Saturday, July 19, 2008

"The government doesn't have any money."

Everyone seems to take offense at the "Cali-Banger" moniker these days.

Let's get this straight: Cali-Bangers are more about lifestyle than place of origin, although the two are correlated eerily most of the time.

Cali-Bangers lead a life of excess, of excess in almost all aspects of their life. Their motto, "I can sleep when I'm dead", seems appealing on some levels, squeezing every last drop out of life & such. Seems even admirable, on some level.

But Cali-Banger excess has no limits. It leads to competitive excess, a need to "out do" everyone, in everything. You got a big house, mine's gotta be bigger. You make big money, I gotta make more. You got a hot wife, mine's gotta be hotter & younger, even if it means surgery. And on and on.

What does this have to do with Bend & it's housing? Well, think about the Coasts, in contrast to the Mid-West. The Midwest is priced where it is because large chunks of the Midwest population simply refuse to work 2 jobs, and have their kids working too. They care less about $800 iPhones than Cali-Bangers. They care more about raising their kids than yanking out their wifes C cups & stuffing in double D's. They care more about human decency than Botox.

And this might sound high-falutin', holier-than-thou bullshit, but actually it will lead to the Coasts, and Cali-Bangers especially, falling farther than anywhere else in the Country with respect to housing.

Think about it: Say you're a Midwest family, Dad working, making blah money in some blah town. OK, your house cost $75K. Everythings OK, making ends meet.

Then the shit hits. Dad gets injured, car wreck, or something. What to do?

Well, in that case, Mom can work. She won't make a fortune, but she really doesn't have to. They aren't the vassal's of their possessions. They own little, they owe even less. Mom will get them by, and Dad has friends who will help & they're insured. Their means are modest, but so are their needs.

Enter the Cali-Banger. They own 3 huge SUV's, plus a sports car despite being a family of 3. Their house is too big for them. They simply don't even comprehend that they didn't need all that room, they needed to keep up with the Joneses. Same with the cars. Same with the gadgets. Same with their bed sheets, clothes, jewelry, and everything else.

They are making a TON of money, and they work all the time for it. They own a lot, and they owe far more, because they don't buy anything that appreciates, only depreciation. Boob job & Botox, and fat sucked out here & blown back in there. They only value their lives in terms of what they have IN EXCESS of what their friends have.

What's wrong here?

I'll tell you; There is no slack in the system. There's nothing left. The engine is running at max, and it can't give anymore.

The Cali-Banger is self-destructing. It has mortgaged it's life for more. The Cali-Banger is 150% maxed out. It's not just fueling all the possession-obsessed idiocy it can, it's borrowed ALL IT CAN. There's not a penny that isn't already spent, whether earned today or in the future.

This is why I hate Cali-Bangers. Their morals are repugnant, but so are many whitey-ass hillbillies. So are many blacks. But Cali's are worse.

Cali-Bangers will ultimately self-destruct. They will ultimately be carried out. California will suffer like no where has ever suffered in the ANALS (yeah, I said ANALS) of financial history. It's no coincidence they have suffered the first BANK RUN in our lifetime.

California is self-destructing, and it is The Cali-Banger that is their undoing. The hypocrite that preaches Green living & business from their 8mpg SUV. That is a Cali-Banger. Excess, hypocricy, competition, ego, and consumerism gone completely berzerk. THAT is the Cali-Banger lifestyle.

And one other thing: A Cali-Banger will ALWAYS DEFEND, and will never understand why anyone could possibly want to live any other way.

Look at where home prices are the highest. The Coasts. Why? Cali-Banger lifestyle. 2 1/2 incomes. Work more to spend more. Keep up with the Joneses. Period. Midwest? 1 income. There's slack in the system. There's capacity. There's breathing room, financially & otherwise.

Where has this brought us? Besides kids unable to communicate besides txt msg, people working themselves to death? Nothing. This country has adopted the Cali-Banger lifestyle. What is our ONLY REAL ASSET? Our ability to work. And that resource is 150% tapped out; We are not just spending 105% of what we make, we have mortgaged our future consumption to the hilt. And beyond. We have almost NOTHING left to give. Our only Real Resource, OURSELVES, has been SOLD.

In the 50's, we were poor. Sort of. But our expectations were not huge & we saved. Then it was realized that there was HALF this country that wasn't earning. So women began working. On the Coasts. Largely. Then kids.

And so now, to adopt a Cali-Banger lifestlye of 100% gadgets & Paris Hilton dogs that we see on TV, we've mortgaged our lives beyond the hilt. We can thank The Cali-Banger. California is the Detroit of tomorrow. We are digging a hole so large it will bury us all.

The Cali-Banger has made it NECESSARY that EVERYONE MUST WORK to even afford a house. How many people have had to start working in Bend because the Cali-Banger lifestyle has been so whole-heartedly adopted. More for everyone, right? Sounds great!

We all get gadgets, and little dogs, and cars, and big fake titties, and all sorts of great stuff. We've become slaves to Our Stuff. We are living for The Stuff. We'll die to get more Stuff. We have spent everything we will ever earn to live for today. Our government has likewise done the same.

Concern grows over a fiscal crisis for U.S.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

(07-17) 04:00 PDT Washington - -- As the Bush administration proposes backstopping mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with a $300 billion line of credit and Congress contemplates another economic stimulus, the question is who will bail out the government?

"People seem to think the government has money," said former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker. "The government doesn't have any money."

A rare consensus has developed across the political spectrum that the government's own fiscal affairs are precarious, with an astonishing $53 trillion in long-term liabilities, according to the Government Accountability Office.

To put that number in human terms, the debt has reached $455,000 per U.S. household. As that debt grows, the United States increasingly relies on foreigners, including China and Middle East oil producers, for financing.

"The factors that contributed to our mortgage-based subprime crisis exist with regard to our federal government's finances," said Walker, now head of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a group established to raise alarms about the nation's budget. "The difference is that the magnitude of the federal government's financial situation is at least 25 times greater."

Baby Boomers

This year's presidential election coincides with the first retirements of the 78 million people born between 1946 and 1964. The first of this Baby Boom generation may now collect Social Security. In three years, they will join Medicare, the giant health care program whose finances are commonly described as out of control. Medicare accounts for the bulk of the nation's long-term liabilities.

The presidential candidates, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, have not addressed what the aging of the Baby Boom generation means for the federal government. Their brief forays - Obama's suggestions to raise the payroll tax on high-income earners to buttress Social Security and McCain's description of Social Security's financing as a disgrace - have been met with furious attacks.

Both promise to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on new tax cuts and spending programs. Their health care proposals concentrate more on expanding access than controlling the soaring costs that are driving the federal budget problems and squeezing workers and businesses.

Health care costs

"Health care costs are just amazing," said John Shoven, director of Stanford University's Institute for Economic Policy Research. Total health care costs now consume 16 percent of the economy and are headed quickly toward 30 percent, Shoven said. "Social Security is a big problem, but it's dwarfed by health care. Even the housing problem is dwarfed by health care."

Just the built-in rise in spending on programs for the elderly will cost about 25 percent of workers' payrolls over the next generation, said Richard Jackson, director of the Global Aging Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Robert Greenstein, director of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, agreed that "the nation faces large, persistent, long-term deficits that ultimately risk damage to the economy. We agree that policymakers have to make tough choices soon."

There is consensus, too, on what needs to be done: Cut spending and raise taxes. A bigger problem is how to contain health care costs, but some form of rationing is necessary, experts said.

Only disagreement

The only real disagreement is whether the government's fiscal condition will lead to a financial meltdown, or whether the U.S. economy is strong enough to right itself without a sudden loss of confidence and a flight of foreign capital.

"People on Wall Street think I'm Dr. Doom & Gloom," said Kent Smetters, an economist at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and a former Bush Treasury official. "I believe we could have a financial crisis like we've seen in South America or Asia. It could easily happen, and under current policy will happen in the United States. People say, 'Gee, give me a date.' Obviously, that's impossible, but the longer we wait, the higher the probability. Could it happen in the next decade? Absolutely."

Alice Rivlin, budget chief in the Clinton administration, discounts the possibility.

"We're a much stronger economy than Argentina," Rivlin said. The government "can handle borrowing in the range that would be necessary in a recession," she said. "What we can't handle is the cumulative long-run obligation."

Financial markets are often fixated on the short-run, and the government's finances are far from transparent. Unlike corporations, the government is not required to state its long-term obligations. Crises of confidence, like today's banking problems, strike suddenly when a tipping point is reached and investors decide to flee.

The government's fiscal problems are "like termites in the house," said Jackson. "You don't notice it until foundations are eroded."

"I had such a frustrating meeting the other day on the Hill, where one staffer said, 'We don't have a problem until Wall Street tells us we have a problem,' " said Maya MacGuineas, head of fiscal policy at the nonpartisan New America Foundation. "By the time the financial markets tell us we've gone too far, it will be too late to fix this in any rational way. We are the toad in boiling water, where it's getting hotter and hotter and nobody's really noticing."

Will they still buy?

The key is whether foreigners will continue to buy U.S. debt. They now hold 45 percent of U.S. Treasury securities, and in all about $11.5 trillion of U.S. public and private debt, say UC Berkeley economists Ashok Bardhan and Dwight Jaffee.

Chinese entities, including sovereign wealth funds that invest government savings overseas, own about 10 percent of U.S. Treasury securities. Even a minor change in China's investment policy could have a major effect on the dollar's value and cause "a sizable increase in interest rates," the economists said.

Still, because of a shortage of creditworthy debt instruments worldwide, and the large role of U.S. institutions in global credit markets, foreigners have little choice but to invest in the United States, they said, predicting "slim chances of abrupt change."

Action needed soon

Whoever's right, all agree that the sooner the problem is tackled, the better. "Like almost any financial problem, if you don't work on it, what happens is it compounds with interest," Shoven said. "There are lots of ways to fix it, and what we pick is none of the above."

The staggering U.S. debt

The federal government's finances are in worse shape than its annual budgets show, because the government is not required to state its long-term obligations, which work out be about $455,000 for every household in the nation.

Breaking down the numbers

Current liability:

Social Security: $6.7 trillion

Medicare: $34.1 trillion

Total long-term government liability: $53 trillion

Source: Government Accountability Office, Long-term Fiscal Outlook, Jan. 2008

Where it goes

U.S. debt held by foreigners as of mid-2007:

-- Foreign holdings of U.S. equities: $5 trillion

-- Foreign holdings of U.S. corporate bonds: $3 trillion

-- Foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities: $2 trillion

-- Foreign share of U.S. Treasury securities: 45 percent.


We are a country on the precipice of utter destruction. It is due to The Cali-Banger. The 3 hybrid SUV-driving, fake tan & fake tits, 3 iPhone, celebrity-worshipping, self-obsessed, self-consumed, 4 mortgages, hideous Cali-Banger. And they've come to Bend. And they are remaking it in their image. And everyone seems to think this is fine.

Our one past savior is productivity. The rate at which a static amount of work yields still more output due to efficiency & improved tools we use.

But we have always grown at faster than this rate, because we were on a slow but continuous borrowing slope. We consumed more than we produced by borrowing. The crisis you are seeing today is the result of that lifestyle. So we produced extra purchasing power with 2-3% productivity gains each year, but we also borrowed 3-4% from future earnings, which is essentially negates our future earnings.

You might think that some slimey bastard you know, who's just moved in and brought all his heinous Cali-Banger toys with him is The Ultimate Cali-Banger. No. No, the Ultimate Cali-Banger would need to continuously spend so far beyond their means, it is literally unbelievable. The Ultimate Cali-Banger would actually FIGHT to spend money on the utterly ridiculous. The Ultimate Cali-Banger would be REVILED The World over, and looked upon with complete disgust.

It seems obvious that The Ultimate Cali-Banger is:

The US Government

Our government, AT OUR BEHEST, is pissing away our efforts at a catastrophic rate. We are at war, yet again, and The Spoils? Right, the spoils are basically a Huge Toilet. The Worlds Biggest Outhouse. The Spoils of War are CRAP.

We are The Worlds Colonialist. Duck & Cover, cuz Here We Come. And as just about any Colonialist can tell you, COLONIALISM IS HIDEOUSLY EXPENSIVE. It costs much, and yields next to nothing.

We are worth LESS now than at any time in recent history.

How much oil it'd take to buy the US

At the recent price of $140 a barrel, it turns out to be a mere 400 billion barrels, or just about the combined reserves of Iran and Saudi Arabia.

By Scott Burns

Most of us view the world through dollar glasses. It's perfectly reasonable. Dollars, after all, are the currency we use in daily life. And those lenses, until recently, were distinctly rosy.

When we asked, "How much is that in dollars?," we usually liked the answer.

But it may be time to ask another question: "How much is that in barrels of oil?"

Trust me, others are doing exactly that.

That's when the world starts to look very different. It also looks more than a little scary to the U.S. Today, the net worth of the entire country is equivalent to a mere 400 billion barrels of oil. That's a smidgeon less than the proven reserves of two Middle Eastern countries: Saudi Arabia (264 billion barrels) and Iran (139 billion barrels).

At more than 40 times its 1970 price, oil has outstripped the value created by a full working generation of Americans in a period of dramatic technological change and innovation. During the same time, the value of American business shares, as measured by the S&P 500 Index ($INX), has risen only about 15 times above its 1970 level.

I find that hard to believe. After all, in 1970 the Internet was only an arcane toy for academics. Computer memory was desperately expensive. Intel had just been formed and was introducing the first dynamic random access memory chip. Bill Gates had yet to enter (or drop out of) Harvard and was five years from founding Microsoft. Steve Jobs was years away from creating the Apple II and was decades from launching the iPhone. AT&T was still a single national company, owning all of the regional Bell companies.

No one was yet thinking the U.S. post office was a quaint institution, soon to be treasured for its many buildings that could be converted to trendy condos. Phone calls were expensive. Sears, Roebuck was an important retail stock, not a real-estate play by a hedge fund manager. All surgery was invasive. And it was still believed that stomach ulcers were caused by stress. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin had not yet been conceived, let alone applied to Stanford, where they would create Google.

All of that dynamism and creativity pale against the price of oil. Looking as far back as 1970, America has never been worth less in barrels of oil.

I learned this by measuring the net worth of all U.S. households and nonprofit organizations in barrels of oil. Every three months the Federal Reserve estimates the value of our collective tangible assets, financial assets and liabilities to arrive at our net worth. It's the whole enchilada -- all our cars, our houses, our durable "stuff," bank deposits, stocks, bonds and mutual funds. Everything. Then it subtracts all our mortgages, consumer credit and other debt to arrive at our net worth.

This year's floods in the Midwest are projected to reduce the corn harvest by 700 million bushels. Look for higher prices on meat and soda, and more ethanol imports from Brazil.
At the end of March, for instance, our collective net worth as a nation was $56 trillion, the second straight quarter it had dropped. Divide $56 trillion by the recent $140-a-barrel price of oil and you get 400 billion barrels of oil as the value of America, a fraction of our national value in 1998, 1995 or even 1990.

Either oil is too expensive or America is too cheap.

YearHousehold net worth* Price of oilBarrels to buy America

1970

$3.4 trillion

$3.18

1.1 trillion

1975

$5.1 trillion

$7.67

670.3 billion

1980

$9.5 trillion

$21.59

438.6 billion

1985

$14.2 trillion

$24.09

589.7 billion

1990

$20.3 trillion

$20.03

1.1 trillion

1995

$27.7 trillion

$14.62

1.9 trillion

1998

$37.4 trillion

$11.18

3.3 trillion

2004

$48.1 trillion

$42.00

1.1 trillion

2007

$57.7 trillion

$120.00

481 billion

2008

$56 trillion**

$140.00

400 billion


The last time we worth this little, was 1980. We were practically just hobbled by an oil shock. We were mired in a quagmire of stagflation.

And guess what? Things got really great after that. Well, mostly. Reagan-omics itself almost crippled this area in the 80's. But the country as a whole experienced HUGE wealth gains. Times were good.

So it'll happen again, right? Great time to buy, right?

I don't think so. Back then, we weren't leveraged to nearly the extent we are today. We were still coming into the Great Computer Revolution, and the Chinese were still yet to become the HUGE producers (not consumers) of junk beloved the World over. Oil & commodities entered into massive price declines.

Of these things, we can at best look forward to some unknown technological revolution, which is at best in it's infancy today. And even if we do find it, it's gains have been largely spent by a pattern of government individual borrowing. We are tapped out. That's why it really is different this time.

And it's a Global Phenomenon. Everyone (except for the Chinese & Middle East) is tapped out. In a planet of Cali-Bangers, we are clearly the Head Banger.

Producers will out.

Producers will win, consumers will get crushed, and we are the ultimate self-medicated (on debt) consumer. And I'm sure the Chinese & Iranians are chuckling everyday, KNOWING that capitalism has had it's run. And it's finally going to collapse in the Ultimate Minsky Moment.

And if the US is the Ultimate World Cali-Banger, then Bend is the Penultimate Cali-Banger town. I've never seen a place so consumed with it's own munificence. Celebrating & wallowing in it's own glory. Holding up a mirror to behold it's own beauty.

Fucking pathetic.

Listen, being a Cali-Banger doesn't mean you have to come from Cali, it's just a hell of a correlation. But it has been known that Cali-refugees were literally born in the wrong place, and they knew it. Like a transvestite, they knew they were inhabiting the wrong body right away. Here is a test to compute your Cali-Banger Quotient:

1) Do you own a Denali, Yukon, or Escalade? If yes, and you are a 2 person household, add 10pts. If you have 2 kids, or haul crap in it in a true work-related fuction, add 5 pts.

2) Are you from Southern Cal? Add 10pts. Did you arrive between 2003 and right now? Add another 10pts. Did you BUY anything (home, townhome, doesn't matter) on the Westside? Add yet another 10pts.

3) Did you start up your own business when you got here? Add 10pts.

4) Eaten at Merenda, Deep, or anywhere in The Old Mill in the past month? 10pts.

5) Fake titties anywhere in your family or bloodline? Add 20pts. Realtor? Make it 30pts Botox? 40pts.

6) Bend Athletic Club? 10pts. Juniper Center? Subtract 10pts.

7) Did your last bike cost over $1,500? 10pts. When you roadbike do you where spandex? 10pts.

8) Did you sell a Cali house, move here & pay cash for you first Bend home? 20pts.

9) Own a iPhone or Blackberry? 10pts, I don't care if it's for work. I know an iPhone doesn't work here. Cali-Banger don't care.

10) Are you pro-"Green"? Have you bought Yet Another Automobile, parked a gas-hog, and started driving a Prius or some shit to work? Add 20pts, you fucking idiot.

You pass the Cali-Banger threshold by scoring a 50 on this test. Actually a true Cali-Banger will get a zero on this test. They simply refuse to listen to reality.

Cali-Banger isn't really a person. It's a code for what's wrong with this country. We're all of us turning into these wretched monsters. It's our tolerance that allows it.

We have started to tolerate this horror. We glorify it. We glamorize it. We worship it.

I, for one, have not. I HATE Cali-Bangers. I don't suffer their bullshit in silence. I don't fall for their wounded puppy bullshit. I loathe them. They ARE WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY.

Go back to your shithole & corrupt your own kind. Fuck you & Get Out.

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IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Though builders are in a construction bind, custom homes and remodeling projects may be giving them a much-needed boost.

By Andrew Moore •
The Bulletin


Despite the recent downturn in real estate, some builders of custom homes in Central Oregon say business is good, at least for now.

Ed Busch, owner of PGC Building and Design in Bend, said he’s on track to make more money this year than he did in 2006 and 2007. Busch builds custom homes, including one listed for $1.7 million on Awbrey Butte that’s part of the Tour of Homes this weekend and next, but his company also does remodels, which is one reason he’s doing so well, he said.

“We try to service whatever someone’s needs are, from shelves in the garage to a Tour of Homes house for $1.7 million,” Busch said. “It’s more about if someone has a need, we service it, and it seems to be working.”

Busch recently broke ground on a custom home in Sunriver, has another one in the permit stage and plans to start another project in Spring River in the next three months. Busch said he has enough work to get him through next spring and he keeps hiring workers to help him through.

Still, the downturn has cut into some of his work. Busch said two projects recently fell through after the clients canceled their plans due to financial concerns.

Stricter lending requirements have eaten into people’s ability to borrow money to pay for projects, said Sander Culliton, who builds custom homes and is owner of Pacific Crest Building and Design. But for those with cash, it’s not an issue.

“Most of my clients (are) still building. They aren’t building off of construction loans; they have their own money,” Culliton said. “They have cash in the bank or the stock market.”

Culliton said his company is keeping busy, with a $1.5 million custom home he recently finished on Awbrey Butte, also included on the Tour of Homes, and another he recently started in Tumalo. Culliton also does remodels and, not surprisingly, he said, there has been a slight uptick in the number of remodel jobs he’s taken on, partly because, compared with moving, it’s a more cost-effective choice for some families.

The surprising thing for Culliton was not the real estate slowdown, which he said he knew would come, but the impact the related credit crisis has had on lending.

“As a builder, especially right now, when you try to get money, the lender says, ‘Oh, you’re a builder.’ It’s like a scarlet letter,” Culliton said.

The current economic climate means it can be a challenge for builders to get financing for their own spec homes, or homes built by builders speculating they will sell, Culliton said, so he’s focusing on picking up custom-home projects financed by homeowners. He has one custom home he plans to build in the spring and said he’s negotiating for others.

Approximately 80 percent of builders in the U.S. build fewer than 20 homes a year, said Mike Jensen, director of communications for the Central Oregon Builders Association. In some sense, all builders can be considered builders of custom homes, Jensen said, but they do differ from large-scale developers, also called production builders, who build entire developments.

Jensen said COBA has roughly 300 members. He was unable to say how many of those build custom homes.

This weekend’s Tour of Homes, which is organized by COBA, features a number of new and custom homes built by COBA members. There are 73 homes on this year’s tour, down from 82 last year. Jensen said the number of homes on the tour varies every year and that this year’s dip is not due to the real estate downturn.

Nate Powell of Powell Builders Inc. is one of 50 builders with a home on the tour. His home, in Bend’s Woodside Ranch development, is valued at $1.25 million and was built to a customer’s specifications.

Powell said the ongoing building activity, especially of custom homes, is attributable to homeowners with enough money to weather economic slowdowns and to retirees who have saved to build dream homes.

Powell said his business is good, at least through January, when he’s slated to finish two custom homes on Awbrey Butte and in Crooked River Ranch. After that, he doesn’t know what will materialize, but Powell said he can always go back to work swinging a hammer. He doesn’t expect he’ll have to, but he does think he will build less.

Before the real estate boom, Powell said, he built three homes a year. During the boom, it rose to five homes a year and peaked at eight in 2006.

“It’s getting back to normal,” Powell said. “You hear people saying how bad the economy is and, yes, it has dropped, but it’s more realistic now. We were going through an expansion and boom that I don’t think was normal.”

Bill Boos, a partner in Ridgeline Custom Homes in Bend, said his company has six local homes in various stages of construction — all pre-sold.

“As a builder here in Central Oregon, we are extremely busy,” Boos said.

Ridgeline also has a home on the Tour, a 2,000-square-foot property in NorthWest Crossing. Boos is finding customers are opting for smaller homes with quality touches.

As long as builders respond to what buyers want and work with them, there’s business available, Boos said.

“We never thought in our wildest dreams that we would be doing what we’re doing now,” he said.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

said Mike Jensen, director of communications for the Central Oregon Builders Association. In some sense, all builders can be considered builders of custom homes...

Huh. So ALL builders are custom builders, and Custom builders are thriving....so, ALL BUILDERS ARE THRIVING! Yeah, the slump is OVER!!

Standard COBA bullshit, completely mindless.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

These boneheads are still BUILDING multi-million dollar spec homes & The Bulletin has decided to print a piece declaring The Housing Slump Is Over.

