crazy but how else would a town look if it has twice as many houses and buildings as it has population?

tim said...

>>I know that sounds crazy but how else would a town look if it has twice as many houses and buildings as it has population?

Maybe we should start filling out the Youngstown, Ohio sister city application.

Anonymous said...

RED-HOT FUCKING news

I know just this AM, I was pointing out the ABSOLUTE silence the tech analysis of TETHEROW.

The THING is all you HOMER-WORSHIPPERS have to remember is that TETHEROW is on the HOOK for $28M in deferred SDC payable FUCKING-NOW. I repeat the DEBT is higher than the place is worth. Think about that!! This goes for MOST of BENDS fucking deferred SDC resorts.

****

, Apr. 2 2008
Bend's Tetherow Golf Course and Club House Acquired by Eugene-based Spring Capital Group

EUGENE, Ore., April 2, 2008, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Spring Capital Group, whose principals are Tom Connor and Don Woolley, announced today that it has acquired the Tetherow Golf Course and Club House, one of central Oregon's newest and most prestigious golf resorts. SCG is a diversified private investment and real estate development company headquartered in Eugene, Ore.

The 18-hole Scottish links-style Tetherow course has been under development for nearly two years by CH Golf Club Partners LLC, a partnership of Dutch Pacific Golf and Arrowood Development LLC.

"We are excited about this acquisition and the opportunity to work with two exceptional architects -- internationally renowned David McLay Kidd who designed the course, and Ankrom Moisan Architects, designer of the club house," said Spring Capital Group spokesperson Tom Connor, Jr., who is an executive in the company.

"We plan to be 'hands on' in managing and operating Tetherow toward long-term success," he continued.

The private resort course will become part of Spring Capital's portfolio of real estate holdings in the western United States.

Spring Capital is developing 188 of Tetherow's 379 homesites. Connor said the SCG-owned homesites are the largest in the development and range from one-half to one full acre.

"These homesites, ranging from $300,000 to $775,000, not only include a membership in Tetherow Golf Club, but they also offer spectacular views of the Cascade Mountains and national forest. In addition, homeowners will be close to all of the amenities Bend has to offer," Connor added.

He noted that there is a great deal of anticipation for Tetherow's summer opening. Much of that excitement is based on Kidd's reputation as the designer of Bandon Dunes in Oregon and the highly anticipated Castle Course at St. Andrews, Scotland.

Both the Tetherow golf course and the lower level of the club house will be open in time for summer play. The entire two-level club house will be completed sometime in August.

SCG has been actively engaged in all phases of land, residential, hospitality, industrial and commercial real estate projects in the western U.S for the past 25 years. Among its projects under construction are single-family homes on the Big Island of Hawaii which include the Villages of Mauna Lani, Kukio and Hualalai, a Four Seasons resort.

The privately held SCG, said it would not disclose financial details of the Tetherow golf course and club house acquisition.

SOURCE Spring Capital Group

Anonymous said...

Sisters is NOT imploding. Sisters is NOT doing anything.

Sisters my dear friends, is simply returning to her earlier self. Remember 20+ years ago all these washed mill towns were 90% field niggers, 9% house niggers, and 1% plantation owners.

Today there are NO jobs for the field niggers, the house-niggers are seeing their RE jobs go bye-bye, and the plantation owners are now only stuck with 2nd or 3rd generation field niggers on welfare.

It's going to be this way for ALL of fucking central Oregon get over, I have tried to explain for a long time time where we're going.

NOW how many of you fucking equity parasites, fancy-dans that came here to expose yourself to ART, are going to stick around, when your afraid to leave the house??

How many of you are still going to buy a house here near bottom, knowing that there may never in your lifetime be another sucker coming to down???

Anonymous said...

Bend all downside scenarios are possible, up to and including something similar to a Mad Max post-apocalyptic wasteland.

*

BEM, your think my way. I have a D-8 CAT with a TURBO, and I'm thinking about changing the steel tracks over to solid rubber tires on each axle. Nothing will stop me. I think we can have a hell of a good time.

We'll just wonder the empty roads and scavenge. I love Road Warrior, a favorite movie, right up there with Blade Runner.

Look at the 'best in 20' that way its being campaigned right now is to kids. Bike race out of NWXC. The peddle, pole, and peddle brochures are now at all SEA&PDX banks, along with 'best time in 20' to buy, I'm guessing its that 25 yr-old's that make money, are too stupid to know that it's NOT the best time, but they'll try anyway. Its clear that OLD PEOPLE is over. These marketing people are on their last big campaign. If all kinds of folks don't BUY NWXC in the next few months at these events, then your going to see complete failure.