Good call, Costa, you cocksucker.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

At housing’s bottom, many will be priced out
Renters hope values will fall so they can buy — statistics don’t bear that out
The Associated Press
updated 3:07 p.m. PT, Tues., July. 15, 2008

LOS ANGELES - Doug Gylfe still can't afford to buy a home in Torrance, Calif., despite a 23 percent drop in prices. And Congress isn't helping.

That's the dilemma this week for the nation's lawmakers and millions of Americans who are priced out of homeownership: any rescue policy to stem foreclosures could artificially prop up home prices and perpetuate the affordability crisis in many major cities coast to coast.

"In spite of the downturn in the housing market...affordability continues to be the No. 1 housing challenge," said Rachel Drew, research analyst at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies.

In Torrance, the coastal city 16 miles south of Los Angeles where Gylfe lives, the median home price in his Zip code has fallen from a peak of $830,000 two years ago to $636,000. But that's still twice what Gylfe can afford on his salary as a real estate appraiser.

"I've lived here since I was about 10 years old, so I really like it," said Gylfe, 53. "I would stay here in a heartbeat if I could afford something."

Lawmakers, however, appear more focused on the negative economic consequences of falling home prices than the benefits.

Congress is, in a way, facing a real estate Hydra: declining home prices, rising foreclosures, tighter lending standards, higher interest rates, and industry layoffs. Yet while trying protect the economy and honest homeowners who were suckered into bad loans, Congress may cut off one of the serpent's heads, only to see two grow back.

"It's very difficult, from a practical perspective, to implement policy prescriptions that are (metro) focused," said Sam Chandan, chief economist for Reis Inc., a New York-based real estate research firm.

And while most economists agree the imminent threat to the economy and financial system are great, Edward Leamer says, "The folks who sat on the sidelines, they should feel legitimately annoyed that the more speculative folks who bought homes they couldn't afford are going to be bailed out or helped by the federal government."

Leamer, a senior economist at the University of California, added, "And these other folks (who) acted responsibly and didn't get in over their heads and decided they didn't want to buy the home, they're not getting any benefit."

This week, the House and Senate are patching together a bill for President George Bush's signature that would let the Federal Housing Administration insure up to $300 billion in new loans to help struggling homeowners avoid foreclosure, among other initiatives.

Lawmakers also are considering earmarking $3.9 billion in funding to help buy and rehabilitate foreclosed properties, giving first-time buyers a tax credit up to $8,000, and propping up mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The initiatives could help thousand of homeowners refinance their mortgages and avoid foreclosure, and sop up some of the bank-owned properties that are driving down home prices in some neighborhoods.

But by supporting home prices, the government is also short-circuiting a correction in home values that some say is necessary to bring prices closer in line with incomes for most working-class families.

The median price of an existing home peaked two years ago at $230,100. As of May, it had fallen about 9 percent to $208,600, according to the National Association of Realtors.

The lower prices have helped make many real estate markets more affordable, but experts say they're not deep enough in many major metro areas to narrow the affordability gap for policemen, teachers, nurses, restaurant, retail workers, and many other vital service jobs.

"In many metropolitan markets, certainly in California, you can earn 120 percent of the median (income) and still not be able to find anything affordable or that's in a reasonable commute distance," said Barbara Lipman, research director of the Center for Housing Policy in Washington D.C. "There just isn't a sufficient supply of housing for moderate-income people."

A report published by Homes for Working Families earlier this month forecast home prices could hit bottom in less than a year, ending up around 2004 levels.

But "even after the market bottoms, you're still not going to have quite the affordability that you had before the housing bubble took place," said Andres Carbacho-Burgos, an economist with Moody's Economy.com and co-author of the report.

What makes a home affordable or not can vary quite a bit depending on the cost of financing, the size of down payment and other costs of living.

The traditional benchmark is that housing costs shouldn't exceed 28 percent of a household's gross monthly income.

Moody's Economy.com study based its calculations on this threshold and assumed buyers would have a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage for 85 percent of the home's value.

Strikingly, in nearly half of the 40 major metro areas studied, households earning 120 percent of the median income fell short of the affordability benchmark. San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami and Stamford, Conn., were all in the top 10.

Even for families earning well above the median income, affordability in some cities can still be a stretch.

Courtney Lind and her husband have a combined income in the six figures. They've been biding their time to buy in Los Angeles for three years, but they want to buy before their second child is born in December.

The Linds can afford up to a $500,000 home — above the median price for the county — but still short of what homes go for in the Los Angeles neighborhood where they rent.

"We would love to stay here, but anything in our neighborhood is $600,000 or above," said Lind, 33.

In their price range, she said, they can get an 80-year-old fixer-upper, with about 1,000 square feet of space, and a very little yard on a busy street.

Unless buyers like the Linds and Gylfe move to cheaper areas — usually with longer commutes — there's little they can do but hope that market forces are stronger than Congressional intervention.

Gylfe has set his sights on a suburb of Long Beach where home prices have plunged from the $500,000s to about $325,000 — just above his budget. He expects prices might slip into his range in a few months if they continue to decline.

"It's a nice area," Gylfe said, but "it's not nearly as nice as where I've always lived here in South Torrance."

Anonymous said...

You're right the Cali-banger isn't a real person. It's a meaningless stereotype used to make you feel better about not taking responsibility for the conditions in your own community.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Wall Street's Great Deflation
posted by William Greider on 07/14/2008

Phil Gramm, the senator-banker who until recently advised John McCain's campaign, did get it right about a "nation of whiners," but he misidentified the faint-hearted. It's not the people or even the politicians. It is Wall Street--the financial titans and big-money bankers, the most important investors and worldwide creditors who are scared witless by events. These folks are in full-flight panic and screaming for mercy from Washington, Their cries were answered by the massive federal bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, the endangered mortgage companies.

When the monied interests whined, they made themselves heard by dumping the stocks of these two quasi-public private corporations, threatening to collapse the two financial firms like the investor "run" that wiped out Bear Stearns in March. The real distress of the banks and brokerages and major investors is that they cannot unload the rotten mortgage securities packaged by Fannie Mae and banks sold worldwide. Wall Street's preferred solution: dump the bad paper on the rest of us, the unwitting American taxpayers.

The Bush crowd, always so reluctant to support federal aid for mere people, stepped up to the challenge and did as it was told. Treasury Secretary Paulson (ex-Goldman Sachs) and his sidekick, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, announced their bailout plan on Sunday to prevent another disastrous selloff on Monday when markets opened. Like the first-stage rescue of Wall Street's largest investment firms in March, this bold stroke was said to benefit all of us. The whole kingdom of American high finance would tumble down if government failed to act or made the financial guys pay for their own reckless delusions. Instead, dump the losses on the people.

Democrats who imagine they may find some partisan advantage in these events are deeply mistaken. The Democratic party was co-author of the disaster we are experiencing and its leaders fell in line swiftly. House banking chair, Rep. Barney Frank, announced he could have the bailout bill on President Bush's desk next week. No need to confuse citizens by dwelling on the details. Save Wall Street first. Maybe lowbrow citizens won't notice it's their money.

We are witnessing a momentous event--the great deflation of Wall Street--and it is far from over. The crash of IndyMac is just the beginning. More banks will fail, so will many more debtors. The crisis has the potential to transform American politics because, first it destroys a generation of ideological bromides about free markets, and, second, because it makes visible the ugly power realities of our deformed democracy. Democrats and Republicans are bipartisan in this crisis because they have colluded all along over thirty years in creating the unregulated financial system and mammoth mega-banks that produced the phony valuations and deceitful assurances. The federal government protects the most powerful interests from the consequences of their plundering. It prescribes "market justice" for everyone else.

Of course, the federal government has to step up to the crisis, but the crucial question is how government can respond in the broad public interest. Bernanke knows the history of the last great deflation in the 1930s--better known as the Great Depression--and so he is determined to intervene swiftly, as the Federal Reserve failed to do in that earlier crisis. By pumping generous loans and liquidity into the system, the Fed chairman hopes to calm the market fears and reverse the panic. So far, he has failed. I think he will continue to fail because he has not gone far enough.

If Washington wants real results, it has to abandon the wishful posture that is simply helping the private firms get over their fright. The government must instead act decisively to take charge in more convincing ways. That means acknowledging to the general public the depth of the national crisis and the need for more dramatic interventions.

Instead of propping up Fannie Mae or others, the threatened firm should be formally nationalized as a nonprofit federal agency performing valuable services for the housing market. That is the real consequence anyway if the taxpayers have to buy up $300 billion in stock.

The private shareholders "are walking dead men, muerto," Institutional Risk Analytics, a private banking monitor, observed. Make them eat their losses, the sooner the better. The real national concern should be focused on the major creditors who lend to Fannie Mae and other US agencies as well as private financial firms. They include China, Japan and other foreign central banks. Foreign investors hold about 21 percent of the long-term debt paper issued by US government agencies--$376 billion in China, $229 billion in Japan.

It is not in our national interest to burn these nations with heavy losses. On the contrary, we need to sustain their good regard because they can help us recover by bailing out the US economy with more lending. If these foreign creditors turn away and stop their lending now, the US economy is toast and won't soon recover.

Americans should forget about whining; it's too late for that. People need to get angry--really, really angry--and take it out on both parties. What the country needs right now is a few more politicians in Washington with the guts to stand up and tell us the hard truth about out situation. It will be painful to hear. They will be denounced as "whiners." But truth might be our only way out.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

You're right the Cali-banger isn't a real person. It's a meaningless stereotype used to make you feel better about not taking responsibility for the conditions in your own community.

WELCOME CALI-BANGER!

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Actually a true Cali-Banger will get a zero on this test. They simply refuse to listen to reality.

My God I'm tired of being right.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Bargain hunting picks up as Southern California home values fall further
Prices in the six-county region drop 29.3% in June compared with a year earlier. Some areas see sales rise as foreclosed houses are deeply discounted.
By Peter Y. Hong
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

July 17, 2008

Southern California home values keep spiraling down, but sales volume is picking up in the Inland Empire and other areas where bargain hunters are snapping up foreclosed properties at steep discounts.

Home prices plunged 29.3% last month from a year earlier, to a median of $355,000 in six Southern California counties, a real estate information service reported Wednesday. That's about where prices were in 2004.

The number of homes sold in June was down 13.6% from a year earlier. But Riverside County posted an 11.8% jump in sales, thanks to repossessed homes being sold at fire-sale prices, according to DataQuick Information Systems.

Low prices are luring both first-time buyers and full-time real estate investors such as Kurtis and Cindy Squyres of La Quinta.

The couple have been buying two to four houses a month, most of them foreclosures in the Coachella Valley and Inland Empire. They look for the cheapest properties they can find, aiming to buy and quickly resell for a modest profit of perhaps $10,000.

"That's the new market," Kurtis Squyres said of foreclosures, which made up 62% of all home sales in Riverside County last month.

The housing market "would really be in trouble if these bargain hunters weren't so active," DataQuick analyst Andrew LePage said.

Without these buyers, homes would languish even longer on the market, leading to steeper price cuts, LePage said. But he cautioned that the uptick in sales activity probably wouldn't lead to a bump in values in the near-term.

"At some point prices stabilize, but that is six to 12 months later easily," LePage said. "Then you're also looking at years of relative stagnation" before prices actually rise.

Price declines in Los Angeles and Orange counties have been less severe than in the Inland Empire, but they are falling just the same. Home values were down 23.9% in Los Angeles County in June from one year earlier, to a median of $415,000.

In Orange County, the median price in June was $495,000, down 23.3%. The median is the point at which half the homes sell for more and half for less.

By comparison, home values in San Bernardino and Riverside counties dropped more than 30%.

By the time the slump is over, home values throughout the region will be down about the same amount -- probably 40% to 50% below peak levels, predicts Los Angeles economist Christopher Thornberg of Beacon Economics.

Home values in Los Angeles and Orange counties are down roughly 25% from their peaks last year.

"In the places that were harder hit, it's pretty clear we're getting close to the bottom," Thornberg said, but "places like West L.A. -- where people said, 'It can't happen here' -- are starting to stumble now. It's a function of time."

Kurtis Squyres believes that many of the desert towns where he buys houses have hit bottom.

"Houses are already down 50%" in some neighborhoods, he said.

To find the best bargains in a market cluttered with abandoned properties, Squyres said he and his wife spend all day scouring real estate listings, phoning brokers and sending postcards to absentee property owners, asking whether they are interested in selling.

They work out of a room in their rented house; they sold their own home in 2005 when they thought the market was about to crash.

Often, they buy houses that others might consider dumps.

"You've really got to find that oddball and take advantage of it," Kurtis Squyres said.

After buying a property, the couple try to unload it as soon as they can to investors they court on their website, FarBelowMarket.com. Those buyers typically try to flip the homes for a quick profit too.

Foreclosures and short sales -- homes offered for sale at prices below their mortgage amounts -- are increasingly shaping markets even in long-established communities.

In Orange County, for instance, foreclosures and short sales constitute the majority of homes for sale in eight cities, among them Aliso Viejo, Santa Ana, Garden Grove and Anaheim, according to an analysis of listing data by Aliso Viejo real estate broker Steven Thomas.

Overall, foreclosed homes made up 41.1% of the homes sold in June, the first time the percentage has topped 40% in this real estate cycle. In June 2007, foreclosed homes made up just 7.3% of home sales.

When banks foreclose homes, they offer them first for sale at an auction, typically at a price lower than even the amount of the defaulted loan. Last month in California, foreclosed homes went to auction with opening bids set at an average of 31% less than the amount owed on the loan, according to ForeclosureRadar, a seller of default data.

Few of those homes find buyers at the auction. In California, 97% of homes auctioned are bought back by the lender because of the lack of higher bids, ForeclosureRadar said. Those homes are then sold by lenders on the open market, sometimes at prices even lower than the auction price.

The spread of foreclosures beyond the newly built developments in the inland counties is now affecting prices in more affluent areas. Some analysts had predicted the high end of the market might escape substantial price drops. But in June, the sales price of Southern California homes valued in the top one-tenth of the market declined 20% from a year earlier, according to DataQuick.

Richard Green, newly appointed director of USC's Lusk Center for Real Estate, said prices might be nearing the bottom, even in higher-priced areas. Green has been shopping for a house for himself in the Pasadena area.

"Two years ago I never would have bought a house" in the neighborhoods where he is now shopping, he said.

Green estimates the homes he is considering have fallen about 20% in value since then, he said, which is far enough for him.

"I plan to live there until I retire, so if it goes down another 10% while I'm living there I will not care," he said.


Can't teach an old dog new tricks. These Cali-Spankers are STILL FLIPPING HOMES!

Anonymous said...

Let's blame illegal immigrants instead. Or oil companies. Or this blog's favorite RE. Or how about anyone not from European descent? Or how about Bush and Cheney. There are so many targets. I heard the Pope blabbing about materialism too. Too bad he isn't for birth control. Life is so hard, if it weren't for all those other people and their evil ways it would be paradise. I just feel so much sympathy for your pathetic plight when I hear about Cali-banger. Blah blah blah whine moan bitch on...

Anonymous said...

BTW I scored 10 on your test. Bike got me.

Anonymous said...

Homer,

Good rant, I concur the last thread seemed to drift that 'calis' were victims of the bend-boss-hogg racket.

The truth is never was there a better sucker for old desert rats than the cali. The good news is the calis will all leave, as one cannot live off the land in the desert.

I really think that we're being primed for austerity, not seen for years. You need to go back to WWI for your value of USA based on OIL. That would give us a good comparison for the last great depression.

The cali is not to be sympathized. He/She came to Bend to double their bets, and they have been doing so since the late 1970's. Very few made money. I really think that Bend is 'cali-ism' in excess we're #1, we're the new 'nigger', as in 'nigger-rich', e.g. only owning the clothes on your back.

The dollar will continue to slide, which means $280/Barrel will put the USA at 1/2 price of today. The world is voting with its wallet and dumping dollars.

Look at the IRAQ invasion this way, at the very least by controlling their oil, the BUSH-CHENY tribe controls an asset that could purchase the USA outright!

Note, also before one jumps to some huge fucking conclusion, the oil will be gone as know its use in 20-40 years, and the USA has the biggest COAL deposits in the world. Our coal will ten-fold, the rest of the world will be buying coal derivatives in the form of liquid petro from the USA in the next century.

Your cali-ism of excess, is just a 1920's blip. The world moves on, I think the logical assumption would be that if the USA continues to impoverish itself, that you can expect China or some 'super-power' in the future to invade the USA to secure our coal deposits.

Anonymous said...

By Andrew Moore •
The Bulletin

Despite the recent downturn in real estate, some builders of custom homes in Central Oregon say business is good, at least for now.

*

One of the busiest tourist weekends in memory, this story is a plant to tell the visiting tourist that has not yet been reamed, that there has never been a better time to build a custom home in Bend.

A better angle would be, Fuck the custom, just low ball and buy a dream home from a desperate seller in Bends current market.

Note, for those with no memory, the HOLLERN-TRIBE owns the land under the BULL, and thus the ONLY goal of the BULL is keep the perpetual-building-machine humming. There is NO other purpose in life for the BULL or team-brooks.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

For a good laugh, have a look at page 10 of CBN, "Building Industry Favors bend's New SDC Deferment Plan"

I know, surprise, surprise.

It's your standard CBN nightmare. Here's a good quote:

Because of the current collection system, developers are often forced to pay the fee with money borrowed from their bank, which results in additional expenses in the form of interest.

People, we need to find the VIGILANTES that are FORCING BUILDERS TO PAY THESE FEES.

But wait, CBN is ALL OVER the topic of DEFAULTING BUILDERS:

The point has been raised that a developer may decide to bail out of the project before it's completed, and not pay the fees at all.

The city is considering two reservations that give it a safety net in case that happens, or if a developer decides it can't complete the project or defaults on the loan.

First, the city would begin charging 12 percent interest per month after the nine month deferment period. Second, the bank would ultimately have to pay the city back the total SDC fee due.


OK, so our first recourse is to charge 12% per MONTH, which compunded over 1 year comes to something like 300% interest per annum.

We can only assume that either this is a typo, or the City of Bend has decided to break all usury laws. I'll assume the first, and assume it is really 12%/yr.

Second, the onus of repayment falls on the BANK if the builder blows up.

Huh. So in this ass-fucking trifecta, ONLY THE CITY & THE BANK get humped in case of default, the builder WALKS AWAY SCOTT FREE.

Yes, I can see how just about everyone is in favor of LENDING TAXPAYER MONEY to BUILDERS in the WORST HOUSING SLUMP IN GENERATIONS to BUILD MORE HOMES, so THAT UPON DEFAULT & AFTER ALL THE BANKS MONEY HAS BEEN PAID IN AN HOURLY BOONDOGGLE TO THE DEVELOPER, that we then have to SUE A BANK to get our money, AS THE BUILDER SCRAPED TOGETHER THEIR FINAL $10 GRAND & FLEW TO TAHITI.

Great plan. Socialize Risk, Privatize Reward. It's Perfect, and Every Cali-Banger will support it. WHICH MEANS OUR CITY COUNCIL WILL PASS IT OVERWHELMINGLY.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

BTW I scored 10 on your test. Bike got me.

Me too. Fucking Merenda.

I paid in disgust however, and had to bathe afterwards. More fake titties than you could shake a stick at.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Well, actually I go to the Juniper Ctr, so maybe I'm back to 0...

Anonymous said...

Grover Norquist must be chortling.

Anonymous said...

You're right the Cali-banger isn't a real person. It's a meaningless stereotype used to make you feel better about not taking responsibility for the conditions in your own community.

*

The cali is a very real person. They can be seen speeding through Bend round-abouts daily. They can be seen by their car, they can be seen by their dress.

Yes, their is nobody responsible in Bend, but you must understand that in the current HOLLERN manufacture PR/MARKETING boom of 1998+ anybody at city-hall testifying against the boom was told to shut the fuck up, and of course like all GREAT ponzi schemes everyone was allowed to make some money, even old time 'bend-environs' like HBM of the SORE were on the band-wagon, seeing that everyone's old mill-shack was going to make them a millionaire, everyone ASSUMED they would become a permanent member of the HOLLERN-TRIBE.

A cali is a fucking disease, and is a real person. HOMER trys to call the whole USA cali-ism, but cali is really about california, and what it does to people, and the kind of people who leave the east-coast and come to cali, and then migrate north.

Florida has its own breed, and in general the east-coast are all mother fuckers, classic americans, in the sense of complete fucking dog-eat-dog americanism.

I concur with homee that mid-west is the salt of the earth, but that don't mean they'll inherit the earth, history shows the meanest junk-yard always wins. The bible is full of fucking shit, about the meek inheriting anything.

The law of the jungle is the jungle-law. The USA will continue to rape and pillage the world,, and the citizens of the USA will continue to rape and pillage one another.

Cali-ism, or its particular type of consumerism, is of course non-sustainable. Our current post 1998 cycle, where they could sell the $1M, and come to Bend and buy 1/2M, and live off the other 1/2M is OVER. No more perpetual money machine in Bend. The cali lifestyle and visible wealth will go the way of the do-do, just like visible wealth post-depression.

I too concur with the '10' on homee's scale, I too bought a carbon-bike this spring on sale for $1600, thus I'm up there, but I WILL NOT WEAR THE BLACK SPANDEX. I did not buy a titanium, and I waited for CARBON to come below $2k. I'm still riding my 25 year old mtn-bike ( steel ), and this is the first road-bike I bought in 20+ years.

There is NOTHING one can do in Oregon, things just play out. It's typical YOUNG idealism to assume that one can change the machine, e.g. the HOLLERN perpetual-development-machine.

For every Abernethy(mayor), or Bend Politician, there are a 1,000 folks in Bend that will replace them in order to suck HOLLERN cock and become millionaires, via the access presented. The system of Oregon is self-corrupting and never changing. There is NOTHING a mother can do.

As someone who spent 20+ years in SALEM (lobbying) I can tell you that OREGON is ONLY about pigs feeding at the trough, the ONLY thing that will ever change OREGON, is an empty trough.

"Taking responsibility" - its a meaningless phrase, ALL of the world operates on "take care of your tribe, and fuck the rest of the world", this is the true story of human survival.

Anonymous said...

Despite the recent downturn in real estate, some builders of custom homes in Central Oregon say business is good, at least for now.

*

This is like the BLEDSOE home being built at highlands, across from the new elementary up on Skyline.

I know of a few dozen of these $20M+ homes, the trouble is they start 1-2 years ago, and most are 3 year homes, and most of these builders have NO FUCKING idea of what they're going to do when these jobs are done.

Almost all the +$1M builders I know, SOLD their mcMansion last year at break, and bough the cheapest home they could find in BEND, and are riding the storm lean&mean.

Now the above paragraph, is what the smart builders that have been here for awhile.

Regarding 'spandex' and road bikes. I know dozens & dozens of people, who bought here post 1998, with the idea that their $2M was going to $10M, and that the BEND purchase was going to be their retirement plan. Most of these people are now 50% under-water, and they really believe it will come back in two years for the 'break-even'.

I have written for almost two years here now that 2012 will be bottom, but it will be post WWIII before the BEND 2004 insanity comes back, OREGON runs on 20 year cycles, always has always will.

The PAIN for these retirement people. The builders I know largely owned their mcMansions, and of course since they built them they could afford to DUMP them, which is why the SOLD, I would even leap to suggest that many of the homes that have sold in the prior years were such.

There are three I see,

1.) Typical cali, nothing down on Shevlin $750k crap-shack, this bitch is fucked

2.) Cali stock option lucky-ducky, came here post 1998, bought mcMansion, paid cash, now other cash is gone, and they're afraid to sell as they came to Bend with $5M, and now would leave with $500k, we call that the BEND ream.

3.) The 'builder' got the land for free, on the development subdivide, built for whole-sale, basically got the home for 1/2 market. Sold the home for cost last year, I have seen lots of this.

In the next two years we're going to see #1 yell & scream, then in TWO years we're going to see the nouveau riche committ suicide (#2), and of course #3 is sitting tight, sort of like our MARGE, they know the drill. If it goes on for more than 2-5 years of no work, then they'll move on. The current home they're sitting on is always the kind I have advised no more than 4X of the BEND yearly income, which today would be about $240k for a home, and dropping by the hour.

Anonymous said...

Cali-Banger excess has no limits. It leads to competitive excess, a need to "out do" everyone, in everything. You got a big house, mine's gotta be bigger. You make big money, I gotta make more. You got a hot wife, mine's gotta be hotter & younger, even if it means surgery. And on and on.

I knew a guy who had the saying "He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins" on his license plate. He was a native Oregonian. The attitude you describe is an AMERICAN one, not just a California one.

Anonymous said...

Because of the current collection system, developers are often forced to pay the fee with money borrowed from their bank, which results in additional expenses in the form of interest.

*

I love this it makes me cry. It used to be that as a builder, you bought the land, paid the fee's, paid for the architect, and then went to the bank. That way the bank knew you had some skin.

This talks mostly about Bend's current stupid-fucking builder's, they don't even want to risk their own cash on fee's, they want to borrow, the bank will not loan, so the city-of-bend taxpayer becomes the bank.

Of course the tax-payer will never know, cuz brooks stands to profit the most, and brooks controls the BULL.

Smart builders right now are doing 3 year customs for rich morons like bledsoe with more money than brains, and then when those jobs are done lying low.

Only complete fucking idiots would build today.

Let's be honest here, the demand is NOT from the builder, nobody is taking out permits ( fee's ), the building has stopped, the city wants the building to continue, and thus the city is the one offering the permits to be deferred forever. The city over-built its fancy new buildings in the past ten years, and has too much staff, they're try to manufacture biz, by reducing the price to negative.

WE know in real biz, that giving away product/service never works, unless your the internet.

Austerity is what Bend needs, but electorate wants the bubble to continue, and thus has not voted the incumbents out, and the politicians are doing what they know to bring back 2004. Which is to make it easy and cheap to build.

Bend could with the right marketing be the K-MART Aspen of the world, trouble is right now the few good jobs in town are BLEDSOE type projects, if the city continues on the KMART approach, the 'exceptional-ism' of BEND will be GONE!

It's tough, everyone was told next year, now its just a little time to the light in the tunnel. ...

Personally I think only a few stupid fucking builders will take the defer on single-family, HOLLERN has tons of apartments coming in this year and next all over BEND. I think this is where the deferral is really being targetted, HOLLERN doesn't want to expend real cash, in a time where there is NO real cash.

Remember in the last cycle 1983, HOLLERN almost lost everything, cuz he was land-rich, and cash-poor, today he's house-rich, and cash-poor.

Expect city-hall to do all they can to keep HOLLERN ( BULL ) alive, on life support.

Once all these apartments come on line in 2009, they expect cash-flow, they theory is just wait, but then BEND will become the high-density shit-hole of OREGON, but will be great!

Anonymous said...

He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins" on his license plate.

*

That means nothing, the guy could have a truck, a gun, and a dog.

A cali doesn't own 'toys', that would be FUN, a CALI only exists to SHOW HIS TOYS, NOT USE them, a native Oregonian RED-NECK, uses his toys.

A cali wouldn't even consider a truck or a gun to be a toy.

Our cali's go to salons in Bend to have their anus cleansed, or sit at Merenda to be seen, near their prius holding their iPhone.

The red-neck with the 'toy-sticker', can be seen on back desert roads in Oregon. Out riding dirt-bikes, and drinking cheap beer.

The old red-neck toy lifestyle is cheap, you work on your own truck, you ride a ten year old dirt-bike that you maintain. You re-load your own ammo for your gun, your re-load equipment is your 'toys'.

I don't think a cali would even consider his/her possessions as toys, a cali doesn't live for FUN, a cali lives for competition.

HOMER quite often trys to show the world relative to bend, our little bend is desert-island. A place where wandering cali's end up in search of paradise.

I have NEVER seen a cali with a bumper-sticker that says "he with the most toys wins', that is a pure red-neck philosophy, cheap boats, cheap trucks, cheap bikes, and cheap beer, living life, of course even that life, depends on burning fossil fuel. A lifestyle that very well also go the way with the do-do.

Anonymous said...

The Midwest is priced where it is because large chunks of the Midwest population simply refuse to work 2 jobs, and have their kids working too.

Do you have any empirical evidence for that statement, or is it just anecdotal, or perhaps based on nostalgic memories of your childhood? When I was growing up on the East Coast in the 1950s it was the norm for only one parent (typically the father) to work. But of course 40 or 50 years ago it was possible for a working-class family to enjoy a decent standard of living -- own a home, get a new car every three or four years, take a two-week vacation every year -- on one income. That was in what I call the pre-RepubliCONomics era.

Of course we also have to take into consideration the fact that back in those days working-class families were content with small (by today's standards) houses, only one car, only one TV, no computer, no Wiis or Xboxes, no iPods, no cell phones ... gosh, how did we SURVIVE???

Anonymous said...

That means nothing, the guy could have a truck, a gun, and a dog.

The guy I'm talking about had a LOT more than that. He had totally bought into the doctrine that having a shitload of STUFF makes you a "winner."

And, as I said, he was a native Oregonian. The virus of consumerism is highly contagious and it has spread all over the country. No state or town is immune.

tim said...

>>The Midwest is priced where it is because large chunks of the Midwest population simply refuse to work 2 jobs, and have their kids working too.

As a midwesterner, I think you have cause & effect backwards here.

I think the reason a lot of the moms still stay home there is BECAUSE the housing prices are so low. The buddies I have back there don't make a lot of money, but they bought their $80k houses when they were 25 or 30.

In the last 10 years, though, a lot of the jobs have gone from Ohio (except maybe in Columbus, which is growing relative to Cleveland) and those people have lost their houses even with their $400 mortgages. A lot of them have moved to the Carolinas, especially to Charlotte, which has had ever-increasing jobs.

And yet even Charlotte may fall apart now. The companies that drive downtown Charlotte? Wachovia and Bank of America.

In short, there is no safe place any more. The midwest is cheap, but depressing as hell. But I think it'll be fine in 20 years.

The advantage of Ohio in general over Bend is people never believed the dumb-ass golden housing shit that Bendites believed.

Anonymous said...

"Look at where home prices are the highest. The Coasts. Why? Cali-Banger lifestyle."

Nope. Simple supply and demand. More people want to live there. Why? Because that's where the jobs and opportunities are. The heartland started emptying out when we transitioned from an agricultural to an industrial economy, and now that we're transitioning to a service economy the trend is even more pronounced.

tim said...

>>When I was growing up on the East Coast in the 1950s it was the norm for only one parent (typically the father) to work.

Visit Massillon Ohio, if you dare. Still a lot of families with one car and the mother staying home.

And yet they don't seem any happier to me than anyone else.

80% of them seem fat.

Anonymous said...

I scored only a 20 on the Cali-Banger Test so I guess Homer will allow me to stay here.

tim said...

I scored a 10. If occasional use of Juniper counts (rather than membership), I'm at 0. That's like PERFECT.

I always knew I was the opposite of a Californian.

Anonymous said...

I've never seen a place so consumed with it's own munificence. Celebrating & wallowing in it's own glory. Holding up a mirror to behold it's own beauty.

Damn you got THAT right. As far as that goes, Oregonians in general are the same way. I've never seen a place where people love to pat themselves on the back so much and continually tell each other (and anybody else who will listen) how incomparably and uniquely glorious and beautiful and wonderful their state is. As if this was the only state that has mountains and trees and lakes and rivers and a coastline.

They even brag about their so-called state higher education system, which is (to be charitable) second-rate at best.

It gets a little nauseating after a while, truthfully.

tim said...

>>Damn you got THAT right.

Well, wrong "its" 3 times in a row.

tim said...

Before Boeing's corporate headquarters left, I would have given Washington State the title of "most self-absorbed." I don't see any problem with Oregon having the title now.

Anonymous said...

1) Do you own a Denali, Yukon, or Escalade? If yes, and you are a 2 person household, add 10pts. If you have 2 kids, or haul crap in it in a true work-related fuction, add 5 pts.

*****

even if you have two kids you still add 10 pts. because a minivan would be far better than an SUV for you in every way. only if you tow something very heavy quite often does an SUV only add 5 pts.

Anonymous said...

Anybody read John Costa's Weekly Drivel this morning? His basic thesis is that times are bad, but they'll get better eventually. (Gosh that is PROFOUND, John.)

He talks about the real estate bubble (without ever using the B-word, of course) and says: "In the rush that was too good to be true, someone camouflaged the fundamentals."

Which is just a little ironic, don'tcha think, considering that Costa and his rag were among the most enthusiastic camouflagers.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

More people want to live there. Why?

Dude, only a Cali-Spunker would say that.

Have you EVER been to the Midwest for any period of time? Be honest, and the answer is probably NO. Or if you have, it was against your will, and you had a strong predisposition to HATE the Midwest.

I have lived there & I have lived on both Coasts (why am I capitalizing "Coasts"?). And I like The West the most.

But generalizing MY OWN liking this place to "MORE PEOPLE WANT TO LIVE HERE" is standard self-absorbed myopia.

I MAY WELL move back to the Midwest if & when the DOWNSIDE of Coastal living exceeds IT'S benefits. Yeah, I said IT'S.

Anonymous said...

Though builders are in a construction bind, custom homes and remodeling projects may be giving them a much-needed boost.

By Andrew Moore •
The Bulletin

*****

contrast today's Oregonian:

Portland-area builder implodes
Ryan Olsen lost it all in the housing meltdown

"two years into a crushing collapse that has not yet ended."

"For the industry as a whole, the party was over. A historic correction would soon sweep the U.S. housing market with a vengeance"

"When a market turns, Grant said, "It goes from 70 miles an hour to zero in one second."

etc.

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/121643431498170.xml&coll=7

Bewert said...

Re: And yet even Charlotte may fall apart now. The companies that drive downtown Charlotte? Wachovia and Bank of America.

In short, there is no safe place any more. The midwest is cheap, but depressing as hell. But I think it'll be fine in 20 years.

...

Chattanooga, TN seems to be doing pretty good. They redeveloped their downtowm riverfront in a true public/private partnership (not the inbred BS of Juniper Ridge fiasco) and just scored a $1B investment by VW for a new auto production plant. Not a bad score for a 175,000 population small city.

Of course, they were smart enough to actually create an industrial park out of the 1550 acres they had to work with. Unlike our dumbasses, who are intent on spending a couple billion bucks tranplanting Celebration, FL onto the scrub juniper and sagebrush of JR.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Here's the full text of that Oregonian piece:

Portland-area builder implodes

Ryan Olsen lost it all in the housing meltdown
Sunday, July 20, 2008
ROBIN FRANZEN
The Oregonian Staff

His newly built Happy Valley homes lit up like a movie set, Ryan Olsen was enjoying one of the brightest nights of his life.

Hundreds of guests -- bankers, real estate brokers and local leaders -- strolled the porches and the grounds as his two little girls twirled on a dance floor under the stars.

The August 2006 party at Olsen's boutique 12-lot subdivision -- named Tarynhurst, to evoke Portland's prestigious Laurelhurst neighborhood -- set him back $100,000.

For years, the high school dropout from Gresham worked to distinguish himself by building "artisan" homes with period exteriors and modern floor plans in North and eastside Portland, doing lots of dirty work himself. Now lavishly bankrolled at age 29, he gambled that buyers would flock to fully fashioned Ryan Olsen suburban neighborhoods.

He had every reason to be confident. As a teen, he lived briefly on the streets of Los Angeles, trying to figure out what to do with his life. Using his smarts and his drive, he learned to build houses and created a company. He won his family's admiration.

The day after the party, Olsen sold the model home for $860,000. But then, the good times simply ended.

"We didn't sell another home for three months, anywhere," Olsen said recently, two years into a crushing collapse that has not yet ended.

For the industry as a whole, the party was over. A historic correction would soon sweep the U.S. housing market with a vengeance, catching Olsen in its blast. Millions of people had bought houses on terms they couldn't really afford, aided by lax and sometimes fraudulent lending practices. Now, as lenders belatedly tightened loan standards and housing values stalled, would-be buyers told Olsen they couldn't buy because they couldn't sell the houses they already owned.

In the Portland area, Olsen was one of the first to fall, bringing others down with him. Subcontractors and suppliers filed lawsuits alleging nonpayment; he pushed some customers to the brink of foreclosure. He maxed out his mom's credit cards.

In January, he lost his contractor's license because of unpaid debts.

In hindsight, observers say he hit that low because his business naivete was no match for his brash ambition.

"Young guys got burned the worst," said Eugene Grant, a lawyer and former Happy Valley mayor, who thought Olsen's homes were some of the nicest designs to emerge during his city's boom. "If you haven't lived through the rough times as developers, you don't have a healthy caution for the real estate cycle."

When a market turns, Grant said, "It goes from 70 miles an hour to zero in one second."

At month's end, Olsen's own home is scheduled to go to auction. He doesn't know where he'll land when the bidding is over.

"I was a millionaire by 28, and by 31, I'm as broke as when I was homeless," said Olsen, still wearing a polo shirt bearing his defunct company's logo.

"I didn't realize there was this thing called the market that was bigger than me. Bigger than Wall Street."

Building a dream

Olsen wasn't one of Oregon's big-boy builders, but he had a niche -- the modern upscale Craftsman. Built-in bookcases and wainscoting. Box-beam ceilings.

And he had an upscale attitude: "For Sale" signs costing $1,000 apiece because, as an advertising piece for The Oregonian quoted Olsen saying in 2006, "he didn't want something ordinary."

He chose the industry because he figured he could make a lot of money -- without a college degree. "It was something where I could come in with nothing," he said.

As a troubled but ambitious 17-year-old, he fled briefly to the streets of Los Angeles. He returned to Portland within a year, strapped a ladder atop a Honda Civic and declared himself a housepainter. With his father long dead, he considered himself the family patriarch.

"I figured I'd fake it till I made it," Olsen said.

His mother was skeptical and told her son so. But by then Gayle Tomlin had learned to speak her piece, then let her strong-willed son do his own thing. "Ryan beats to a different drummer," she said. He surprised her by turning beater houses into pretty homes.

Paint-slapping got old fast, but he fell in love with the character of older homes. Within a couple of years Olsen was buying old houses and teaching himself the remodeling craft. He pored over code books.

By age 26, he knew what he really wanted -- to design and build "new-old" houses himself, with period exteriors yet roomier floor plans and ample closet space.

Building one house at a time in North and Northeast Portland by 2002, Olsen cultivated a following. Buyers snapped up his new-old houses, often before they were done. He was proud, thinking how good it would feel to drive his grandchildren past them someday.

But land was getting harder to find, so in 2005 he leapt for subdivisions in Beaverton and the 'burbs. In early 2006, he broke ground in Happy Valley, with considerably steeper price tags topping out at $860,000. He also delved into his third subdivision, in an affluent Gresham neighborhood near the Persimmon Golf Course.

Gresham, his hometown, was where he first hung out with builders as an inquisitive and sometimes annoying 10-year-old collecting pop cans off construction sites for the deposit money and asking a lot of "why-this, how-come-that" questions.

They would answer his first three questions, Olsen said, grinning at the memory, "and then they'd say 'Hey kid, I've got a job to do.' "

His ambition pushed him to ever greater heights. Between 2003 and 2006, Ryan Olsen Development's revenue grew 736 percent, according to a 2007 ranking by an industry magazine. In August 2006, the same month as the Tarynhurst party, he boasted that he hoped to build 100 houses in 2007.

"No one else was building something timeless," Olsen recalled. "I came in thinking people would love them."

"Grasping at straws"

As the housing market started to cool everywhere, however, Olsen's sales were sluggish in Beaverton and nonexistent in Happy Valley. Monthly interest payments on construction loans and business overhead were killing him, he said, at the same time lenders were offering him even more money.

Olsen was worried. "I could see rumblings in the rest of the housing market."

He tried to drum up buyers with incentives: six months without payment, then "flex funds," which the buyer could apply to closing costs, upgrades, whatever. Only one house sold.

He toyed with giving away a BMW. Instead, in early 2007, he dramatically dropped prices by $50,000 to $100,000, hoping to generate some action. Instead: "Nothing," he said. "We were grasping at straws."

He dumped 70 lots in Hood River and Mount Scott but kept building in Gresham, he said, because he couldn't sell the lots. By then he owed millions and was at wit's end.

In a desperate bid to stay afloat and keep his workers employed, he maxed out his credit cards, refinanced his house, burned through his late brother's life insurance money.

"I felt like Luke Skywalker going through the asteroid field," he said.

A quick reprieve gave him hope: Between March and May he sold two more homes in Happy Valley. His confidence revived, he started work on two custom houses in Portland.

Those custom projects slid into disarray, however, as Olsen's financial troubles deepened and housing market worsened. The man who once attracted buyers with no trouble would find no more customers.

At night, he woke up bathed in sweat, distraught that he'd failed people who trusted him, ruined his finances, damaged his reputation. "I'm thinking for the first time in my life I can't meet my moral obligations," he said. "I'm a smart guy -- why can't I find a way out of this?"

Tumbling down

Today, Olsen's professional life is ripped down to the studs.

At the end of last year, he shuttered his office. In January, the state revoked his contractor's license. Today he faces a hefty $113,000 in judgments from the Oregon Construction Contractors Board, based on complaints already investigated; several more are pending. All of his partly built houses and vacant lots in Happy Valley and Gresham are in foreclosure.

He considers the possibility that he was a "passionate, crazy fool," but holds tight to the idea that dreamers like him are ruled by passion. He also knows that some people think he's a jerk or worse.

He sees his mistakes: Houses that were too expensive for their locations; houses with too many stairs in Gresham's older demographic; hanging on too long to failing projects.

In the flush days, he even refused to sell to people he didn't think loved his houses enough -- something he now knows sounds arrogant.

Still, he wonders, "What if?"

"If I hadn't done Gresham and stayed in Northeast doing my houses, everything would have worked out," he said.

Legend Homes founder David Oringdulph, whom Olsen considers a mentor, says Olsen took a gigantic leap into a new market without adequate preparation. In his view, Olsen's homes lacked interior luxuries and surprises that high-end buyers expect -- the wow factor.

"Ryan is a smart guy and could make a comeback," said Oringdulph, whose own company has now filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. "Unfortunately, Ryan made a lot of mistakes at the same time."

A merciless market didn't help.

"Capitalism (has) a Darwinian aspect, where through booms and busts, people making the product that is the least attractive, or is not quite meeting the market, or covering costs, tend to be weeded out," said Gerard Mildner, director of the Center for Real Estate at Portland State University.

Olsen, his mother said, learns things the hard way -- always has -- but has more perseverance than anyone she's ever known. "This is a setback for him, but this is not the end," she said, and it's made him realize that work success isn't everything. "I know Ryan is going to make good to all the people who believed in him."

Olsen, flipping through a scrapbook of his company's rise in his 1926 Northeast Portland bungalow, said paying back what he owes is priority one -- if he can find a way back into the biz. To get his license back, he'll have pay every last penny of the state judgment against him. And before long, he will once again have to figure out where he's living.

At month's end, the place he's called home for the past two years will be sold in foreclosure. He knows bankruptcy probably isn't far away.

He hangs out with his girls at Jamison Park -- they are what keeps him going -- and dreams about a comeback.

"I'm a smarter man, and a better guy," he said. "And I'm not quitting."

Anonymous said...

In short, there is no safe place any more. The midwest is cheap, but depressing as hell. But I think it'll be fine in 20 years.


*

Life is what you make of it, there is no boring or depressing place. Hell get an RV sun-bird mexico in the winter, and canada in the summer, nobody has to be tied to a shit-hole anywhere.

Cheap places, you cunts make me sick. In Italy a home has always cost $1M, kids wait until 40 to get married, and then wait for their parents to die to get their own home. Nobody can afford a home, and this is why all have one car perhaps per house-hold.

The USA was lucky for awhile, cheap homes, and everyone had a chicken in every pot whether he/she worked or not.

Not anymore, the USA is quickly going to be like everywhere else, where most folks just barely exist.

Anonymous said...

But generalizing MY OWN liking this place to "MORE PEOPLE WANT TO LIVE HERE" is standard self-absorbed myopia.

*

I agree so fucking what. That is like, a land shortage in Eastern Oregon.

Who cares if someone in Zimbabwe wants to live in Bend, Aspen, Kauhi, or Florida, ...

It's all fucking irrelevant. If you have money you live where you want, if you have no money you talk shit.

The constant rhetoric from the BULL&SORE, and the lemmings that have bought party line is that everyone wants to move to Bend.

Sure parasites want to come to Bend, as we all know just being here your going to get rich!

The word will get out, todays BULL makes it sound like the BUBBLE is still on in Bend, in PDX the ZERO ( oregonian is called the big-zero ) says the Bubble is over.

Eventually even the stupid will know that Bend is no longer an easy place to get rich, then and only then will the population drop, and exodus explode, and new stupid calis with HELOC's disappear.

PDX is diversified, BEND is a one horse company town with one product to sell lifestyle/livability explicit easy-riches implicit.

Bend's poor will explode, and rich will become extinct. Then and only then will the emperor of Bend be seen having no clothes.

Free concerts every other day at the parks? Who pays? The vendors. How long will they keep dumping good money? When the music ends, the events end, there will be nobody here to say things like "Everybody wants to be in Bend".

LavaBear said...

Bay Area home prices plunge 27% in last year.

Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, July 18, 2008

(07-17) 12:20 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Double-digit drops in median home prices hit every Bay Area county in June, even the ones that had seemed Teflon-coated.

Anonymous said...

The Coasts. Why? Cali-Banger lifestyle."

Nope. Simple supply and demand. More people want to live there. Why? Because that's where the jobs and opportunities are.

*

Yup, in the 1960's during the vietnam war, they put all the factory's in SO-CAL, before that there was NOBODY in SO-CAL, by the 1970's Orange-County had ran out of land, and folks started building in Riverside....

I guess the real question is, why did the loving government give all the contracts to coastal so-cal contractors?


Look at Seattle, same thing Boeing, all military up, until the collapse of vietnam.

The okie's from the depression came to so-call in the 1930's cuz it was cheap.

Oregon up until the 1970's was dirt-cheap, and just like Appalachia in terms of incest.

Coastal lifestyle is largely a post-hippy cali mythology, tomorrows aging will never be able to afford the option.

The retirees were SOLD a dream, just like HOLLERN sold our retirees the DREAM.

ALL the +$10M rich I know came to Bend, cuz they couldn't afford Santa-Barbara, ... They believed the mythology that Bend would be the next Aspen and they were getting a bargain.

I really think that coastal lifestyle living will go with easy money, recall that much of the RE boom artificial wealth has been post 1960's on the west-coast, now that RE prices are 10X of income its over.

Then you got jap factorys going where folks are young, and land is cheap like Ohio.

Back in the 1950's in LA, land was cheap, and average age was young, things change. Bend is going to be soon all a bunch of old dead and dying broke people. How in the fuck are the working young going to be pay the bill? They will not they'll leave.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Feds can't fix Fannie and Freddie

The mortgage giants aren't short of cash. They're stuck with bad loans that aren't going away. Also: Short sellers didn't bring down the lenders -- the lenders did it themselves.

By Bill Fleckenstein

As the Treasury prepares to ride to the rescue of Fannie and Freddie, it's worth noting one little detail: That so-called plan is in reality just a concept.