I agree, once the 'beautiful people' in BEND start bailing, this place is going to be filled to the rim, with UGLY people real quick, and then it will accelerate.

One last question for everyone, who in the hell is this EUGENE team that supposedly is BUYING TETHEROW?? THE only big money in EUGENE is logging money, and that equipment money, and that is PAPE. Who the hell really are these guys, and where does their money come from??

Remember TETHEROW has borrowed almost $50M to date, and on the hook for $28M to the city for deferred SDC's, 1200 acres, even if they could get $100k/acre and I doubt it, right on the edge, that would be $120M, the DEBT on this place is getting REAL CLOSE to what land is worth, and thats after the improvements. I really don't think that ANYBODY is going to pay over $100k/acre for BEND desert land anymore, not for a long time.

Certainly NOBODY is going to put anymore 'good money' into this, which is why it 'sold' I'm sure, they found someone to take on the debt, and perhaps offer future 'profit'. It's at the end of the line for good-money, I really don't see any more good-money dumped in.

I think what you have now is a pass 1/2, most likely these new guys will put lipstick on the PIG, and try to sell it to some BILLIONAIRE, ... yeh right.

Anonymous said...

The importance of Trader Joes is it lets people be smug about saving money.

*

Timmy, you obviously don't eat well.

I like to cook, and whenever I'm over the hump in the valley, I stop at Trader Joes, and get all my olive-oil, cheese, flour, nuts, anything that you would want for gourmet Italian or any Spanish, French cooking they got for 1/3 the price of Newport. They have a ton of stuff that Newport doesn't even have for any price.

If you eat frozen SHIT, or package food, or mcDonald ( fast-food ) then trader joe would be no big deal. But you go through a quart of greek-olive oil a week, and a LB of parmesan-reggiano a week, and high quality pasta, ... pine-nuts, .. good meats, ... THEN TJ is the place.

If you graze at Bend Restuarants, or don't know how to cook, then YES TJ is NO big deal. If you love to cook, and I mean really fucking cook, the best mexican, italian, ... Then you would KNOW that TJ is like fucking heaven.

TJ is going to be really good for Bend, finally SHIT-HOLES like Whole-Food, Safeway are going to have real competition, and finally people are going to be able to get some good wine & cheese at a very good price.

p.s. they have some of the best beer around for $4.99/six, and right now Oregon Micros avg $7.99/six or higher, ...

Anonymous said...

From Salon.com:

Want to see "The Great Depression: The Sequel"? Here's a handy three-step do-it-yourself action plan.

1. Continue to ignore growing income inequality and govern the United States for the benefit of the rich at the expense of the many.
2. Continue to whittle away at the safety nets that exist to cushion Americans from economic ill winds.
3. Continue to weaken government oversight of Wall Street.

Or, in other words, combine Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's toothless regulatory "overhaul" (which, absurdly, would actually result in less government oversight of the financial markets than currently exists), with Sen. John McCain's pledge to continue the economic policies of George W. Bush (read his lips: make the tax cuts permanent). Presto: A severe recession gets the opportunity it has long been waiting for and heads south for parts unknown for almost a century.

Read more:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/04/02/depression/index.html

tim said...

>>Timmy, you obviously don't eat well.

I cook from scratch and use tons of olive oil (from Costco, since there was no Trader Joes). Mostly eat fruits, veg, and nuts. Big Italian fan.

I don't see how what you said is any different from what I said. Bend needs cheap. Trader Joes is cheaper than Newport. I've said both of those things. I'm saying Trader Joes is a big deal more than ever because it's "upscale" but cheap, and so no one has to be embarrassed about shopping there.

Did you just feel like arguing today? A little ornery?

Bewert said...

Re: So this will actually get rid of about 1ac of bedrock from Juniper Ridge, right?

Oh man, why did I ever doubt the wisdom of our brilliant City Council?

They'll get that Juniper Ridge project done if they have to shut this City down, those clever buggers!

I hope they sell City Hall, the police buildings, maint. buildings & all the City's other holdings, so we can all bask in the goodness of scrub desert after we're pushed into bankruptcy.

If there's something we're in short supply of, it's desert scrub. It's sad but we are down to our last 50 billion acres of scrub. Look at Christmas Valley... so little scrub left out there that there is a buying frenzy to snap up land for sale out there, before it goes below the psychologically important 98% level.

Yeah, we need precious desert scrub land.

...

Now that's the beginnings of a fine rant.

Bewert said...

Re: Dude, if you saw my nasty old station wagon... Does YOUR car have duct tape holding pieces on? Mine does. I'm one thrifty SOB.

Timmy, you have outdone me for cheap.

Amazing ;)

tim said...