Fannie Mae (FNM, news, msgs) and Freddie Mac (FRE, news, msgs) do not have a liquidity problem that can be solved by the Federal Reserve or even by an injection of Treasury capital. It's a solvency issue. Short-term cash isn't the real problem. Over time, the mortgage giants' liabilities are quite likely to swamp their assets. Thus their assets are contingent, but their debts are forever.

Further, if the Treasury is the only entity left willing to buy shares to shore up Fannie and Freddie, what will happen to other troubled financial institutions? Between now and the year's end, more mortgages will percolate through those institutions' balance sheets, creating losses that will force them to seek capital as well.

As for access to the Fed's discount window, even if Fannie and Freddie use it, that won't change much. Lehman Bros. (LEH, news, msgs) has had access to the discount window, and that has done Lehman little good. Nor has it healed Washington Mutual (WM, news, msgs), Bank of America (BAC, news, msgs), Citigroup (C, news, msgs), etc.
Standing single file . . . and in fear
The rapidly growing disaster the country faces, in addition to the financial one, is a recession that's worsening -- a reality depicted in widespread images of depositors lined up at IndyMac (IDMC, news, msgs) bank. (A friend of mine known as Mr. Mortgage has also noted lines at multiple locations of Washington Mutual.) I suspect that as this process moves forward, many regional banks will experience modest runs, because fear becomes contagious at some point. And fear eventually leads to panic.

This is all part of the next-time-down thesis that took forever to arrive, due to monkeying with the financial system by Wall Street and the government. But it is finally here.

As the process plays out, it will further hamper people's ability to make mortgage payments. That will impair mortgage assets, with a feedback effect on housing prices. Of course, our currency will continue to be undermined by what the Fed and the government want to do. You can quickly see how intertwined the real-estate market, stock market, economy and currency are.

As far as the stock market goes, fear has not yet morphed into panic, but I think we will get to that point. On the upside, folks often forget that markets are ruled by people -- who, at the end of the day, are ruled by their emotions. There can never be a new era because human nature remains the same.
Complacency: A Greenspan legacy
For now, fear has not reached panic levels. In fact, I am amazed by the complacency of so many stock operators, who act as though their greatest fear is missing the next rally. I guess that's how former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's policies over the past 25 years have conditioned financial muscle memory -- to believe that nothing ever goes wrong for long.

Turning to wrongheaded finger-pointing, I found it interesting that Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Chris Cox wants to amend rules for naked short selling (though his proposals are much ado about nothing, as it is already illegal), specifically in the cases of Fannie, Freddie and certain brokers. I know I've said this before, but since there's been so much chatter about short sellers, let me once again try to make this perfectly clear:

Short sellers didn't create the housing bubble, which is what caused the unfolding disaster. Nor did they make the bad loans now going sour. Short sellers do not ruin companies, and they are incapable of driving a company's stock price lower for more than a brief moment. If unscrupulous manipulators decided to pressure a stock lower, that would be a recipe for losing money unless they were extremely quick, not only to sell but also to cover the short position.

Likewise, short sellers didn't cause Bear Stearns to collapse. That was a do-it-yourself job, executed by the arrogant chieftains who let themselves get wildly over-leveraged.

And someone might tell Cox that short sellers didn't ruin Fannie Mae. That was the handiwork of former CEO Franklin Raines and the rest of management (as well as the regulators), whose Enron-like greed caused me to name the company "Fanron" on Feb. 23, 2005. As I wrote in my daily column on my Web site that day:

"Problems there definitely matter, since Fannie has been one of the primary engines that finance the housing ATM. In yet another turn for the worse, OFHEO stated that it has 'identified (additional) policies that it believes appear inconsistent with generally accepted accounting principles.' When I read this morning's OFHEO headlines (concerning Fannie's 'held for sale' loans and 'use of FAS 140' hedge accounting), I thought this smells, just like Enron, ergo, my new nickname for Fannie -- Fanron."

This business of blaming short sellers for lower stock prices (and speculators generically for high oil prices) is getting ridiculous, especially when the real perpetrators suffer minor consequences as they walk away with giant piles of money.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Good find lavabear. Here's the full text:

Bay Area home prices plunge 27% in last year

Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, July 18, 2008
This Alameda home is one of many foreclosed properties th... A "Reduced Price" sign was posted in front of a home for ...

(07-17) 12:20 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Double-digit drops in median home prices hit every Bay Area county in June, even the ones that had seemed Teflon-coated.

Across the nine counties, the median price paid for resale homes, new homes and condos in June plunged 27.1 percent from a year ago to $485,000, dipping below the half-million-dollar mark for the first time in four years, DataQuick Information Systems of La Jolla (San Diego County) reported Thursday.

Among resold homes, bank-repossessed foreclosures - which usually are discounted - accounted for 28.7 percent of all existing-home sales, up from just 3.5 percent in June 2007. Solano County, with foreclosures at 57.7 percent of all resales, had the highest percentage; San Francisco, at 3 percent, had the lowest.

Affluent areas such as Marin County and San Francisco, which until now had resisted most price erosion, saw existing single-family home median prices fall by about 11 percent. Including new homes and condos, the Marin County and San Francisco medians fell about 12 percent to $846,000 and $726,750, respectively.

"This is pretty grim; double digits across the board," said Christopher Thornberg, principal at Los Angeles' Beacon Economics. "It was eminently predictable if you had a realistic view of the world. I heard a lot of people say the Bay Area was never going to see prices fall, San Francisco was untouchable; in San Mateo, it was impossible; San Jose, not with all the tech money, blah, blah, blah. But prices at the peak relative to people's incomes never made any sense."

A total of 7,178 existing, new and resale homes changed hands in June, down 9.9 percent compared with a year ago. It was the lowest June sales volume since 1993, and the second lowest since DataQuick began record-keeping in 1988.

For existing single-family homes, the median was $510,000, down 30.9 percent from the $738,000 peak in June and July 2007.

"There is significant depreciation out there, especially in inland areas," said Andrew LePage, an analyst with DataQuick.

Price drops were steepest - and sales volumes strongest - in counties where foreclosures were widespread. For instance, Contra Costa County, where almost half of all June sales were foreclosures, saw existing-home medians plunge 44 percent from $642,500 to $360,000, while the number of sales was up 25.5 percent compared with a year ago.
Tight rental market

Kevin Kieffer, a Realtor with Keller Williams Danville who covers central and eastern Contra Costa County, said he is doing a brisk business in foreclosures.

"I'm working with seven different investors now, all looking in the $200,000 or $300,000 range for single-family homes (in Concord, Brentwood and surrounding areas)," he said. "The rental market is so tight, I can sell them a home and at the close of escrow have a tenant in there."

Many foreclosed properties are selling for half the price they reached during the giddy peak two years ago.

"Right now, I'd say a Brentwood four-bedroom, two-bathroom with 2,600 square feet that was $650,000 a couple of years ago can easily be had for $325,000 and below," Kieffer said. "In Concord, three-bedroom ranch homes that were selling for $500,000; you can get those post-foreclosure for $225,000 or $250,000."

Median price, which indicates that half of all homes sold for more and half for less, is skewed by the composition of home sales - the more low-cost homes sold, the lower the median. Experts pointed out that an increase in lower-cost sales has caused the median to shift lower. The credit crunch, which made it harder to get high-cost mortgages, exacerbated this trend.

"For the first half of this year, the biggest absolute growth in terms of units has been in the $500,000-and-under category," said Avram Goldman, CEO of Pacific Union GMAC Real Estate, which has 13 Bay Area offices. "Last year, a lot of those properties were on the market and just weren't selling. Some of them turned into short sales and foreclosures, and now they're moving."

Goldman underscored the frequently made point that the Bay Area is composed of numerous micro-markets, including some like San Francisco's Noe Valley, which he said is still going like gangbusters.

Once-bulging inventory levels around the Bay Area have stabilized, Goldman said, with most counties having four or five months' worth of inventory, compared to double-digit gluts in January.

In his view, Goldman said, "We're kind of bumping along the bottom."
Chance for affordability

For many home buyers, foreclosures represent an avenue to affordability.

Financial consultant Jay Shurman and his wife moved here from Maine in late 2006 and started house-hunting early this year.

"We have found that homes owned by individuals are listed at prices that are too high; we are now concentrating on homes that are bank-owned," Shurman said in an e-mail in May.

On Wednesday, the couple signed papers to buy a bank-owned property in Alameda. They were among four bidders for the three-bedroom house, listed at $565,000. Their bid was slightly above the asking price. Because the property is still in escrow, the exact price is not yet disclosed.

The same house sold for $750,000 in September 2005.

"Bank-owned properties we found were $100,000 less than other people's," Shurman said on Wednesday. "If you want to sell your property, you're competing with them."
By the numbers

27.1% Drop in median price for Bay Area

$485,000 Bay Area median (first time under $500,000 in 4 years)

28.7% Sales involving foreclosed homes

7,178 Number of new and resale homes changing hands in June - the lowest June since 1993

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

"This is pretty grim; double digits across the board," said Christopher Thornberg, principal at Los Angeles' Beacon Economics. "It was eminently predictable if you had a realistic view of the world. I heard a lot of people say the Bay Area was never going to see prices fall, San Francisco was untouchable; in San Mateo, it was impossible; San Jose, not with all the tech money, blah, blah, blah. But prices at the peak relative to people's incomes never made any sense."

Hmmmm, I seem to recall someone saying that right cheer on this here blog, and getting whaled on unmerciful.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Farmers are the US's homespun Iranians:

Economy not looking so bad, as viewed from the farm

By Alister Bull2 hours, 35 minutes ago

The U.S. housing crisis looks pretty distant when viewed from the cornfields of middle America, although land values pushed up by record commodity prices also evoke past booms that ended in bust.

Farm prices in the corn belt jumped an eye-popping 20-plus percent last year. Economists at the Kansas City Federal Reserve say that so far, the gains seem to be based on anticipated profits from future harvests, not speculation.

If prices suddenly turned lower, the sector could suffer, and it would not be the first time. Farm values collapsed 40 percent between 1982-87, squeezed by higher production costs and lower agricultural earnings.

"If prices stay put we're somewhat better, but if they don't, we're somewhat in trouble ... It's not all roses," said Dennis Kvatum, a soybean and wheat farmer in Beardsley, Minnesota.

On the other hand, farmers have far fewer debts than in the 1970s and 1980s, giving them a decent cushion.

"Rising farmland values might be a sign of a bright, new, golden age in agriculture -- but they are not without risks, noted the Kansas City Fed's latest Economic Review.

In the meantime, the rest of the regional economy is benefiting from the sector's strength, albeit with typical Midwestern understatement.

"Our business is really not bad. In fact, it's pretty good," said Mike Haverty, chief executive officer of Kansas City Southern (KSU.N) railway, whose trains haul cargo like coal and grain for export to ports in Mexico.

Surging energy costs have not dented the railroad man's enthusiasm because strong demand has helped him to pass along roughly 70 percent of these increases to customers.

A monthly manufacturing survey by the Kansas City Fed of its district declined in June, but it did show that companies' expectations for future activity remained positive and export activity was solid.

The Kansas City Fed's seven-state district spans the farming heartland of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and western Missouri, as well as the Rocky Mountain states of Colorado, Wyoming and northern New Mexico, where energy and ranching, as well as tourism, are economically dominant.

DOING WELL

"The major food exporters, energy and commodity producers of our district are doing well," Kansas City Fed President Thomas Hoenig told Reuters in an interview earlier this month.

"Our housing industry is under pressure, but by much less than in southern California," he said, referring to a region of the country at the heart of the subprime mortgage meltdown.

U.S. agricultural exports have skyrocketed more than 40 percent this year due to both higher prices and larger volumes, amid soaring demand from markets like India and China, whose massive emerging middle classes want to eat more and better.

The benefits of this boom have been felt broadly, with retail sales taxes up in neighboring Nebraska, for example, in an indication that consumers have continued to spend and buoy a service sector suffering at a national level.

"Record high commodity prices have lifted farm profitability and that has spilled over into capital spending," said Jason Henderson, a rural economist and head of the Omaha branch of the Kansas City Fed.

"We're going to have some solid growth in 2008 and our service sector is holding up well," he said, adding that west Nebraska may be one of the few places in the country where demand for SUVs has defied $4-plus gasoline.

The Kansas City Fed calculates an index of farm incomes and capital spending based on a survey of agricultural banks.

This gauge soared to around 160 during 2007 from a reading near 100 in the fourth quarter of 2006, with capital spending tracing a similar climb. But the pace of gains for both were expected to slow over the coming months.

"Rising input costs are limiting crop profit margins. Livestock producers are posting huge losses due to higher feed costs," it noted in its most recent survey of agricultural credit conditions, which covered the first quarter.

On top of margin pressures, higher commodity prices also up the ante for agricultural businesses that have to buy and store produce at the higher prices, and finance these inventories with bank credit.

"Your county grain elevator used to need a credit line of $10 million and now that is more like $40 million," said Paul DeBruce, chief executive of DeBruce Grain, a huge private grain distributor with $4.6 billion of turnover in fiscal 2008.

Some if his grain elevators customers were negotiating harder on when they would get paid than on price -- an indication of their need for cash -- and order backlogs for agricultural equipment were lean, in a sign of slowing demand.

"The industry is not in trouble, but it is under strain," the Kansas City-based DeBruce said.

Anonymous said...

Unlike our dumbasses, who are intent on spending a couple billion bucks tranplanting Celebration, FL onto the scrub juniper and sagebrush of JR.

*

Pussy, our JR is not scrub, its a bed of rock all the way down. Les-Schwab cost $800k/acre to excavate to make shovel ready.

The entire JR fiasco ONLY exists for TWO reasons.

1.) Hap-Taylor (knife-river) gets the billions of dollars of excavation work.

2.) Almost ALL the land surrounding JR is owned by HOLLERN, which insures a perpetual money machine for the next generation of the BROOKS-TRIBE.

Les-Schwab was just an anchor, and they had to give them over $16M in taxpayer money just to incentive the move.

Everybody win's Knife-River gets perpetual work, breaking up some of the worst rock in the county, this is why the 1500 acres was sold for ONE-DOLLAR.

Note a while back some stupid developer spent millions excavating an STD lot? He's BK now, the secret of BEND is making the tax-payer excavate. The secret of the BROOKS perpetual-money-machine is making the tax-payer pay the SDC.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...


In the meantime, the rest of the regional economy is benefiting from the sector's strength, albeit with typical Midwestern understatement.


If Costa ran the thing, it'd be Superlatives & Exaggerations Galore. And it'd be laced with Cali-Banger bullshit as the by-product of the process.

"Local Farmers Reap Millions In Corn Harvest Bonanza! Teen Injured As XBoxes Sold Out!

Mother Of Injured Teen Urges Caution, But Understands The Mania.

'I't killt them motherfuckers myself ta git GTA IV!"

Anonymous said...

The following from today NY-TIMES. Everything is happening exactly as predicted the force is strong. Who will bail out the US Government?

Is the US-GOVERNMENT Too Big to Fail?

Article Tools Sponsored By
By PETER S. GOODMAN
Published: July 20, 2008

IN the narrative that has governed American commercial life for the last quarter-century, saving companies from their own mistakes was not supposed to be part of the government’s job description. Economic policy makers in the United States took swaggering pride in the cutthroat but lucrative form of capitalism that was supposedly indigenous to their frontier nation.


RESCUE Christopher Cox, the S.E.C. chairman, left, and Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, center, hear Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson tell senators he wants authority to help save Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Through this uniquely American lens, saving businesses from collapse was the sort of thing that happened on other shores, where sentimental commitments to social welfare trumped sharp-edged competition. Weak-kneed European and Asian leaders were too frightened to endure the animal instincts of a real market, the story went. So they intervened time and again, using government largess to lift inefficient firms to safety, sparing jobs and limiting pain but keeping their economies from reaching full potential.

There have been recent interventions in America, of course — the taxpayer-backed bailout of Chrysler in 1979, and the savings and loan rescue of 1989. But the first happened under Jimmy Carter, a year before Americans embraced Ronald Reagan and his passion for unfettered markets. And the second was under George H. W. Bush, who did not share that passion.

So it made for a strange spectacle last weekend as the current Bush administration, which does cast itself in the Reagan mold, hastily prepared a bailout package to offer the government-sponsored mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The reasoning behind this rescue effort — like the reasoning behind the government-induced takeover of Bear Stearns by J. P. Morgan Chase just a month before — sounded no different from that offered in defense of many a bailout in Japan and Europe:

The mortgage giants were too big to be allowed to fail.

Big indeed. Together, Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee nearly half of the nation’s $12 trillion worth of home mortgages. If they collapse, so may the whole system of finance for American housing, threatening a most unfortunate string of events: First, an already plummeting real estate market might crater. Then the banks that have sunk capital into American homes would slip deeper into trouble. And the virus might spread globally.

The central banks of China and Japan are on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Fannie’s and Freddie’s bonds — debts they took on assuming that the two companies enjoyed the backing of the American government, argues Brad Setser, an economist at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Commercial banks from South Korea to Sweden hold investments linked to American mortgages. Their losses would mount if American homeowners suddenly couldn’t borrow. The global financial system could find itself short of capital and paralyzed by fear, hobbling economic growth in many lands.

Nobody with a meaningful office in Washington was in the mood for any of that, so the rescue nets were readied. The treasury secretary, Henry Paulson Jr., announced that the government was willing to use taxpayer funds to buy shares in Fannie and Freddie. The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, said the central bank would lend them money.

The details were up in the air as the week ended, but some sort of bailout offer was on the table — one that could ultimately cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Whatever the dent to national bravado, or to the free-enterprise ideology, the phrase “too big to fail” suddenly carried an American accent.

“Some institutions really are too big to fail, and that’s the way it is,” said Douglas W. Elmendorf, a former Treasury and Federal Reserve Board economist who is now at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “There are no good options.”

Still, there are ironies. Since World War II, the United States has been the center of global finance, and it has used that position to virtually dictate the conditions under which many other nations — particularly developing countries — can get access to capital. Letting weak companies fail has been high on the list.

Mr. Paulson, who announced the bailout, made his name as chief executive of Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment giant, where he pried open new markets to foreign investment. As treasury secretary, he has served as chief proselytizer for American-style capitalism, counseling the tough love of laissez-faire. In particular, he has leaned on China to let the value of its currency float freely, and has criticized its banks for shoveling money to companies favored by the Communist Party in order to limit joblessness and social instability.

All through Japan’s lost decade of the 1990s and afterward, American officials chided Tokyo for its unwillingness to let the forces of creative destruction take down the country’s bloated banks and the zombie companies they nurtured. The best way out of stagnation, Americans counseled, was to let weak companies die, freeing up capital for a new crop of leaner entrants.

But as Japan’s leaders engaged in bailouts and bookkeeping fictions to keep banks and companies breathing, they offered those words of justification now heard here: The companies were too big to fail.

In 2002, the government engineered the rescue of Daiei, a huge, debt-laden grocery chain. In 2003, it injected some $17 billion into Resona Bank to keep it upright. Each time, Japan’s leaders said failure was not an option. It would pull too many others into a downward spiral.

Today, among strict adherents of laissez-faire economics, the offer to bail out Fannie and Freddie is already being criticized as a trip down the Japanese path of putting off immediate pain while loading up the costs further along.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Damn. This freakin blog is huge. I ran YSlow:

408.9K 1 HTML/Text

1.8K 3 Redirects

11.2K 7 IFrames

60.9K 3 XMLHttpRequests

0.0K 12 Flash Objects

20.4K 10 JavaScript Files

1.4K 4 Stylesheet Files

4682.1K 141 Images
5187.0K Total size
181 HTTP requests

The whole thing w/o caching is 5.4 megs. Cripes. Mainly images.

But 409K of text also.

"I'VE WASTED MY LIFE!!!"

Comic Book Guy, The Simpsons

Bewert said...

Re: Pussy, our JR is not scrub, its a bed of rock all the way down.

It's scrub on top of rock. With a little bit of sand thrown in. I just went around the entire perimeter Friday.

I guess Hollern's land is where the Mayor plans to put employers, not JR. Maybe Hollern wants to build Old Mill 2 out there.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Is the US-GOVERNMENT Too Big to Fail?

Good piece.

Bewert said...

Why the system will not be reformed, case study #1:

Angelo's Many "Friends" and related articles.

In January 2004, Richard Aldrich, a California state appeals court judge, decided to refinance his 8,200-square-foot house next to a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course at the Sherwood Country Club in Westlake Village. He turned to a prominent Sherwood member: Countrywide Financial chief executive Angelo Mozilo.

Aldrich’s application was assigned to a loan officer named Robert Feinberg; the judge was seeking a $1 million loan and a $900,000 line of credit. By email, Feinberg alerted Mozilo that the credit line was “above what guidelines allow.” Mozilo responded, “Go ahead and approve the loan, and close it as soon as possible. Don’t worry about this deal, it’s golden.” Countrywide further waived half a point, or $5,000 on the million-dollar loan. (Homebuyers can reduce their interest rates by paying points, which are equal to 1 percent of the value of a loan.)

That wasn’t Aldrich’s only contact with Countrywide. At the time he refinanced, a class action lawsuit against Countrywide was pending before the appellate court, brought by borrowers contending that the company offered an inadequate payment to settle allegations that it charged excessive fees for credit reports. That August, Aldrich was part of a three-judge panel that unanimously rejected the borrowers’ appeal.

...

Countrywide’s generosity to Aldrich reflected a broader strategy. Through a program that provided loans on favorable terms to V.I.P. borrowers, the nation’s largest mortgage lender curried favor with politicians, government officials, and business partners who were in a position to influence policy, profits, or public opinion. While some may not have been fully aware of the special terms, many took the bait. Some, including Aldrich, appear to have skirted or violated conflict-of-interest rules or ethics policies.

Feinberg, who served as gatekeeper for the V.I.P. program from 2000 to 2004, wrote hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of loans—as much as $400 million in 2003 alone—for customers whom his superiors had singled out for special treatment. After he filled out the applications, they were processed by a V.I.P.-loan underwriting unit, which had its own branch number in Countrywide’s recordkeeping system.


Much more at the link.

As usual, the big boys will make out, companies will be merged if necessary, or bail out if possible, and the little guy, the middle class taxpayer, will get hosed while being told how great he has it by the mainstream media.

Because, as Phil Gramm said, America is just "...in a mental recession...it's become a nation of whiners..."

Anonymous said...

About two years ago I predicted that BEND RE would go below 4X income, and of course I was laughed, I predicted bank-runs, ... I said that by the time BEND-RE was at bottom, you would not be able to get a loan.

Look at our recent past, most loans were private packages, that money is gone CDO/CMO's are to be avoided at all cost by investors.

The last man standing in RE loans is Fanny&Freddy, with their demise there will be no money. Want a loan? Try the mob, and pay mob rates.

The effect when loans aren't available?

Look at 1933 real-estate paralysis: sellers couldn't sell, and buyers couldn't buy. Paralysis of the entire RE system. It is coming. It took years before the US government stepped in with guaranteed loans, and so with this time, they'll not step in until the bottom is seen. How low?

The great depression has on average ten-to-one ratio of investment, and things went down 10X, this time with zero-down, its hard to say, certainly not to zero, as NOT everyone did a zero down, and some places more than others.

Given that Bend is a second home market, and that its an expensive desert Island, we can say easily 80% down, 1/5x, which takes us back to the early 1990's, but still NOT as low as the mid 1980's. Bend could easily go down 1/10X in this cycle or even lower, depending on the time-depth of this depression.

Virtually everyone that bought in the last ten years will have lost money, given that most people these days have used their home as their retirement account, retirement as we know is fucked. Note carefully mcCain&O-bomb-a have said NUTTIN about Social-Security, its FUCKED.

It's time to go back to the old survival strategy in Bend, minimize expense, watch your back. Hide your wealth, to avoid crime. Live cheap, live in a small home. Stay out of government radar, and god forbid don't take your dog off-leash anywhere in the city of bend, or you'll be BK.

Anonymous said...

OK... absolutely KICK ASS post. Well fuckin' said. A nation of cali-bangers we are... I was in florida over the winter... crazy cali-banging going on over there too.

Ever read "Behold a Pale Horse" by William Cooper? I just started it and have finished the first chapter that's about how we're manipulated on all levels to turn into cali-bangers basically... should continue to be an interesing read.

Anonymous said...

It's scrub on top of rock. With a little bit of sand thrown in. I just went around the entire perimeter Friday.

*

Take some pic's bp, and put it on your site, show us the new LS building, I haven't been out there on the perimeter walk since last turkey-day.

I agree, some scrubby junipers, a few cups of sand, and rock down as far as, ... IMHO JR is MORE worthless than the bad-lands, at least at the bad lands there is a ton of sand, but that rock is unforgiving on tires at the bad-lands.

Yes, I'm sure by the next bubble 2025 ( post WWIII ) the JR will be surrounded by OM#2, and the tuscany-pines for miles, ... it will make NWXC look like a turd.

On the other hand if for some strange reason, the city of bend financially imploded with due-diligence over the next few years, the HOLLERN-TRIBE would BK, and the tribe would move on, and certainly Knife-River would move their equipment else-where.

There is NO guarantee that things will work out as planned.

The shit-eating debt, ... like the failure of fanny/fred, what is keeping BEND alive is MBO ( municipal bond obligs ) about as dirty as CMO's & CDO's or TOXIC I should say.

If things keep going the way they're going, and the city can't borrow from the MBO pool like a drunk-sailor, then your going to see red-ink, your going to see the hollern ho's bailing ship.

Anything can happen. There is no guarantee that what worked last time, will work this time.

It might already be too late for Bend, they really could have gone austere a few years ago, when it was clear the bubble was over, its almost like the whole insider scene of the city is killing all those with bad-news, and only listening to rasputin ( kuratek ). Again, watch the MBO's, and watch Bend's credit-rating, cuz thats the only bell-wether that controls this drunken sailor.

I can't stress enough that an MBO is to the HOLLERN-HOGG-MOB city-self-dealer what a HELOC is to a cali-in-Bend.

When the MBO gets shutdown, then and ONLY then will the real Bend be seen naked.

Anonymous said...

[Is the US-GOVERNMENT] Too Big to Fail? By PETER S. GOODMAN ( The Nation )

( NY-TIMES TODAY )

Homer, you may want to post the link, I only posted the first page, and its originally from the Nation.

I think this is a good notion of this week(s) news, typical sunday, bring out the worst. Now its not chrysler anymore, but who is going to bail-out, the USA???

Given how fucking PISSED the world is its kind of an awkward time to go begging, note today that O-BOMB-A is pimping with Malaki in Afghan, our boy, a boy that most likely will be out soon, hated by his own people, USA puppet. It's sort of shows WHO O-BOMB-A is about, when the news of the day is that our puppet-prez of afghan is 100% for O-BOMB-A, well yea, he know who controls his leash.

How come O-BOMB-A ain't in China, or the ME begging for folks to buy T-BILLS??

It takes billions of dollar a month to keep our puppet governments world-wide in biz, its all a good rhetorical question; Who will bail out the USA?

Being a colonial power, or a world-policeman is a very expensive debt. Now that the USA is getting closer to BK, I'm sure most of the world will silently just watch the implosion with glee, too many years of egocentric exceptional-ism. A lot like watching Bend implode from the outside, like anyone cares? Tell that to someone in Bend, yet outside who has heard of Bend.

Anonymous said...

"More people want to live [on the coasts]. Why?"

"Dude, only a Cali-Spunker would say that."


Bubble Boy, it is a FACT that people have been moving out of the heartland to the coasts since WWII, at least. Why do you suppose that is? Because they're all "Cali-bangers" and want to "live the Cali-banger lifestyle"? Nope. It has nothing to do with lifestyles or climate or recreational opportunities or metrosexuals or anal cleansing salons or any of that bullshit. It's because the coasts (and a few Midwest big cities) are WHERE THE FUCKING JOBS ARE. Ya can't make a living down on the farm anymore. And no matter how nostalgic you are for some (largely mythical) Little House on the Prairie existence, we ain't going back to the 1880s or even the 1920s.

But if you want to move to Wichita, nobody's stopping you.

Anonymous said...

I guess Hollern's land is where the Mayor plans to put employers, not JR. Maybe Hollern wants to build Old Mill 2 out there.

*

I think HOLLERN-LAND will be STD's, and MALL's.

They'll go back to the original plan for JR; 10% park, 50% industrial, 40% office, there's no point in having STD's in JR, when the boss-hoggs own the land outside of the 'zone' besides as we all know the real money is not made on STD's per-se, but the sale of the developed lot.

The land surrounding JR cost virtually nothing, and will be sliced and diced into lots, and the SDC's picked up by the tax-payer, Pure PROFIT, all the way to the bank.

Anonymous said...

Hmmmm, I seem to recall someone saying that right cheer on this here blog, and getting whaled on unmerciful.

Nobody claimed the Bay Area would be immune to the real estate bust, Bubble Boy. What people took issue with was your absurd claim that San Francisco was going to turn into another Detroit.

Anonymous said...

If you have money you live where you want, if you have no money you talk shit.

If you have money you live where you want; if you don't have money you live where you can make some. Or at least think you can. During the boom a lot of non-rich people moved to Bend because "they heard there were jobs there." Those poor folks are totally fucked now.

Anonymous said...

It's because the coasts (and a few Midwest big cities) are WHERE THE FUCKING JOBS ARE.

*

The coasts are where the MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX JOBS were, when they started coming out post 1960's.

This has been true since the late 1950's, once the USA reverts to its true self, a penal-colony, with ag workers, once again the coastal areas will be what they are, except this time, even the fish are gone, so the coast will be a ghost-town. Living at the coast for the sake of such, with no chance of a living, ...

Artificial cold war job creation is what created the migration, whether it be boston high-tech, or so-cal aviation, or boeing, it all goes bank to the industrial war machine post WWII.

Now that the USA is broke, most likely this artificial biz will collapse, and the hulks will become something else. Folks will migrate back to the mid-west for no other reason that they can eat.

Sure the willamette-valley allows eating, and some parts of cali. But sure as hell in BEND you cannot live off the land, well a few cowboys could, but not 80K parasites.

Things are changing, certainly folks migrated to the west-coast post 1960's en-mass, then for a better life for their kids moved north, and then inland.

Bubbles: post WWII there was the nobody else had factory bubble all the way up to the 1960's, then their was the RE bubble 1970's to 2004, ... There really are no more bubbles, unless you think that someone in Bend will invent a perpetual motion machine.

I really think now we're going to enter some kind of long-term debt paralysis. Many will walk, some will work to payoff debts.

Only folks with cash will be able live at life-style destinations, like a coast with no fish, or a desert island(Bend) with no ag, perhaps you'll see more people growing domestic beef in Bend?

The RE bubble ( 1970's to 2004 ) created jobs on the west-coast, and now that is over.

Nobody is going to rationally invest in the coasts for jobs, look at the japs, investing in the mid-west by be away from aging pensioners in detroit.

Once the Japs see the US economy market for auto collapse, do you really think they'll keep the fucking plants here running? For the few remaining man-twats with enough cash to buy a prius??

Life has always been hard, for a few generations post WWII life in the USA was easy, that is over.

Anonymous said...

Ya can't make a living down on the farm anymore.

*

When fuel is $20/gal, the guy who raises his own beef near Bend will look like a genius.

To boot, it's better to eat local, not knowing where the fuck the 'beef' you buy from Rays is really from.

What goes around comes around. For years kids made five-figures for web-design, soon they'll be begging for yard jobs.

Folks MUST eat, with rising fuel costs food will be local once again. It will simply cost too much to eat vege's in the winter grown in south-america. People will start canning again,

It's almost impossible with fuel costs to do large scale mechanized ag, unless your MONSANTO or equiv, I think the people who make money on the land farming, will be those who figure out how to find knowledge that was lost.

I don't think that the issue of making money on the farm, is as amusing as those who will be trying to make money from remote-sites via their computer. When the US service economy crashes, there will be no demand for anything, worst of all will be the down-grade in lifestyle.

Get use to living off $20k/yr or less, or you better have lots of gold buried.

Anonymous said...

If you have money you live where you want; if you don't have money you live where you can make some.

*

Yes, but even in the 'day' ( 2002 or later ), it cost MONEY to pack to Bend. In order to get a construction job, you had to have the look, and the truck, ... you had to know someone.

People with REAL money can live anywhere, and often have a dozen homes all over the world.

Someone without money, if they have an auto, probably lives in that auto, which makes it REAL FUCKING HARD TO GET A JOB WHEN YOU HAVEN'T BATHED.

I think its fairly clear, that with exception of the MEXICAN most folks came to BEND with a credit-card post 2002, which meant you had to have a mailing address.

Hell yes, they're fucked, but they were fucked, the second they decided to head to Bend.

Did anyone post 1998 or 2002 who came to Bend not get fucked? This is what Bend does is fuck people. Bend is a tourist racket town. Sure if you got here 2002 and worked until 2005 and saved your money, and rented cheap, and didn't eat out, but how many did that? Besides you could have made more many in Seattle all along.

The point is if you have money, you can live where you want. Sure if you have a credit-card you can also live any where for awhile! Like RE, the banks are going to slowly shut the credit-card as we know down, as their is no collateral and non-payment is sky-rocketing, there is no longer enough payers, to subsidize the non-payers.

"The original" thread started "Everyone wants to move to Bend". Yea, most poor people all around the world, would love to live in Bend, if you kept them fed, so fucking what.

Anonymous said...

What people took issue with was your absurd claim that San Francisco was going to turn into another Detroit.

*

I think the problem is that HOMER never defines SF, I think for him it means west-central-cali, for me it means the area around golden-gate park, which yes, it will never go down, on the other hand, San-Jose will become like detroit, the essential obvious thing is that given HOMER is NOT of the west-coast, he doesn't know it like the back of his hand.

Anonymous said...

Nope. It has nothing to do with lifestyles or climate or recreational opportunities or metrosexuals or anal cleansing.

*

It's rather hard to be a man-twat or a metro-sexual in the mid-west, on other hand Bend or SF would embrace you with open arms.

I really think their is a reason that folks say "I'm from Missouri, SHOW ME", ... The salt of the earth, know how to fix things, ...

On the other hand you can come to LA or SF, and so long as your young, or can act hip, you can mooch, and live like a king, thus in TIME, the coast creates a moochers paradise. The same of BEND, I know virtually ( in my circle of folks that have kids under 30 ) no folks that have kids employed, the average I know has a 22 yr old daughter and/or son living at home going to COCC on the 50 yr program, without a job of course, cuz that would cut into study time, and besides as we all know, its not worth your time to work in Bend, as you don't even make enough to pay insurance or gas.


Lifestyle? In Bend. Retirement at 20. Tolerance for non-workers on the west-coast? 100% no problem.

I think in the 1960's parents came from the mid-west struggling post-depression survivors. Just like first-generation mexicans, work their ass off. Second generation don't work, live off parents, same for the second generation whites on west-coast.

Dot-Com created a lucky time where idiots could talk about websites, and not even deliver and make $10k/mo, that didn't last long.

West-Coast like Bend, is about dreams, and mythology.

Bend is the end of the road. Is there a better place for dreamers??

I mean what is it like 90% of BEND believes in perpetual-motion-machines.

Anonymous said...

More from, "WHO WILL BAIL THE USA OUT". ... Good stuff - Forest of unsold Homes in Bend, Oregon, ... Solution? More forests. ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/weekinreview/20goodman.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087&em&en=945bf6e6d466ab5c&ex=1216699200

Meanwhile, as American debts swell and foreigners hold more of it, nervousness grows that, some day, this arrangement will end badly. The dollar has been declining in value against other currencies. Some foreigners have begun to hedge their bets by buying more euros. “Obviously, this is going to come to an end,” Mr. Schiff said. “Foreigners are not charitable organizations, and they’re going to demand that we pay them back.”

No single country owning large amounts of dollar-based investments is inclined to dump them abruptly; nobody aims to start a panic. But fears have begun to grow that one day a country may get spooked that another is about to dump its dollars — and that could trigger pre-emptive panic selling.

“Foreigners could decide it’s just not worth the risk and sell,” says Andrew Tilton, an economist at Goldman Sachs. “The really dire scenarios have become a lot more likely than they were a year or two ago.”

Still, as Mr. Tilton and others are aware, one fundamental reality continues to offer assurances that foreigners will still buy American debt:

In the global economy of the moment, the United States itself is too big to fail.

The logic for that assurance goes like this:

The American consumer has for decades served as the engine of world commerce, using borrowed cash to snap up the accoutrements of modern living — clothes and computers and cars now manufactured, in whole or in part, in factories from Asia to Latin America. Eliminate the American wherewithal to shop, and the pain would ripple out to multiple shores.

Globalization, in other words, allowed China and Japan to amass the fortunes they have been lending to the United States.

But globalization also emboldened American capitalists to take huge risks they might have otherwise avoided — like borrowing to erect forests of unsold homes from California to Florida, delivering the speculative disaster of the day. They were operating with bedrock confidence that money would never run out. Someone would always buy American debt, delivering more cash for the next go.

And this same interconnectedness appears to have reassured regulators in Washington about the health of the American financial system, as they declined to intervene against highly speculative lending during the real estate boom. Mortgages were being distributed to investors around the globe, and so were the risks, the regulators reasoned. Anyone who bought into that risk would have a strong interest in seeing that the American financial system stayed upright.

In other words, in the estimation of people in control of money, the United States cannot be allowed to collapse, just as Fannie and Freddie cannot be allowed to fail. Too much is riding on their survival.

The central truth of that logic still seems to be apparent as the Treasury keeps finding takers for American debt.

So the government offers its rescue of the mortgage companies, and foreigners keep stocking the government’s coffers. “They don’t want the U.S. to go into the worst downturn since the Depression,” Mr. Tilton says.

But all the while, the debt mounts along with the costs of an ultimate day of reckoning. Debate grows about the wisdom of leaning on foreign credit, and about how much longer Americans will retain the privilege of spending and investing money that isn’t really theirs.

Bailouts amount to mortgaging the future to stave off the wolf howling at the door. The likelihood of a painful reckoning is diminished, while the costs of a reckoning — should one come — are increased.

The costs are getting big.

Anonymous said...

On the other hand you can come to LA or SF, and so long as your young, or can act hip, you can mooch, and live like a king, thus in TIME, the coast creates a moochers paradise.

That statement is utterly bogus. As a rule, the bigger the city, the tougher and more competitive the people have to be to survive. I have lived on both coasts and in the middle, in big cities and suburbs and small towns, and have always found this to be true. The toughest, sharpest and most competitive people in the US (probably on the planet) are in NYC; like the song says, "If you can make it there you can make it anywhere." The West Coast is somewhat less competitive but still much more competitive than the Midwest or the Intermountain West. The people who have stayed behind in rural America are those who either (a) those who just love the rural lifestyle and are willing to pay the price in the form of lower incomes (the minority) or (b) those who don't have the smarts, ambition or competitiveness to make it in a more urban environment. Sorry, but it's true.

But you're right when you say that Bend is a haven for lotus-eaters.

Anonymous said...

the average I know has a 22 yr old daughter and/or son living at home going to COCC on the 50 yr program, without a job of course, cuz that would cut into study time, and besides as we all know, its not worth your time to work in Bend, as you don't even make enough to pay insurance or gas.

hey you just described osama-bama's voting base!

Anonymous said...

Gawd, I think I have 70 pts, my Carlsbad sister ruined it for me. Botox, titty fix, lipo, and I am (was) Realtwhore (no fixes personally).
You have really nailed this rant. All that has been said today has really zeroed in on the true destruction of Bend and many other towns. The Cali-banger scale is perfect.
I know most here will survive the next few years. I do think it will take a collective effort. More on that much later when it it needed.

#3 is sitting tight, sort of like our MARGE, they know the drill. If it goes on for more than 2-5 years of no work, then they'll move on. The current home they're sitting on is always the kind I have advised no more than 4X of the BEND yearly income
Fortunately I am sitting on 1.5x current income, as far as debt goes,not former income as that income is 1/5th what is was.
Later.

Anonymous said...

Did anyone post 1998 or 2002 who came to Bend not get fucked?

Yes. I came in 1999 from a small town on the east coast, got an above-median paying job that I still have, for a company not based in Bend. I bought a 1300 sq foot house, sold that house, put a bunch of money in the bank and was smart enough to start renting. Somewhere in that time I met a wonderful woman and got married. In the meantime I spent a lot of time playing - skiing, mountain biking, road biking. I drive a 1998 Subaru that has been paid off for years and have no debt.

All things considered I am doing much better now than I was in 1999. I'm wealthier, happier and healthier. Moving here was a good decision and I don't plan on leaving any time soon.

I score 20 points on your test because almost every bike in our house is more than $1500 and I wear spandex when riding and racing. Yes it serves a function.

LavaBear said...

You ride unicorns on rainbows. I'm pretty sure he's talking about Bend RE.

LavaBear said...

When things are good you typically don't come out on a Sunday and talk about how great things are.

Paulson: U.S. Banking System Fundamentally Sound

By Randall Mikkelsen
Reuters
| 20 Jul 2008 | 11:15 AM ET

The U.S. banking system is fundamentally sound despite the highly publicized IndyMac failure, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said on Sunday, as he listed financial system stability as his top economic priority.

"Our banking system is a safe and a sound one," Paulson said during an advance taping of CNN's "Late Edition."

Federal regulators this month took over failed mortgage lender IndyMac. It was the third-largest banking failure in U.S. history, and the lines of frustrated depositors outside the bank provided a stark illustration of the U.S. home financing crisis.

But Paulson said just five U.S. banks have failed this year compared with an annual average of about 250 during a decade-long crisis in the U.S. savings and loan industry that began in 1982.

He said about 99 percent of the 8,500 U.S. banks, with about 99 percent of bank assets, fell into the highest category of capitalization, a measure of financial health. At the end of the last quarter, the number of problem banks on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s watch list ticked up to 90 with combined assets of $26 billion from 76 with $22 billion at the end of 2007.

Paulson said it was crucial for the U.S. economy that the housing crisis end as quickly as possible, and key to that was ensuring confidence in U.S. financial markets.

Last Sunday, market worries over home mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac prompted the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve to unveil a plan to offer massive aid to the two companies.

Treasury asked Congress for unlimited authority to lend money to the troubled mortgage companies and to buy their stock if necessary to inject fresh capital. Some Republican lawmakers have balked at the prospect of a "blank check" that could cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars.

"The stability of the capital markets -- that's my number one priority," Paulson said. "It's very important right now that we do what we can to increase the confidence in the capital markets, the stability of the capital markets, and these two institutions are very important."

(Additional reporting by David Lawder, editing by Philip Barbara)

Update: The U.S. economy will need months to recover from a growth slowdown caused by a home mortgage crisis, turmoil in financial markets and high energy prices, Treasure Secretary Henry Paulson said on Sunday.

Paulson also told CBS television's "Face the Nation" he was optimistic Congress would approve the Bush administration's request for authority to lend money to the troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

"We're going through a challenging time with our economy," Paulson said. "We're going to be in a period of slow growth for a while ... I think it's going to be months that we're working our way through this period."

A key to recovery was for the housing market to stabilize quickly, he said. To that end, it was essential that Congress approve the plan aimed at shoring up confidence in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Paulson said he was "very optimistic we're going get what we need from Congress."

(Reporting by Randall Mikkelsen, editing by Alan Elsner)
Copyright 2008 Reuters.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...


I think the problem is that HOMER never defines SF, I think for him it means west-central-cali, for me it means the area around golden-gate park, which yes, it will never go down, on the other hand, San-Jose will become like detroit, the essential obvious thing is that given HOMER is NOT of the west-coast, he doesn't know it like the back of his hand.


See, I think I DO differentiate. I do NOT see Seattle or Portland going down nearly as hard as Frisco. And NO I don't really see a difference in the magnitude between anywhere in the entire Bay area. It's all going to suck air.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

I am (was) Realtwhore (no fixes personally).

That was a conditional! Fake titties first & Realtor!

I do believe that Realtor was at one time an honorable profession.

Fake titties + Realtor? That there'll cost ya.

Similarly the SUV thing: 4 people OR hauling shit for work only costs you 5 pts.

Going out & BUYING a BIG HYBRID ESCALADE should actually triple your score, you consumption fueled mental case.

Cali-Bangers: Always CONSUME their way to a solution. Dumbfucks. Plant a garden

In fact, planting a garden should knock off 20pts...

Anonymous said...

I'am just trying to figure out my score here. My sister has had a breat enlargement and then a breast desizer,she said they we tooo big. Then lipo suction on her thighs and tummy. Makes me want to puke. She had the whole face burn, whatever that is called. One of her best friends is "The queen of face doo's, Joan Rivers" She plays in the Bahamas whenever Joan calls. Doesn't impress me><<<:>
My sister has a huge helping heart and does many free help projects. But I guess she feels she needs to keep up with Mrs. Smith or Rivers.
Soooo can you forgive the family score? I would otherwise be a zero.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Soooo can you forgive the family score? I would otherwise be a zero.

Usually I'd be pretty hard core. But I think we can relax the familial ties score. Especially when you know it's just heinous.

Plus she had a reduction; That's gotta count for something...

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Fortunately I am sitting on 1.5x current income, as far as debt goes,not former income as that income is 1/5th what is was.

Really? I thought it was maybe a cut in half.

Anonymous said...

"the essential obvious thing is that given HOMER is NOT of the west-coast, he doesn't know it like the back of his hand."

"I do NOT see Seattle or Portland going down nearly as hard as Frisco."

you may be onto something here. no one who knows even the first thing about the bay area, or the west coast in general, would ever use the silly non-nickname "Frisco." if you can only spare two syllables, call it "San Fran."

Anonymous said...

She had the whole face burn, whatever that is called. - marge

*

And then some question when dunc suggests that marge is a man.

hey, marge do you know what a 'Bend Anal Wipe" is??

Anonymous said...

I don't really see a difference in the magnitude between anywhere in the entire Bay area. It's all going to suck air.

*

This my point exactly, here is a blogger who see's San-Jose & Castro as the same, obviously he's never been to either.

Long after the Mexicans re-take San-Jose the long-john silvers will hold the Castro.

Anonymous said...

Paulson said he was "very optimistic we're going get what we need from Congress."

*

Only one comment. Who is this "WE" white-man??

Yes, We, the royal WE, the bruce-pussy WE, will get what WE need.

The rest of the USA is fucked.

Anonymous said...

Yes, I would have gotten zero, except the $1500 road-bike, trouble is you cannot buy a carbon bike for less than $2k in BEND, I got my on sale this spring in PDX.

Thus I really think the road bike-criteria should have been set to $2k, for $1500 in Bend, all you can get is alumineeeeeuuumum.

A shit bike in Bend is $1k, and good bike in Bend is over $2k, most likely close to $3k would be good metric for cali biker in Bend.

Given that a bike that actually means something in BEND would cost over $5k, I think that is the figure HOMER should have used.

Lastly, I just want to mention one thing to newbies, as they say in BEND where you can't even buy locks, don't even think of letting your +$2k bike out of sight in this town for an hour it will be gone, BEND has the biggest bike theft in the west-coast, its a regular craigs-list bonanza.

The people I know in Bend with HOT titanium bikes have spent over $10k on their bike, and note most have 1/2 dozen bikes.

Perhaps a better metric would have been (n-1)10%, where n is the number of road-bikes per person.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

if you can only spare two syllables, call it "San Fran."

I shall always henceforth refer to it as Frisco, and to those that live there as Frisco Bitches, or You Frisco Faggots, depending on how hammered I am.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

"I shall always henceforth refer to it as Frisco"

Frisco is a city in Texas, just north of Dallas.