>>Timmy, you have outdone me for cheap.

That's nothing. My old man wired a car battery in when its frame rusted away with coat hangers. No kidding. My mom is loaded and she has 35-year old towels that don't even have fuzz on them anymore. You actually get wetter when you use them to dry off.

Anonymous said...

Did you just feel like arguing today? A little ornery?

*

I gave up my costco 10+ years, ago, I have lived in Italy and Greece and know my olive oil well, the stuff at Costco used to be the same shit as safeway, but in 5gal drums, ...

TJ has about 1/2 dozen internal brands that are all very good.

Onery, no the weather is nice, I have to say that 'food' is probably one subject I'll not give an inch, we can talk beer, wine, ... but cheese, bread, & olive-oil. Those have to be good, BAD cheese, olive oil, and bread sucks; I bake my own bread. Almost all oil sold in the USA is rancid, but if you never tasted the good stuff you don't know.

It's like Mexicans, a wife that can't make a good tortilla or salsa, you have the legal right to shoot her.

Sorry Tim, I love you but to ME Costco fucking sucks, like MARGE says its only about toilet-paper, I used to go there for ten-years ( I'm talking way before the one at HWY 20 ), I used to go to the valley for toilet-paper, and they had a few tools, BUT I NEVER bought FOOD of any kind at COSTCO it was ALL SHIT. Oh yea, I know stuffed salmon, and bullshit.

So your right, mention 'costco' and you'll piss me off. So anyway 10+ years ago they went from free commercial card to $50/yr, well I spent $45/yr on toilet paper ( septic safe ), so I haven't been back to costco since.

Anonymous said...

TJ's is next to Food For Less, if you want cheap, it's there. I only buy at the other stores with coupons. If it's not 30% off? forget it. Newport? Never and I am near there everyday. Besides TP and PT, my other fav to buy there is smoked salmon for 9 bucks in the box. It last's forever and is included in my survivor food. Guess I should just buy a smoker.
I could have had 6 deer in the freezer tonight. The suckers were eating my strawberries that are just starting to put out thieir shoots.
I really don't think it's going to be as bad as some of you think it is. But, I am covering my bases with stashes of impotant thing and a safe for guns and ammo Huh! I just need an alternative electricity mode I have one small generator and may invest in somthing larger. I may be blonde but not dumb. Actually I gray now.

Anonymous said...

most of the salmon at costco is that toxic farmed crap. Looks pretty but that's because it's got red dye to color the meat. Atlantic Salmon has white meat not pink. Most farmed salmon are Atlantic Salmon. Don't buy farmed fish. It's bad for you and bad for the fishing industry.

Anonymous said...

Holy crappski..Did you see the paid ad insert in the BULL today?
Best 20 Years in 8 pages of shit why it's time to buy or "hold"?
We all know why to buy, right?
Whe reasons to hold:
1. You have owned less than 2 years.
2. You job security is uncertain.
3. You don't plan on staying 5 years.
4. You don't have good credit or a decent downpayment. DUH
5. You have an existing home to sell in a neighborhood where prices are dropping precipitously or where the number of foreclosures is spiking.
Well, I guess we know why not to sell in this enviorment, right?
Jeebus, save us.

tim said...

It was a beautiful night. Spent an hour watching my daughter and about 80 or 90 other gals getting ready for softball season at Harmon park. Very pretty. Cold once we lost the sun.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Dude, if you saw my nasty old station wagon... Does YOUR car have duct tape holding pieces on? Mine does. I'm one thrifty SOB.

I have not washed or vac'd my car since the 90's.

Bewert said...

Re: I have not washed or vac'd my car since the 90's.

Dude, that's not thrifty, that's just lazy. Don't you have a wife who will kill you if you don't clean things up a bit?

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Dude, that's not thrifty, that's just lazy. Don't you have a wife who will kill you if you don't clean things up a bit?

I didn't say it was thrifty.

Although people don't ask me for rides anywhere after the first time.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Don't you have a wife who will kill you

Yes.

tim said...

Don't you have a wife who will clean your car?

Anonymous said...

Ahhhh..softball season is a beautiful thing. Time to get down and dirty. Love that game. I was an out of the park or strikeout hitter in my day.
Sounds like someone should clean his car out. Dirty Boy! Your wife need not clean your car. There maybe someone that needs a job that would clean that dirty thing out.

Anonymous said...

You don't need a wife....

You need a husband....

.... a husband who will do things for you......

.... like deliver your baby!

Yay Oprah!!!

Yay Bend!!!!

Coming tomorrow!!!!

Bend, the town with that pregnant husband!!!!!

Anonymous said...

200th comment

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