Anonymous said...

"For me Castro is a hot and personal topic"

It wasn't my post but the reference to "Castro" above is about the Castro neighborhood in San Fran. It gets its name from its main street, Castro Street, which "was named for José Castro (1808–1860), a leader of Mexican opposition to U.S. rule in California in the 19th century, and governor of Alta California from 1835-1836." (Wikipedia)

Anonymous said...

"I shall always henceforth refer to it as Frisco"

and let's always henceforth refer to Bend as Byng, which is a city in Texas, north of Frisco.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

named for José Castro (1808–1860), a leader of Mexican opposition to U.S. rule

So far, they are both murderous fucking Commies...

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Welp, Yet More Bull Shit from The Bulletin.

Here's the headline:

Visit Bend has seen a boost in funding, and it hopes to turn that into a boost for local tourism

Here is the first line in the piece:

Despite a 5 percent cut in city funding for the fiscal year that began July 1, Bend’s tourism-promotion agency, Visit Bend, is spending more money marketing the city’s attractions and generating more revenue than ever before, the city’s top tourism official said.

It never ends....

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

The visitor bureau has increased its funding by expanding its revenue sources from the city of Bend to a more diverse group of sources, including Mt. Bachelor ski area, which is contributing $100,000 toward a cooperative marketing program that will launch this winter, he said.

Other funding sources include $35,000 from Rockford, Mich.-based Merrell, which became Bend’s official outfitter in November 2007, La Placa said.


Oh good. Our taxpayer dollars have been 100% co opted by 2 corporations.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Comcast also will promote Bend tourism through online promotions on www.comcast .net, broadcast e-mails to subscribers and by inserting promotional brochures about Bend inside the cable company’s monthly bills of its 115,000 subscribers, he said.

Oh, and that shit works. First thing I do when I open my CABLE BILL is read the inserts.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

At least they did one thing right: The visitbend.com website.

Looks good. And actually has a shitload of info.

Anonymous said...

Well its confirmed as thought, nobody on this blog has ever been to SF. Period.

Marge, Castro is the gay-leather section of SF, its like a whole area of RENO-911, crossed with gay-leather bars out of 'police academy' a real fun place. Not a fucking thing about CUBA. I concur with Dunc, Marge is a man. Most likely our 'sally' guy.

Regarding Homers: Geography, if a REHO can call MADRAS 'close to bend', then 'bend' is a region. Portland is a region, and SF is a region.

Now, some parts of seattle will do fine, line 'university', or 'queen-anne', other places like tacoma, will go in the toilet, cuz the nice places have always been nice, and the shit-holes got over-priced in the bubble.

Same for PDX, areas like Ladds, Dunthorpe, council-crest will do fine, areas like gresham, happy-valley, or hillsboro mini-me ranches near INTEL are fucked.

Same for our BEND, as I have said all along nice little homes near Drake Park will hold to 4X income, this STD siberian shit 1Mile radius from Deschutes brew-pub will fall below $100k.

Every region has its very nice area, and its sucky areas, during the bubble in PDX they moved all the blacks out of NO-PO to gresham, its questionable post-bubble whether the white yuppy will stay. This is a lot like OAKLAND-CA, close enough from an RE point of view to be SF, whites have displaced blacks in oakland, but in that case there was NO where to move the blacks, they can't go east or west.

Much of south-sf towards san-jose has always been mexican barrios, that too got ran up by the bubble, where today 1bd shit-shacks are $800k, and people are living ten to a house. Not going to make it, this is probably why some in cali would like to send the mexicans to mexico.

This all gets back to wars in the Middle-East, they got no where to send the blacks, except to die in war.

Then there is our pretty little all white Bend-OR.

HOMER likes to draw a broad brush that all of SF will tank, or all of the world will go to hell. Some parts of BEND will be just fine. Like where I live, almost everyone on my street has been there 10+ years, and most of the homes are paid off.

The STD's are where the pain of the BEND region will be.

In SF, SEA, PDX regions the areas where the minorities were ran out of their homes, and the areas yuppified, that will be the greatest pain. Generally marginal white yuppy's over-paid for these shacks in the minority areas, with zero-down, and there is no skin on a large scale. Thus in all these cases I expect to see a huge drop.

We really don't have any of these issues in BEND, thus so fucking what, but homer keeps bringing it up.

At least PDX,SF,SEA has fucking jobs, more than you can say for BEND, which is now only tourism&government, which some would say is the same. There is OLD money in pdx,sf,sea; outside of hollern&smith there really isn't much old money in bend,

There really wasn't too much hobby farming in SEA, or SF. But PDX ( hillsboro,boring,...) so a lot of hobby-farming, e.g. 5ac mini-me-mcMansions, that are now down 60% and falling, like sisters, and tumalo, these money-losing acreages that were ONLY bought for APPRECIATION are going down hard.

That is the thing with the good, as I spent much time with the BAD.

The GOOD is the same everywhere, walking distance to restuarants, close-in, whether it be the drake-park area, or golden-gate park, or university-sea, or irvington/ladds-pdx these areas have always had hardly NO HOMES for sale, and there has always been a long list of people waiting for an opening. I have defined the GOOD, all else is FUCKED.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Marge is a man. Most likely our 'sally' guy.


Sorry marge. They know a lot about gay leather bars & want all women to be men.

Anonymous said...

"The GOOD is the same everywhere, walking distance to restuarants, close-in, whether it be the drake-park area, or golden-gate park"

The areas around GG Park are the dreary, foggy Sunset and Richmond Districts, where the new arrivals from China live in very crowded conditions. The old money areas are in the northeastern part of the city, such as Pacific Heights, Presidio Heights and Russian Hill.

Anonymous said...

"named for José Castro (1808–1860), a leader of Mexican opposition to U.S. rule

So far, they are both murderous fucking Commies..."

The U.S. stole California from Mexico in a brazen land-grab and eventually turned it into a nightmare. If you support that type of thing, then you must love what the Cali-Bangers did to Bend.

Anonymous said...

"The STD's are where the pain of the BEND region will be."

Part of this is just a matter of timing. People always talk so bad about new development, make fun of tract housing. But after 30 years when the trees have grown up and services moved close by, then all of a sudden these become established neighborhoods with good reputation. Everyone hates new housing developments in their early years, but years from now the better-built ones will suddenly become desirable.

As much as they're hated, home owner's associations add value because they keep the neighbors from doing lots of ugly, stupid shit in their front yards -- keep rusty hulks from accumulating, keep RV's from filling the driveway 11 months of the year, keep piles of topsoil and bark from sitting by the curb, waiting for months to be applied, until weeds take it over completely. Now THAT brings down neighborhood home values.

Anonymous said...

As much as they're hated, home owner's associations add value because they keep the neighbors from doing lots of ugly, stupid shit in their front yards

And they keep people from doing crazy things - like tucking their garbage cans neatly against the side of the garage. I mean, would you live in a neighborhood where you could tell that some of your neighbors actually generated trash? Or recycled?

And I know some of my neighbors drive scooters - but shame on them. They need to be hidden out of site at all times.

Don't even get me started on those people down the street that have a swing set for their children that wasn't properly approved by bringing material samples and a full site plan/elevation to the Architectural Review Committee. Heathens.

and the numbers... THE NUMBERS! Did you see those people down the street that are not using the proper font for their house number?

and I know 4 doors down they didn't use an approved paint color. Sure it looks right to the untrained eye, but in certain light you can tell there is a little too much brown in their tan.

What good are the HOAs if they can't keep all this madness from happening! I bought in this neighborhood so I could live without freedom of choice. Freedom of choice just adds stress - you actually have to make decisions.

Anonymous said...

People always talk so bad about new development, make fun of tract housing.

*

BULL FUCKING SHIT RE-HO.

STD's are out in the middle NO-WHERE which means you have to drive to Rays, Newport, Costco,... five times a day, rather than fucking WALK.

This is WHY the fucking STD is dead.

The ENTIRE premise of the STD was the post industrial RE-BUBBLE ( 1970->2004 ) which is now dead, it was dependent UPON cheap fuel.

ALL value is being able to walk to the store, the hw-store, the beer-store, this is HOW most of the world lives.

USA exceptional-ism is dead, BEND exceptional-ism is a SICK FUCKING JOKE.

The BEND STD will get HIT hardest down 90% across the BOARD, this has already been a dead-horse over&over on this blog/board for almost two fucking years.

Want to NOT lose your fucking money in RE?? I have already said where you'll hold, and I have already said where you'll lose. Given that 90% of the CUNTS on this blog-site live in FUCKING STD's cuz they're newbies, e.g. less than ten years in BEND. You can hurt a lot of feeling here when you offend the STD occupant, like offending a cali, but the fact is they're ONE IN THE SAME.

The CALI, and the BEND-STD occupant are the same fucking animal.

The explosion of STD's in BEND exists for ONE REASON only, and that is SDC deferral. If the FUCKING STD parasite had to pay the actual SDC rather than defer the cost to the old-timers, then their would be NO FUCKING STD's.

The saddest fucking part is that ALL the newbie clowns are REPUBLICAN GOLFERS, and you would think they would pay their way? Hell NO, they'll always get someone else to pay their way, out in a SIBERIAN TRACT.

Yes, HOA's, probably the only thing that saves a STD parasite from one another, but as you see up on AWBREY, eventually old HOLLERN will get tired of being the NAZI in Bend, and the WHOLE HOA ponzi scam will collapse, and when it does, all your STD's will become meth houses over-night.

Anonymous said...

You think you have it bad? My neighbor's kid was skateboarding last night at 8pm even though our CCRs specifically limit any offensive activity in the neighborhood. They let their cat out too. I'm trying to sell my house and am having no luck. I've already dropped the price to what I paid for it in 2006. I'm sure that kid must be skateboarding whenever there is a showing.

Anonymous said...

The old money areas are in the northeastern part of the city, such as Pacific Heights, Presidio Heights and Russian Hill.

*

I agree, but old money is old-money, which means nothing ever changes. But these are good examples of areas in SF, which will hold, because of the historic case of being so damn hard to get.

I still love GG-PARK, I don't mind fog, it always burn's off. It's still fun to stroll haight-ashbury and watch the aging hippy's.

I think the Chinese are pretty damn smart buying up as much of the best RE as they can. Old SF China-Town was cantonese and has been dying for years, the newbies from china are mainland ( mandarin ), and they don't like hong-kongy's, but the main-landers have money. Most chinese are entrepreneurs.

All of this is WHY SF has a great future, in spite the lazy white cali fat-ass parasite golfer.

Anonymous said...

One of my neighbors has a garden. Can you imagine? People will think that people in this neighborhood are too poor to buy food. That can't be good for my property value.

Anonymous said...

Yes, its terrible. I have already dropped my sales price to below the 2004 purchase price here in North West Crossing.

I'm sure the reason that the house hasn't sold is that none of my neighbors drive a prius.

Our HOA meets weekly, and we already have a car selection committee, soon these non-hybrid people will have to park in a neighboring tract. I'm a board member, and we recently approved hybrid sub-committee which will oversee what auto's can be seen in public spaces.

Anonymous said...

Sorry marge.

*

We saw marge's razor-clams a long time ago, and if I were her, I would have sued the plastic sturgeon.

Marge might be a woman now, but he'll always be one of the guys to us.

Homer is right, surgery for the sake of lifestyle is cali-ism.

Anonymous said...

One of my neighbors has a garden. Can you imagine?

*

Yep, and after about ten years they'll figure out they need a greenhouse, so they can grow starters in March, and be able to harvest in Sep, without the green-house, its plant in July, and watch the seedlings die in September.

The point is once the neighbor decides to grow food, then they need a green-house, and that would never be allowed in a STD, as they all have CCR's.

HOA's & CCR's aren't the reason the STD is doomed. The reason that the STD is doomed, is that the whole post 1970's STD lifestyle is OVER, everything is going to revert to close-in, and local, fuel costs are permanent. It's simply going to be too expensive to live, and boring to boot. What do SUV STD wives do? They drive 5-10 times a day to COSTCO or WALMART, with $10/gal fuel, they'll be stuck at home, the world as most men know will come to and end!!!

YES, HOA's SUCK, but only a STUPID fucking CALI would have bought into a BEND-HOA in the first place.

Anonymous said...

Hey did any of you CUNTS go to the sage-brush classic up at Broken-TOP this year?? Last saturday??

I know the one last year sucked big time, little finger food, and shitty wine, and $300/person.

Thinking about stupid fucking cali golfers in Bend, made me think of the sage-brush classic.

Anonymous said...

People always talk so bad about new development, make fun of tract housing. But after 30 years when the trees have grown up and services moved close by, then all of a sudden these become established

*

What a crock of fucking SHIT.

Think Mission-Viejo, down in CALI, back in the 1970's it was the NICEST STD in Orange-County, hell they had their own lake.

Today its ALL mexican, and on the weekend every garage door is open, and has its own flea-mart, and taco bar.

The STD is ALWAYS designed to last 15years MAX, nobody builds a HOME in an STD for a longer life. The kind of CALI that wants a new car every year, is GONE. The WHOLE reason MV sold out in the 1970's was the price was rising 20%/mo during the late 70's, and everybody was buying rights to by via lottery's. Then the first 5-10 years, MV was nice, then by the 1990's it had gone to shit, being +15 years old, and tired.

LOOK at the old STD's in Bend out by 27th SE by the DUMP, where is the fucking services? Are you talking a 7-11? Twenty years ago most of the STD's in BEND were JUST TRAILER-PARKS, in the last ten years most of the trailer-parks were converted to STD's, in another 15years, the same people who used to live in the trailer-park, will be back in the STD, in the run down shitty STD house, probably with their old trailer in the drive-way. This is the life of the STD.

The beautiful CALI is always moving UP, and flipping to the next STD, nobody ever looks behind. Given that this WHOLE lifestyle is new to BEND in the last 5-10 years, you have not seen anything yet.

Eventually OUR beautiful PR&MARKETING people of BEND, will have moved on to Joseph/Enterprise/Wallowa's and will be calling that the next Aspen, and all our beautiful STD people will leave BEND for the RE-gold-rush.

The vacuum created, will suck in the losers displaced to LA-PINES, and REDMOND, and they'll come back to BEND to live in YOUR STD.

Anonymous said...

IF you OWN an STD in BEND your fucked, I mean your really fucked, and now its too late to dump the pig.

I guess this is the essential problem here in BEND, everybody wants to assume the RE collapse is someone elses problem.

Of course most of the STD occupants on this blog are renters, but NOTE, in the coming 1-2 years, your owner will walk, which means you'll get evicted.

All these STD's are going to become scary fucking places at night, given that most are going to be empty. Most banks would rather have a home empty, than to have a renter, remember a bank doesn't want to be in the property-management biz, they want an owner with SKIN to occupy the REMOTE SIBERIAN STD CRAP SHACK.

Weeds, last week HOMER talked about WEEDS, WEEDS means fire, expect to see some big fucking STD's go up in the coming years in BEND, unless the city budgets a fortune to clean up the mess. Given they can't pay for snow removal, I don't think you'll see weed removal. BANKS aren't going to throw good money after bad, everyone will take the write-off, ... this is WHY ALL BEND-STD's will go down 90% or more.

Anonymous said...

The point is once the neighbor decides to grow food, then they need a green-house, and that would never be allowed in a STD, as they all have CCR's.

Don't they realize that if they don't have a garden the property values will stay up and they can then take out a HELOC to pay for food? Once a garden comes into the neighborhood we are going to loose our HELOCs.

Stupid people.

Anonymous said...

Wow, I stepped on some toes this morning with my f-a-v-o-r-a-b-l-e comments about tract homes and HOAs ... you know, I don't really give a rat's ass, I'm just calling it like I see it.

The point? ANY newly developed area is always hated at first -- can any of us honestly figure out which neighborhoods will be OK in 15-20 years and which will become blighted? I guess it's hard because my definition of 'blighted' (yard cars, etc.) is apparently different than everyone else's.

I'm sure it must be NICE to live close to Drake Park with other old farts who have their houses paid off. But we're not ALL collecting social security and one sausage link away from the emergency room. We can't ALL live near Drake Park and within walking distance to Newport Market, can we? Only way that can happen is if everyone starts living in places that look like THE PLAZA.

Anonymous said...

Any Cali-banger worth his/her weight in gold isn't going to ride some POS $1500 road bike. It's $5,000 minimum. Anything below that isn't going to turn heads. A $1500 road bike is like driving around in a buger green Ford Pinto. There's no style points involved.

Bewert said...

Re: ANY newly developed area is always hated at first -- can any of us honestly figure out which neighborhoods will be OK in 15-20 years and which will become blighted?

Blighted: Desert Sleaze, et al

Not blighted: Shevlin Ridge, et al

That cardboard box eastern stuff with 10' setbacks from the last 3-4 years is on its way to doom. Now the older stuff, with a little acreage, out east will do fine--you can actually have a garden and if you do as almostr all farmers do, make one well-planned trip to town a week, you will survive just fine. Hell, plant the right stuff and you can harvest a few deer during the year.

LavaBear said...

>>Any Cali-banger worth his/her weight in gold isn't going to ride some POS $1500 road bike. It's $5,000 minimum.

He must be talking about the frame itself. Even $1500 is an entry level Cali-Banger frame. Cali's wheel set is more than $1500. And he tacos those fuckers every few months so he needs a backup set as well.

Anonymous said...

Any Cali-banger worth his/her weight in gold isn't going to ride some POS $1500 road bike. It's $5,000 minimum.

*

I agree, this shows out of times that HOMER is with his $1500 figure. You can't touch a carbon bike in BEND for less than $2k.

$1500 in BEND gets you a K-MART bike with chinese components.

I buy my bikes in PDX from bike-gallery when they're on-sale, for 1/2 the price of what a so called 'bend-sale' would sell.

I completely agree, you'll never see a jack-ass with black spandex riding a $1500 bike in Bend.

HOMER, get with the times, and work with the crowd when you come up with numbers. Try and go into Sunnyside, or Pine-Marten and ask the salesperson for a $1500 carbon bike, they'll show you the fucking door. Knowing all too well that your not the right-stuff to even be in BEND-OR.

Anonymous said...

OK, I get it...

Anonymous said...

It's not the frame that costs that much money. I can get a custom frame built for $1500 (won't be carbon though)...it's the fucking components. If you don't want the Chinese shit which will break the first time you hit a pot hole, you gotta dole out at least $1500 so you can haul your fat ass around in the smallest gear possible.

Bewert said...

Re: ...it's the fucking components.

Wait till you see what the shit is going to cost next year, with the dollar in the toilet....

Anonymous said...

We can't ALL live near Drake Park and within walking distance to Newport Market, can we?

*

Yes, we can, its called a 15k population or less.

The essential problem, is this shit-hole has been over-sold, and yes your getting it,

HOLLERN has tons of APARTMENTS coming online next few years in BEND, your going to see fucking density, and they know that BUYING is out, all the old sleaze apartments got converted to condo's, so now build new high density apartments.

The problem is over-population, the simple fact is there is NOT enough water in the table, for 500k population in the tri-county like you cunts dream of, its a good thing gas is expensive, cuz something had to put a stop to the population growth here.

Regarding old-farts near Drake-Park, remember they die, and mostly what I see is board-heads, and such living ten to a house in rentals in the inner-hood of Bend, aka drake-park corridor.

Regarding toes stepped on anytime, anyone here says something positive about STD's they're fucked.


The essential problem is definition, there are NO nice large lots well built STD's in BEND, its all like NWXC with 5ft to your neighbor, and no yard, and a house that was built to last 15years.

Bend is the fucking desert.

It sounds like some of you dream of the shack out 15miles east of 27th-se, on 2 acres, that lifestyle is every much for old-farts as well, most young people don't want to live an hour from the store in the winter, and that's how long it takes to come into to town, when your ten miles east of horse-butte.

Most very old people don't want to be 1-1/2 hour from the store either, I know lots of old guys selling their BLACK-BUTTE post cali retirement home, to be closer to ST-CHARLES so they don't have to die enroute. In the winter it takes 1-1/2 hour each way to got to Bend to get vittles, if you live in BLACK-BUTTE, from what I have seen most old-farts get tired of that shit after about 8 years.

YOUTH is the future of BEND and elsewhere, and YOUTH wants to be near where they play, and work, and party. They don't want to commute, they don't want to be out in a siberian STD.

It's the fucking cali parasite trying to get away, the middle age lard ass that represents 90% of this blog, those are the fuckers that live in SHEVLIN std's, or TUSCAN pine std's, or NWXC, ... it ain't cool, and the cool factor is what counts.


Lastly, YOUR NOT GOING TO see 'plaza' density, cuz as we all know that shit didn't sell, what we're going to see is lots of section-8 HUD approved apartments. The kind of shit that made detroit what it is today. Thus, the future of BEND ain't going to be cool, the good news is HOLLERN's going to put his apartments out in siberia, perhaps they'll put in a 7-11 nearby, and you can walk.

All of HOLLERNS 'resorts' are going to be the same way, they're just STD's, imagine living at Brasada, and driving to the store in Bend in the winter, how many years can a cali do this, even with a 4wd SUV?

Anybody that has anything good to say about a BEND-STD, simply hasn't spent anytime in this town.

Bewert said...

BTW, another neighborhood resident loaded up the UHaul and left this morning, "...back to Michigan."

Anonymous said...

Not blighted: Shevlin Ridge, et al

*

Shevlin will be blighted, just give it ten years.

Remember that ALL that area is going high density. All the way to the park. Up Galveston/Skyline all the way to the forest boundary.

Out west of Shevlin they're already trying to get another 10k std's approved.

The inherent problem with STD's is they're always the 'street of dreams' when new, and then the calis move out about 5-7 years, and move up, and then the tract goes to seed.

There are exceptions like Awbrey, but they got views, which hold value, and people think re-model.

Shit, if you really want a nice house, just buy a lot, a big lot where you want to live, and have it custom built, and make sure it gets built right.

It doesn't cost more, if you find your own lot, and certainly material costs aren't that much different.

ALL STD's are a fools speculation game for suckers, they're always built with crap. That's why originally NWXC was such news, they were going to do it right, but that didn't last, now anybody can build anything at NWXC and there is no longer an approved builder's list.

STD's, pack them like sardines, out in no-where, e.g. cheap land. Remember as we have said over&over here, the way to get rich is to develop lots, by worthless desert land, get the city to pickup SDC's, and then find suckers to buy crap-shacks with bank-loans, and sell the lots for $300k, and make a fortune, builders generally don't make real money, its on the land.

This is why its better to shop around, and find a nice lots, and have your own custom home built right.

STD's always go to seed, always have and always will.

It takes often 100 years for an established neighborhood to become self contained, where people can work, live, eat, shop, fuck, play. That is where people want to live.

STD's are all about the cali lifestyle of commuting, and working 12hr days, and driving 2-4 hours a day, thus anything is possible, and post 1970's a lot of people ( HOLLERN ) made a lot of money selling STD's, and lot of copy cats, did the same, all over the west-coast.

ALL STD's are crap.

Anonymous said...

On the subject of STD's, there is ONE other species that even sucks more COCK.

That is the GATED STD.

The people I know all regret buying this shit, as anyone that visits them is a major pain in the ass.

Sebastian says' he puts up gates because the customer wants them, I suspect the cali-customer wants them.

So there you are, there is something in BEND worse than an STD, its the gated-STD.

I might add its also embarrassing to live in a gated STD, they're like prisons, often the gates fail in the winter, big trouble for 911 folk, as the most gates have to be raised by hydraulic manually in emergency after hours.

People who come to Bend and buy into this shit, have no fucking idea of how they're fucking themselves.

tim said...

A recent article in the Economist points out that some magic happened when the Gov't last week decided to let Fannie and Freddie tap the discount window. Before this, only banks could use the window.

Seems that when you use the window you have to put up special collateral. "Good stuff." Like Gov't paper. Or the paper of (get ready for it) government-sponsored entities.

Guess what Fannie and Freddie are. Yep. GSEs. So they now can create new bonds, and take those bonds to the window!

Fannie and Freddie can now, effectively, print all the money they want. They are the new Treasury dept and banks, all rolled up into nifty bundles.

tim said...

Regarding people bailing on the dream of Bend...

I'm hearing all kinds of complaints about Bend I wasn't hearing during the run-up.

Weather, boring, bad doctors and dentists, bad drivers. Sounds like excuses to leave to me.

Everything was "awesome" when houses were going up 20% year. Now Bend "sucks" all of the sudden.

Anonymous said...

Weather, boring, bad doctors and dentists, bad drivers. Sounds like excuses to leave to me.

*

Hell...bad doctors and dentists are every where. The trick is wading through all the marketing bullshit and find the ones who actually practice good medicine. The doc who delivered my kids was in B medical space but he was too busy delivering kids and was right across the street from the hospital where he was the head of the OB department...not advertised as some superhero...

Bewert said...

It took some time but I found the guy who makes dentures (yes, I know, I'm almost 50...) for many of the dentists around. Go straight to him and it's half the price and he knows what he's doing. Right across from Albertson's on North 3rd, next to Timm Family Dental.

Anonymous said...

That's why originally NWXC was such news, they were going to do it right, but that didn't last, now anybody can build anything at NWXC and there is no longer an approved builder's list.

*

BULLSHIT. You can't "build anything" at NWXC because they still have the same architectural standards they've had since the beginning.

Anonymous said...

Nah, NWXC has completely dropped their original arch requirements, originally you had to be from a list of seven approved builders, given that most of those builders are now BK, that didn't work, given that building completely stopped last year, they completely dropped all requirements, and now there are a few new crap shacks going up, so called 'affordable NWXC' crap-shacks.

I might add that originally you paid for those seven builders via the marketing budget, you paid a NWXC premium, but that went to marketing and NOT quality, I know many builders in this town, and they all told me they felt that the so called 'exclusive' builders of NWXC the so called 'best 7' were no better than anyone else in town.

All marketing, 100% marketing, the best part is that quite a few of HOLLERNS new high-density apartments are going in guess-where? NWXC, ...

Anonymous said...

Now Bend "sucks" all of the sudden.

*

Yes, its amazing what happens when you take away that 30%/yr apr always has always will.

Bend was always a shit-hole, but when people can make a $100k or more just on appreciation, most monkeys realize they don't have to work.

As this place slowly grinds to a halt, its going to get REAL FUCKING UGLY.

Hey Tim, I noticed something today on an early drive, I saw tons of contractor trucks all loaded for landscaping, and I didn't see ONE MEXICAN.

Well I already knew this quite a few of my contractor neighbors had started doing landscaping to supplement their income last year, but today I saw six or more rigs, and NOT a one with a mexican.

They scared the mexicans off last summer, and whitey got the $5/hr job ( after expense ).

It must feel pretty good living in one of Bends STD's and have a white man mow your yard.

Anonymous said...

The trick is wading through all the marketing bullshit and find the ones who actually practice good medicine.

*

Shit try to find a 'good lawyer', most just take an upfront fee, and make a few calls, and then tell you the retainer has been spent, and sit.

I know of NO profession, where you can be fleeced, and get nothing done, such as law.

At least with a bad dentist you got a bill, and you can prove the work was a fuck up, and ditto for the doc, and often the med's will give you a quote.

A lawyer will just take a retainer, and deliver nothing but bullshit, and there is NOT a fucking thing you can do, yeh call the 'bar' in salem, that is like calling the mob, and telling them you have been robbed.

Well shit, most docs came to bend to get rich on surgery, BEND ST-Charles is the USA per capita #1 for back surgery. Some of it is the athletic thing where you have a high population of people doing iron-man, that have literally beat the shit out of their body.

The RULE in BEND for any MED, is to get a second OPINION in PDX. Period. At least in PDX their is competition, e.g. 1/2 dozen hospitals.

There are many hungry dentists in Bend, trouble is are any of them good? I prefer the young ones who are trying to build their biz, rather than the old ones, that are trying to screw a few patients out of all their money.

The consensus is stay away from doc's, as they'll kill you every time.

I have met many good doc's, and quite a few honest dentists, but shit I have spent $$$ on lawyers in my years, and I have hardly ever found one that was smart and hard working, most just go from retainer to retainer, or take their 'customer' to the cleaners. Something like less than 25% of cases that go to court win, people think the lawyer is doing something, but most cases are generally quid-pro-quo by a judge, thus it pays to work with a lawyer thats playing racket-ball with the judges.

All this is besides, as BEND goes to shit, and cash is gone our 1,000's of pro's - doc's, dentists, lawyers, will have to bail, as their will be no money. They all showed up during the gold rush, some stuck around for it to come back, its not coming back, they're starting to see the pattern.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of Cali-bangers... why did they stop coming? Maybe because they're trying to get away from the Big Devil and his world-class destination resort!



http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/20/RECH11QS8K.DTL

Anonymous said...

Shit bruce, I think that inventor guy that's always posting here has dentures. Why not give him your biz??

CPST rotary dental implant turbine, perpetual motion mastication. 'Turn an ordinary mouth into a garbage-disposal'.

Something like that, perhaps he can come forward and offer bruce a quote on dentures???

Anonymous said...

Speaking of Cali-bangers... why did they stop coming?

*

They're still coming, they just now go to Redmond for the water-slide.

What about that water-slide homer?

How comes its not on the tombstone?

Anonymous said...

Tim,

Yeh I'm seeing more people at the Deschutes, the conversation used to be "Bend is Paradise".

Now its ...

"When is RE coming back?"

In about ten years, with the bottom at two years.

"I can't wait, I don't have a job here, and my wife hates this place"

So, why are you here?

"I heard it was the best place to be"

Where, Whom?

"What do you think?"

You tell them the truth, and they say.

"I NEVER HEARD THAT FROM ANYONE BEFORE"

Yeh, if you read the BULL&SORE everything is peachy in Bend, I think that a lot of our 2-5 year newbies are starting to open their eyes for themselves and get the picture.

It really is too bad there is no media in this town that tells the truth, they sort of get the picture that the town is about tourism, and city-hall about building STD's, but its takes a long time to sink in.

There should really be signs coming into Bend that say ..."WARNING, you are entering a tourist trap, Our city mission is to sell you more RE than you need".

It's doesn't really go much deeper, most people don't like being played the fool, and so many of the people here aren't willing to even talk to one another about the truth.

I'll say this, when the finally snap, its going to be quick and ugly.

Anonymous said...

Nah, NWXC has completely dropped their original arch requirements ...

*

TOTAL BULLSHIT! Buster must be off his meds today because he's more delusional than usual.

Anonymous said...

I heard a rumor today that another suicide by bad investment happened yesterday. Don't know if it will hit the news. He was a current partner in the Mirada out at Butler Market and Eagle. At one time also in the deal when they torn down the Mill Shed illegaly. Did or does own the OLCC license at Sunriver Country Store. Numerous successes over many years. If it is true Jay Audia is yet the next victim of the RE crash

tim said...

Re: Missing Mexicans

Most Mexicans are good hard-working people. They have been hit hard by the slowdown. And their relatives in Mexico have been hurt as well. I only knew a few Mexicans in town (personally) and they left a year ago.

I have seen some in gardening crews lately. I see fewer in building. But then again, I see a lot less building.

I think the huge immigration was just a side-effect of back-to-back bubbles.

tim said...

Marge,

I don't quite follow your paragraph. Are you saying Audia died? Or someone who had something to do with him died?

Bewert said...

BULL article with Audia quotes:

http://www.bendbulletin.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080123/BIZ0102/801230377/1006&nav_category=

But developer Jay Audia said he and his partners are confident that they’ve found a price range that will attract first-time buyers to a market that was skewed by a three-year bubble that pushed local home prices to record heights, at least partly due to soaring land prices.

“I see a lot of people trying to find a bottom,” Audia said Tuesday. “They’re dropping their prices maybe $5,000 here, then $10,000 there. But we’re jumping ahead of the market, and this is going to find the market.”

One thing is certain — Audia and his partners in Edge Development Group, including Jim Yozamp, owner of Bend-based Pacwest Homes, and Clackamas developer Jim Robinson, got their land at a price well below the market’s frenzied peak. And, depending on how things go, Audia said, it may presage a general drop in raw land prices, with a potential lowering of new home prices throughout much of the city.

The land, on the southwest corner of Butler Market and Eagle roads, sold to a partnership called Proterra Development Ventures out of Vancouver, Wash., in January 2006 for $16.5 million, or about $429,352 per acre, when the bull market in Bend residential real estate was at its peak, according to records on file in the Deschutes County Clerk’s Office.

Umpqua Bank filed a pre-foreclosure notice on the property in May 2007 when the partnership failed to pay back its $10 million loan, plus interest, according to the records.

The bank sold the land for $10 million to Edge Development in October, according to the records, getting back the amount of its original loan to Proterra, but not much more.


This is like the third one. It's really fucking sad if true.

It's just money. Family, friends, and, most importantly, significant others are worth way more than any amount of money.

WTF, people...

Anonymous said...

He committed suicide yesterday or so it seems.

Bewert said...

Re:...a market that was skewed by a three-year bubble that pushed local home prices to record heights, at least partly due to soaring land prices.

...

No, a market that was skewed by soaring greed and stupidity. Whether land, crap shacks, or STDs.

And the most disturbing part of this entire episode is that from COngress/Treas Dept/Fed to COBA/BULL they are all trying to fix it by restarting overbuilding.

National economic suicide, coming to your neighborhood soon.

Anonymous said...

A builder that has been in town for 25 years had a wacky girlfriend that committed suicide a month ago. When the cops came out one said that they were rolling on at least 3 suicides a week now. Teens to 60+ year olds. Never reported in the news however.

Sad Sad times.

Anonymous said...

Never reported in the news however.

Sad Sad times.

*

It should be interesting what threshold that the bull covers the suicide's?

Like the gal that dived out the out window at st-charles a few months ago... It sounded econ to me.

Sad? I'm not quite sure dreamers are at the end of the line when they get to 'bend', if it doesn't work here, e.g. if you don't find a golden-nugget in the toilet, then what?

Anonymous said...

Judia and his partners in Edge Development Group, including Jim Yozamp, owner of Bend-based Pacwest Homes, and Clackamas developer Jim Robinson, got their land at a price well below the market’s frenzied peak.

*

That means they paid $1.6M an acre for land that is worth 0.06 cent/acre.

Holy shit! ( assuming the low prices of $200k/lot where high was $300k/lot, where there are 8 lots per acre )

There's going to be a lot more BULL, until we see the bottom of this trough.

Anonymous said...

I think the huge immigration was just a side-effect of back-to-back bubbles.

*

Well timmy, I'll personally make sure that your grave stone say's "Here lays timmy, the only cunt in Bend that gave a fuck about humanity".

Anonymous said...

Nah, NWXC has completely dropped their original arch requirements ...


*

Homee, why try to get my goat, its old news years ago now, that NWXC dropped its original builder list.

Anonymous said...

ALERT - THERE is something in the AIR in BEND!!

Well tonight I went to our quarterly, retired BEND BUILDER's ASSN meeting AT Deschutes PUBIK house, monday night, ... $3/pint

I normally ask the basic questions, and get the lay of the land, but tonight struck me as very ODD.

Here is the gist, the deal is they're assuming that by spring of 2009, things coming 'roaring' back, and that if you don't DUMP all your SHIT, that's it, there never will be another, ... The assumption is that the O-OBOMB-A elect will be a short term BOOM in BEND.

What I couldn't pin anyone on, was what happens later, they think that the bottom is NOW, and that that spring-2009 will be the best time to PUMP & DUMP.

It's get's better, BLEDSOE is NOW personally loaning to any builder in BEND that needs money, the word on the street is that if you need money, and your credit is good, go to BLEDSOE for good rates.

All I can say is SHIT, this jock MUST love this town, but obviously he feel's he has enough money to protect his investment's. How about diversification? I mean shit?

The ONE THING, and I'LL repeat the ONE FUCKING thing I saw tonight, is NOT a fucking one of our retired builders has been in BEND more than 15 years, they all think that its coming roaring back, deja-vu, there is NO since of history.

This said, this is the MOST optimistic meeting I have seen in the past year, but NOTE, its like you got a ton of 'retired' builders sitting on a ton of empty lots in BEND that are all counting on PUMP&DUMP SPRING-2009. Then what? NO MORE! NOBoDy is going to do biz here, the consensus is spring-2009 will be the last cash-out window.

I ASK what about US, that will not sell, that intend to go the long haul? The consensus was if you haven't already bought in Mexico, and you don't sell it ALL in SPRING-2009. YOU BE FUCKED.

I know this is all too fucking abstract for a bunch of STD renters, but the BUBBLE implosion must be documented, as we're witnessing history in the making.

I talked with some dumb-fucks who really thought the inflection point was going to be April 2008, per da BULL.

I still personally see the foreclosures going down until 2012, and then at lease six years for BEND to roar back, I have NOTHING but patience.

The basic theory I heard is that O-OBOMB-A is going to prime the pump big time in 2009,... I personally don't think history works that way. Secondly the philo is that if just 1/2% of calis with money continue to come to Bend that is enough to keep the desert Isl afloat. I think that gives calis too much credit, all things being equal, why IN THE FUCK WOULD the 1/2% of calis with CASH come to BEND of all places??

This is the oldest con in the world, the assumption that if you get 1% you get rich, this reminds me of deja-vu high tech 1980's, the theory was if you could get 1% of spreadsheet you could get rich, trouble was their were 10k developers working on spreadsheets.

HELLO BEND, WHERE the fuck do you get the ego that the 1/2% of calis with $$ even want to come to BEND-OR? of all fucking places, its just another fucking assumption, that while it might get you laid in a bar by a blond, it will not get you cup of coffee in the AM.

Anonymous said...

Re: Missing Mexicans

Most Mexicans are good hard-working people.

*

You know TIM, I have always said mexicans are the salt of the west, hard-working honest people. I think for me I made that realization about ten.

I met mexicans, and the first thing they ask is how many brother&sisters do you have, how many children, ... When I was in my twentys they asked how many children do you have, that was question #1.

You meet a whitey and its how much money do you make, how many cars do you own, how big is your dick, ... how big are your wife tit's.

I'm mean mexicans value family #1, that is enough to me, to know that they're number #1.

Mexicans have a heart, enough said. Whitey is heartless.

Anonymous said...

while it might get you laid in a bar by a blond, it will not get you cup of coffee in the AM.

*

Has anyone noticed that all of Bend city council, bend city judge, city-hall, .. are blonds??

Go figure.

tim said...

You're right, Buster.

Humans have no dead-reckoning in their heads for either HISTORY or PROBABILITY.

Any dumb jock can do all the physics you need to catch a pop fly.

But history and probability? We have no feel for that, and we'll believe the dumbest things as a result of those two failings.

tim said...

I don't know if whitey is, by nature heartless.

How I think of whitey is distracted. Whitey, if he hasn't become too self-absorbed, can sometimes be roused out of his dream to pay attention to real life.

The distraction is a disease like obesity. It's spreading all over the world.

We're too fucking abstract. It's like the Peter Principle. We went one step too far removed in living our lives. Lost the meaning.

And as for Audia, I think that's just a rumor until I see an obit. Because I know someone who was with a family member of his today. I hope it's just a rumor.

Anonymous said...

Tim,
I too hope it is a rumor, Most rumors like this don't turn out well however.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...


It's just money. Family, friends, and, most importantly, significant others are worth way more than any amount of money.

WTF, people...


No kidding. I think this is the first failure of any sort these people have ever dealt with, and their response is suicide?

Fuck, it's just money.

Get the fuck out of Bend... you'll make more.

Anonymous said...

The distraction is a disease like obesity. It's spreading all over the world.

*

Tim, I've noticed you have this habit of using fat people analogies for everything. People who don't do the outdoor rec thing are like fat people. People who live in the midwest have lifestyles like fat people. Whitey has a distraction disease like fat people.

Now you're paranoid that fat people are taking over the world. What's with?

Anonymous said...

Like the gal that dived out the out window at st-charles a few months ago... It sounded econ to me.

No, that poor woman had been manic-depressive and in and out of hospitals for years. The economy had nothing to do with it.

Anonymous said...

Fuck, it's just money.

Yes, and it's not logical to kill yourself over it. But unfortunately in our society -- especially for men -- there's a lot of shame and stigma attached to financial failure. That's why these people commit suicide.

Also we don't know what other personal problems they might have had on top of the financial ones.

Anonymous said...

It should be interesting what threshold that the bull covers the suicide's?

It used to be, and I believe still is, Bulletin policy not to report a suicide unless the person was somebody prominent or the suicide was public and dramatic, e.g. the woman who killed herself by jumping off a balcony in St. Chas a while back.

Anonymous said...

It's get's better, BLEDSOE is NOW personally loaning to any builder in BEND that needs money, the word on the street is that if you need money, go to BLEDSOE for good rates.

*

It's getting BETTER, HOLLERN is now loaning money to builders, that have bad credit, but can be trusted.

The story is that if you need CASH to pull you through RIGHT-NOW, then HOLLERN&BLEDSOE will go you all the money you need. Obviously you'll pay more than the 4% BA is charging right-now if you have good credit.

APRIL-2009, will be the END, they're voting with their WALLET(S), then again, YOU-KNOW there is collateral on these loans, all these builders have tons of lots and land around BEND, that there using as collateral, with these personal HOLLERN&BLEDSOE loans.

I have heard its very hard to get a HOLLERN loan, but supposedly BLEDSOE is handing out money to anyone who needs it, I find this rather surprising, this guy just got here, and has no sense of history. I also find it surprising that HOLLERN is handing out money, my guess he's a little more selective on the collateral. You can't go wrong say loaning $100k on a large lot on the west-side, I'm sure that a lot of these 'builders' will in fact go BK over the next two years. Thus our NEW SHYLOCKS will get some very valuable land for nothing.

The PREMISE, and again the MAIN premise of the BET is that the entire 1/2% of the calis with CASH will continue to come to BEND en-mass. I really think this is the principal bet, I mean why BEND? With todays national collapse, of all places BEND? Shit there are bargains now in Jackson-Hole&Aspen, thus why BEND??

The entire PREMISE is that 1/2% of calis with CASH, are all dying to sell their CALI property, and move to BEND, and no-where else.

I'm highly suspicious of this assumption. It's too simplistic.

The actuality IMHO is that OREGON takes two years after everyone else to correct. It's always been this way, for BEND to coming ROARING-BACK into perpetuity post april-2009 would defy history, something that BLEDSOE has no fucking idea about. Again, HOLLERN I'm sure is counting on default, and thus picking up prime RE lots, so why not.

Another perspective is that BLEDSOE could be the next boss-hogg, but my suspicion is you have NEW-MONEY, and he's going to blow his WAD on BEND, and this thing is going to go on post 2012 before it ROARS back.

The assumption is by April-2009, the O-BOMB-A new-prez hysteria is going to trickle to BEND, like its O-BOMB-A country, but the fact is this is still REPUBLICAN country, and BLEDSOE & HOLLERN are still right-wingers. The hypocrisy is amazing.

Today we have ton's of builders who can't build, you have the younger ones doing landscape and long distance jobs. BEND IS DEAD. Most of the middle age builders are right now on the road in temporary retirement in their RV. A little cash, sitting on TONS of BEND-LAND, and they're waiting this thing out.

The theory right now is we're at bottom, and if you don't buy now, you'll not get a deal-of-a-lifetime by april-2009. This smells TOO MUCH like the COBA mantra of 'best in 20 years', which we know is BULLSHIT, cuz best in 20 years would mean you could buy a house in Bend for $80k or less, and of course today you can't, and I'm talking WEST-SIDE.

The builders did agree that I met with last night, that west-side is where you can't lose. That east-side was over-built, and would languish for years. That incoming 1/2% rich-calis would all descend on west-side like locust.

I'll say thing, HOLLERN&BLEDSOE are putting their money, where the COBA-MOUTH is, a guy with good credit and collateral can get 4% all day long right now from BofA, I don't know what BLEDSOE is charging, but if your credit is bad, or your supplier credit has been cut a BLEDSOE loan means no BK, but this thing is going to go on, and on.

The assumption is that NONE of hte national matters, that the 1/2% calis have SO MUCH FUCKING CASH saved, and their bringing it ALL to BEND, that it all doesn't matter.

This may be why on this blog, we see so much HOSTILITY towards calling a cali an asshole from hell. Its rather clear that the powers that BE, in BEND, have 100% of their faith that the 1/2% cali-cash factor is the great-white hope of BEND.

I don't even agree with these numbers, first of all their is new money and old money, and the new money will be gone, because of the double-your-bet game, and OLD-MONEY will stay PUT, why in the fuck would leave Palasades in cali, or KnobHill in SF for Bend? A second home in ProngHorn perhaps, but the assumption that ALL of Calis old-money is going to back the bag like the beverly-hill-billys and come to BEND is a crock of SHIT.

Me thinks you have seen a slowdown of wealth moving to BEND.

There is the me-too factor with BLEDSOE, I mean perhaps if he got a dozen NFL buddy's to do what he's doing, that would cause the BUZZ, and I'm sure that's what he's trying to do, but shit that is like golfing, does OLD-MONEY really care that their is an aging jock in the village? I DONT THINK SO!

I see BLEDSOE's new private club, next to the D&D as a place where folks can pay $50k, to sit and watch an NFL game, a social club, like our too many golf courses. So BEND becomes a mecca for lard-ass guys to watch football on TV, and smoke cigars, what the FUCK does that have to do with the amenitys? Not a fucking thing, the social club could just as well be in BLEDSOES new 10k sq-ft gym he's building under his house @highlands@BT. Or some cave up at Pronghorn.

Not many guys are lucky enough to get rich on FOOTBALL, and certainly BENDS un-educated builder who was at the right place, at the right time, that is no different than the morons in 1999, that made $10k for a website, its NOT COMING BACK.

The notion that old-cali-money is coming to BEND to be near right-wing-NFL lard-ass cigar smokers is a crock of fucking shit.

I really think that last men standing in MEN with CASH are so full of themselves, they see BEND as some kind of UTOPIA to weather the storm during the O-BOMB-A years.

The trouble is if you have MONEY, and lots of CASH, there are better places than BEND OREGON, and the simple fact that easy-money will NOT be made in BEND for years to come will be known.

BEND grew in the last ten years cuz of get-rich quick and easy money to anyone with a breath. This is OVER. It's NOT coming back in apr-2009, and at some point HOLLERN&BLEDSOE will quit loaning, and given that is the ONLY thing today keeping BEND alive, the future isn't bright.

Anonymous said...

No, that poor woman had been manic-depressive and in and out of hospitals for years. The economy had nothing to do with it.

*

If you go back and read the story, you'll see that her years of depression was about money.

I think the reason she jumped at the hospital, was that they weren't helping her.

Recall also last year that old couple that ran the car in the garage, they did it cuz of money, and BULL told the story.

It's hard to say if there will be MASS suicide in BEND, I mean this NEW-TOWN is so fluid, they can easily just pack the UHAUL and be gone some night, rather than using a gun.

A society of people that ONLY care about image, and then one DAY they see a MTN of DEBT, with NO fucking hope of recovery, ... Then again, those of us who have lived at some point in our lives with NUTTIN, know very well, that its not all that bad living in a car, and hanging out all day with your friends, and mooching for beer money.

"A leisure class exists on both ends of the economic continuum".

The people who KILL themselves, the old I can see cuz they know they're going to die, they're broke, and the medical bills, just means the lawyers and hospital gets the home.

But for a young person? I think its more COMMON for the BIG business man that has the empire, his life sucks anyways, he's given his all, and when it fails, there is NO point.

Oregon is FULL of slackers, you can go to PDX any time, and get pussy all day long, and hang at coffee shops, and nobody thinks twice that all you own is a bike. Thus there is NO reason for the young to out themselves, and as most probably know the young are bailing BEND in droves and have done so for years.

BEND is a geriatric ponzi racket, the kids know that.

So, who will kill themselves? I think tons of people up at BT will kill themselves given that their broke, the 401k is gone, and the ENTIRE idea of coming to BEND and getting rich off appreciation failed, their retirement dream failed, and without money, there is NO health care.

I think in the coming years your going to see an incredible demand for health care from the golfing class, that makes up BEND.

Anonymous said...

No kidding. I think this is the first failure of any sort these people have ever dealt with, and their response is suicide?

*

Shit get an old boat, or an old RV, and head down to mexico and live on $500/mo or less, or shit go to thailand, and live on $500/mo or less and get a 20 yr-old wife even if your 80, ...

There are simply too many options, unless of course your health is fucked.

I think that is the essence of BEND, our golfers didn't come here to road-bike, or hike, or climb, they came to MAKE-MONEY, and eat tempura-fried-bacon @ the DEEP.

I think that a lot of these middle age builders&flippers, have FUCKED their health, I see them at Deschutes PUBIK house.

I think when your near 50, and your health is shot, and the easy-money is over, that suicide could be a real sweet option.

There is a saving that folks should invest as much in their financial savings as well into their health-savings, e.g. excercise eat-well, ... cuz, all that money don't mean shit when you become jabba-the-hud.

The city, PR&MARKETING, hell look at SageBrush-CLASSIC, ALL of BEND is about RE, easy-money, and GLUTTONY. This a class recipe for suicide. The city pays the wine to flow all year round in tents at our parks, where people eat finger food that will kill them.

Darwin does take care of the BEND crowd in the END.

tim said...

>>Now you're paranoid that fat people are taking over the world. What's with?

In a recurring nightmare I have, I am chased down and eaten by the obese diner from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.

Anonymous said...

Now you're paranoid that fat people are taking over the world. What's with?

*

Tim, exercise does improve the mental,

I concur that midwest isn't fat, those people work hard, ...

hard-work is the same as excercise.

I think 'fat' is just a lazy way to say 'lazy'.

People that have lost their health, and TIM, the #1 reason is OVER-WEIGHT, once you have lost your health, the mental goes down, then if you lose your money, well there is nothing, ... unless of course there is love, family, ... but my opinion of BEND is its a gold-rush town, where everyone left their family to get rich, its hard to go back home poor&out-of-shape.

Hell folks came to build in 2002, and quickly learned by 2004 they could flip and make over $50k/yr for doing nuttin, I remember them all hanging 24/7 at the town bars, enjoying the 'good life'.

There are a lot of 'fat' people who aren't lazy, and there are a lot of skinny people who ain't happy.

I prefer to use the word to describe BEND as GLUTTONY, which talks about the lifestyle in BEND, not the person. In BEND you must have discipline to road-bike, .... hike, its all too easy to go to the partys every fucking day.

Health can be lost quickly even in your 30's, USA is over-weight this is a fact. Toss in depression because of loss of income, with not being in shape, and you have nothing to live for. Of course survivors would have never gotten into this hole in the first place.

Which gets back to OUR BEND, we're a magnet for people who want something for nothing, who want someone to caddy their golf-clubs. Who want to make money while sitting at the bar. It's not surprising that BEND will have tons of people who have NO hope, they left their family's behind, ... I think most gold-rush scenarios end this way, you waste the family fortune on your stake, and you don't find gold, ... very few return, some go to the next claim, ... some stumble home.

BEND is a town of HOT-AIR, HOLLERN has been able to inflate the bubble for 40 years, let's see how long it lasts.

Lots of broke people here, just sit and watch TV, and drink beer, and eat chips. Then its a down hill cycle, is it 'FAT'? Call it what you want, call it depression, but at some point its the end of the road. It's why this are is the METH capital, the kids want a cheap instant high. They're bored out of their minds. Most METH people have destroyed their health by 30, are they 'FAT'? HEll no.

tim said...

>>Also we don't know what other personal problems they might have had on top of the financial ones.

Money problems often bring marital problems along for the ride. It's hard to see past the problems of the day.

tim said...

I just meant our obesity problem is not coincidence. Just like our increasing credit card debt is not coincidence.

Not everyone suffers from the same woes. But as a population, we are suffering from a few maladies worth note.

Sure, as a species we've licked a lot of diseases, invented a lot of cool things.

But we have lots of bad habits and mental health issues to address.

I don't have all the answers. Shit, I don't have any answers.

But I did spend 3 hours floating down the river the other day.

Anonymous said...

I have heard the rumor about Audia from 2 other sources now. One said he did it at home but didn't know how.

tim said...

>>I have heard the rumor about Audia from 2 other sources now. One said he did it at home but didn't know how.

That's terrible.

Anonymous said...

Money problems often bring marital problems along for the ride. It's hard to see past the problems of the day.

*

Marriage counselors have always said that money is the #1 reason for failure in a marriage.

I can remember back in the 50's the old depression people would tell us "With the bill collector at the front door, loves goes out the back door".


Timmy, nobody has solutions, but at least you care.

The whole point here is that we share what we see.

The general gluttony of the US, will not last, Huey-Long used to promise a chicken every pot. Today everyone that breathes has bought home, has credit cards, cars, .. et-al, not only did everything american get a chicken, he got rich.

Rich peoples disease like GOUT has been known for the millenium.

Basically a high diet of liver-pate, and your feet swell up, you can't walk, GOUT has always been a rich persons disease.

Today with so manys americans eating the equivalent of liver-pate, its not surprising that vast numbers of the public are suffering.

Certainly econ depression, is tough, but it makes people tough, easy-money makes people lazy, envious, and boring.

Ebb&flow, nothing new under the sun.

Look at Bend you see the young floating, you see the young mtn-biking, sure once in awhile you see an oldster.

The cali's come to Bend out of shape with a little money, thinking that mtn-biking, and road-biking is in the air, they get caught up with the every night wine&dine party's and soon, excercise isn't even an option.

Bend is marketed as perpetual-youth-machine, but as we all know, its the poor on bikes that get the excercise, not the 'riche' in SUV's.

Bend is full of hypocrisy, it take virtually NO money to enjoy the read Bend, e.g. hiking, biking, x-c skiing, running, walking, climbing, all year round.

In the recent +10 years they came to BEND to get rich, I came here over 40 years ago to play, and I still play.

There's an old saying "Don't wish for anything, you might get it".

Most of the newbie 'riche' builders I know in BEND are in terrible health. Too busy making money, and doing deals to enjoy the simple things in life.

Instead of floating for free, they're paying $500/person for finger-food and bad wine at SageBrush-Classic, so is Bend.

Yep, I too floated most days this past weekend.

Anonymous said...

Audia caught a falling knife back in Jan-2008, and bet the farm, as the below's says the assumption was cheap housing would sell like hot-cakes. A small example of how flawed assumptions don't work in Bend, OR in a 'falling knife' economy.

Low-cost houses in Bend's future
Big question is whether development will portend a drop in land prices

By David Fisher / The Bulletin
Published: January 23. 2008 4:00AM PST
A bank foreclosure on a 38-acre chunk of land in northeast Bend has dropped land costs to the point where a group of Bend developers say they’ll be able to sell new houses again this summer for as little as $189,900 apiece, or a little more than half the 2007 median Bend sale price of $349,000.

Whether buyers will buy remains to be seen: At the moment, they’re not snapping up Bend houses very quickly at any price.

But developer Jay Audia said he and his partners are confident that they’ve found a price range that will attract first-time buyers to a market that was skewed by a three-year bubble that pushed local home prices to record heights, at least partly due to soaring land prices.

Anonymous said...

developer Jay Audia said he and his partners are confident that they’ve found a price range that will attract first-time buyers

*

This is the oxymoron assumption right here, anybody that could buy, did buy. By now that animal, the BEND 'first time' VIRGIN buyer with good credit, and 20% down, simply doesn't exist.

People in BEND, especially newbies only BUY RE to get rich, nobody ever got rich in BEND by buying east-side crap-shacks built for the poor.

Besides in todays market why buy a new 'affordable' when you can buy anywhere in town for under $200k!

Anonymous said...

So far July sales are lagging June.
July to date 53 SFR sold @$284 Med.
June 1-22. 71 Sold @ $309k Med. July 1-22 in 07. 74 sold @ $339k Med.
The only part of the market that is booming is the active listings are going up. Now @1642 SFR.

Anonymous said...

so many hybrid comments here lately and then i found this:

Metropolitan areas where hybrids are most popular

Rank, Metropolitan Area, Hybrids per 1000 Households*

1 Portland, OR 11.19
2 San Francisco, CA 8.76
3 Monterey, CA 6.83
4 Santa Barbara, CA 6.08
5 Los Angeles 5.60
6 Bend, OR 5.35
7 Washington, DC 5.06
8 San Diego 5.00
9 Charlottesville, VA 4.87
10 Eugene 4.64
11 Seattle 4.26
12 Honolulu 3.86
13 Eureka 3.67
14 Sacramento 3.66
15 Denver 3.50

http://www.hybridcars.com/market-dashboard/feb07-overview.html

Anonymous said...

Damn, that's pretty amazing, considering the enormous numbers of gigantic SUVs and trucks you still see around here. I could never understand why anybody who isn't a farmer, rancher or construction worker would want a goddamn truck, and I can't understand why ANYBODY would want an SUV.

Anonymous said...

Certainly econ depression, is tough, but it makes people tough, easy-money makes people lazy, envious, and boring.

"Adversity makes men; prosperity makes monsters." -- Balzac

Anonymous said...

Instead of floating for free, they're paying $500/person for finger-food and bad wine at SageBrush-Classic, so is Bend.

The Sagebrush Classic once was a fairly affordable charity event; now it's just a pretentious party at which pretentious CO newbies get drunk and throw up on each other to show off the fact that they can afford to.

Anonymous said...

it take virtually NO money to enjoy the read Bend, e.g. hiking, biking, x-c skiing, running, walking, climbing, all year round.

Equipment for some of that stuff (biking and skiing) can get pretty spendy.

And of course you can do all of that stuff except skiing virtually anywhere in the country; the idea that you have to live in Bend to enjoy that "unique outdoor lifestyle" is total bullshit, part of the "Bend is SPECIAL" marketing package.

Anonymous said...

Reason why Clinton administration makes it big to economic growth and
simultaneous achievement of fiscal reconstruction

The United States misunderstood the preferential treatment to the income gainer and the property owner in 1925 as a correct selection. It was misunderstood that the tax system was irrelevant to business. The income deregulation plan decreased to 25% though the boom was praised at the high graduated income tax rate of 50?73% at that time was executed.
The world great depression following the large sudden fall of stock prices was caused in 1929 since it continued for four years.

The top rate of income tax will be strengthened in three years, and a graduated tax increase is done and strengthened from 25% to 63?>92% restricting the income in dramatic form. 「The United States held off the rise in the unemployment rate in only six years. National revenue before burst of the economic bubble is completely recovered, and the real economic recovery orbit. 」..decrease.. No had it.
However, the tax increase plan of this United States is evaluated as the policy unavoidably taken, and is clear also in forcing a large tax cut policy of Reagan Administration that generates large-scale fiscal deficit after 50 years and present child Bush administration.

However, it made it big to real economic growth and the simultaneous achievement of the fiscal reconstruction in the tax increase policy of the criticized graduated income tax etc. when Clinton administration after the political power of Reagan failed claptrap.

Anonymous said...

Equipment for some of that stuff (biking and skiing) can get pretty spendy.
*

BULLSHIT,

I'm talking walking in the mtn's or desert all you need is feet, and I specifically said x-c ski, FUCK bend MT-B, you can get ski's at garage sale anywhere in Bend for $5, and same for hiking boots.

Anybody that buys into the fact that it costs money to walk or x-c ski, is an idiot.

Same for biking you can buy bikes all day long good enough to cruise anywhere for $25, where the fuck do you think ALL our bend homeless get their bikes.

Anonymous said...

Damn, that's pretty amazing, considering the enormous numbers of gigantic SUVs and trucks you still see around here.

*

That's cali, bigger is better.

Hell even ARNIE drives a H-1

Like HOMEE says this week, why pay to have your wife go from 38C to 38E? Shit a 'C' cup is more than a mouthful. That 'E' shit is so she looks like a porn-star.

Big tits, dicks, homes, auto's, its ALL cali, and since we brought in the cali's with new money, well this is what we get, good news is all that new money is evaporating.

Anonymous said...

We don't have a confirm on our most recent 'suicide' rumor.

That said, last week I was writing about 'pools' something I have seen for 40+ years in BEND.

Generally POOLS end this way, money doesn't really make it to the 'investment' gets spent on other stuff by other partys along the way to 'pay the bills'.

It's one thing to lose YOUR money, or YOUR family's money, but when you lose your nieghbors life savings, or the church or the community, ...

You take a very visible community person, who trys to do something BIG, and pools all the money from friends, and others, and then trys to catch the proverbial knife, well its not pretty.

Like money, we all know in high-tech for those that made it big in the 80's they thought they had the gift, very few people can do a startup a second time, the first is always luck.

Like BEND RE this cycle, all you had to do is be here, and buy anything from 98 to 2005 and you looked like a geni-ass. Then you go out and build 'affordable' code word for disposable housing, and it don't sell, imagine that!

Bend is fucked, back to POOLS, the LAST big POOLS folded in the late 80's very BIG to pool money in BEND Pools were always ran by realtors or builders, and got millions; the money always got spent or lost, and the people that put the deals together always died. I remember a few years back, a contract was actually put out on an individual, that is how much anger there was, most end in cancer, or suicide, or an 'accident'. Having seen these pools start and end many times in Bend, they all remind me of little 'tulip manias', as everyone in Bend always wants to be part of the latest pool.

Note, when you here the BULL say some developer has "PARTNERS" for his/her project, they're talking a fucking BEND-POOL.

Remember normally if a guy can do it he does all 100% on his own so he gets the profit, if a guy has to pool in the first place, it means he ain't got the cash. This is why pools always go bad, then of course pools are always funded by idiots.

Only in Bend where 9 of 10 believe in perpetual-motion-machines, and perpetual-money-machines, ... in BEND the perpetual money pool, has always been the money-tree. Remember when you hear the BULL or SORE say some developer/builder has a partner think POOL.

Welcome to Bend.

Anonymous said...

Must be a slow day if the Repuglicans have to bring up Clinton.

Don't worry O-BOMB-A is going to create a hysteria in cali, and in the frenzy all the rich are going to move to bend-oregon, so say the latest rumor that bend is coming back april-2009.

I love shit eating republicans they hate clitorisB&o-bomb-a, yet they love to see them get elected, cuz they know the 'new wind' is going to get the cali's to open their wallets in Bend, yeh right, last time I looked most cali liberals were broke.

Anonymous said...

42 ratio % of 96 years from 22% of 79 years of owned wealth of the top the United States
one %
Pay and treatment rise only by 1% while productivity rose during 90 year by 7% in the
United States.

If rich people insist only on those neither tax reduction, tax-avoidance nor tax evasion, it
takes the lead, and the tax is governed, money can be done.
The redistribution policy of wealth is necessary.
The redistribution of wealth and the income redistribution secure the fairness of the resource allocation, and there is an effect to bring the society liquidity. It is sole steps where the chance and the fairness of the rise of the hierarchy are brought, and a necessity and an indispensable element to the present age democratic nation also in the low income earner.
The high income earner turns the majority of the income to savings.
Then, it taxes the high income earner and it distributes it to the low income earner.
The effective demand increases, economy expands, and investment earnings improve because the low income earner who has a higher propensity to consume turns most of the income to consumption, too.

Bewert said...

Buster, that is the best reasoning for progressive taxation I have ever read.

Where would you rather see great wealth--in overseas bank accounts or circulating in our economy?

Simple and succinct.

tim said...

If California doesn't get its fiscal house in order soon, we'll see many businesses moving out. But they won't come to Bend--they'll go to pro-business states.

Some businesses will remain tied to the Bay Area. Internet startups need the lawyers and the capital that are there. But other businesses will go.

Anonymous said...

I have to conclude you don't know what your talking about when you're talking about SF. I think it has more to do with your propensity toward creating artificial stereotypes and projecting your bottomless hatred at them. Sorry, but it ain't reality. Personally, I hate SF. But it is quite sound economically. It is an endless fountain of endless 100K + jobs. If you don't make that in SF, you don't even exist or must have no motivation whatsoever. There is so much money there I don't think you can fathom it.

tim said...

Sf and the strip of tech cities to the south will be fine. But that doesn't mean there won't be RE slumps. There is more money in NYC and London than in SF, and that doesn't prevent London and NY from suffering RE slumps.

Quimby said...

>> Big tits, dicks, homes, auto's, its ALL cali, and since we brought in the cali's with new money, well this is what we get, good news is all that new money is evaporating.

Damn, Homey and Buster. You're being pretty hard on the Calis lately....What's gotten into you?

:=)

Anonymous said...

True about SF real estate slump. But the thing is that prices in SF were always absurd, and largely out of reach of anyone but workaholic overachievers or new money technocrats even before the current run-up. It is a place where it is completely the norm to be a lifelong renter. Rent is controlled, so little motivation to buy.

Anonymous said...

You meet a whitey and its how much money do you make, how many cars do you own, how big is your dick, ... how big are your wife tit's.

*

Actually the most common question people ask is "So, what do you do?"

tim said...

"So, what do you do?"

"I'm a porn star."

"How big is your dick?"

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

It is an endless fountain of endless 100K + jobs.

Right. I have an "endless fountain of hatred" about a place I know nothing about. Don't know much about Seattle either, but I don't see it suffering the same fate.

Mark my words: The fountain is going to run dry in a FEW YEARS.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...


"Adversity makes men; prosperity makes monsters." -- Balzac


Smart guy. Was he in porno? Ca that's a kick ass porno name...

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Metropolitan areas where hybrids are most popular

So weird that Bend is #6. I remember when hybrids first got here, I was in the market for a car, and was told they couldn't give them away... too small. HUGE SUV's were still The Thing.

I wonder if we are tops for HUGE SUV HYBRIDS, an oxymoron so imbecilic, that I literally never would have dreamt such a thing would be manufactured.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

So far July sales are lagging June.
July to date 53 SFR sold @$284 Med.


Looks like June was a fluke.

So few sales, any one month is starting to mean less & less. Might have to go to rolling 3 month AVG's soon to figure out the trends.

tim said...

>>Might have to go to rolling 3 month AVG's soon to figure out the trends.

Yeah, you could do that. YOY numbers still seemed fine to me. A little excited about the June 2008 numbers? A look at June 2007 will cure that. No way month-to-month means anything.

When do sales usually slow down seasonally? August or September? We're almost there.

tim said...

Assault Suspect Spotted
KOHD - 2 hours ago
A phone call to Bend police starts another search for Adam Davenport. He’sa 26 year old Bend man that is wanted by police on assault and robbery charges steaming from an incident at JJ Court Apartments last week.


Yeah, that's right. "Steaming."

Anonymous said...

When do sales usually slow down seasonally? August or September? We're almost there.
Generally people want to be moved in before school starts. So if it's not in escrow by August your chances of selling this year get much slimmer.
I agree that the monthly stats are meaning less for a good read of our market. It will mean even less as we begin to compare 2008 to 2009. The # of sales may run even but I think the Median will start showing lower and lower prices. Keep watching the ppf.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Tum-A-Lum lumber in Redmond & Kayo's Roadhouses' in Bend & Redmond closing.

Both due to 'lack of business'.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

This sounds like the entirety of Cent OR. The bigger they are, the harder they fall...

Diablo Grande project has a devil of a time

Robert Hollis, Special to The Chronicle

Sunday, July 20, 2008


(07-20) 04:00 PDT Patterson, Stanislaus County -- In a state where water is growing ever more scarce, gasoline is flirting with $5 a gallon and home prices are in a free fall, the sprawling Diablo Grande land development stands out as a 20th century dream turned to a 21st century nightmare.

Nested in bone-dry Oak Flat Valley in the Diablo Range 8 miles west of Patterson and Interstate 5, Diablo Grande was touted as a "world-class destination resort and planned residential community." Among its most desirable features are two golf courses, the most prominent of which was designed by golf legends Jack Nicklaus and Gene Sarazen.

Diablo Grande was to be among the largest land developments in the history of Stanislaus County. Sprawling across some 28,500 acres of ranchland - roughly twice the size of Manhattan - developer Donald Panoz, multimillionaire inventor of the nicotine patch, envisioned 5,000 to 10,000 homes, a resort hotel and spa, six golf courses, an equestrian center, vineyards, a winery and commercial properties, including a high-tech research park.

But today, after Panoz and his partners sank more than $120 million into the project, Diablo Grande is mired in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings and is expected to go on the auction block within weeks. The minimum bid is $25 million. If no one bids more, then Housing Source Partners, a Pismo Beach (San Luis Obispo County) condominium developer, will acquire the project, and about $54 million in unpaid debts.

Housing Source Partners is a "stalking-horse" bidder, a term used in the bankruptcy code to establish a minimum bid in a bankruptcy auction, said Craig Stewart, an agent with Marcus & Millichap in San Diego, which is handling the bankruptcy sale.
Lawsuits upon lawsuits

In its bankruptcy filing in Modesto, the developer blames some 21 lawsuits filed, starting in the 1990s by local environmental groups and the Stanislaus County Farm Bureau, for delaying the project and contributing to its demise.

But others, including government officials and homeowners, say many factors, including the developer's own mistakes, caused the collapse. Water, or rather the lack of it, dominated most of the litigation. Ultimately, the developers found a big and reliable source - the nearby California Aqueduct - and contracted with the Kern County Water Agency for 8,000 acre feet a year, enough for about 5,000 homes, the vineyards and golf courses.

A global settlement to the lawsuits was reached in 2004 when the developers agreed to set aside half of their acreage as protected habitat for the endangered California red-legged frog and the San Joaquin kit fox.

In addition to Panoz, J. Morton Davis, chairman of D.H. Blair Investment Corp., and former landowner Heber Perrot were among the original investors in the partnership. According to the bankruptcy filings, today Panoz through two ventures owns 35.1 percent of Diablo Grande, while Davis owns the rest. Panoz declined to comment for this story; Davis did not return calls to his office in New York City.
Homeowners devastated

As bad as things are for the tycoons who pumped millions into the development, the unfolding nightmare is more devastating for many of the 350 or so individuals and families who invested their cash and dreams in Diablo Grande real estate.

Like millions of other dwellings across the country, home prices in this remote development tucked away in the buckskin-colored hills west of Interstate 5 have melted away by more than half, owners say. Many have seen their homes lost to foreclosure. Others who want to sell find they cannot unless they're willing to walk away from most of their original investments.

Claudio and Kristina Ross-Ortiz are in a typical financial bind. A home they purchased in September 2006 for $353,000 has been on the market for a year at $149,000, with no offers.

Through the neighborhood e-mail grapevine, Kristina Ross-Ortiz says she's heard that some 70 homes are being or have been foreclosed upon out of about 350 built. Several calls and a visit to the offices of Dwain Sanders, Diablo Grande's vice president of development, seeking comment have not been answered.

As the development's finances sank late last year, even the well-regarded golf links, named the Ranch and Legends courses, were closed. They have since reopened under new management and stand out as vivid green oases among the hills and native oak savannas.

Each day as he prepares to travel 200 miles round trip to his construction superintendent's job in San Francisco, Gary Rekow loads empty water bottles in his pickup that he later fills from a fire hydrant at the downtown construction site. He brings the jugs back to his 3-year-old home so that he and his wife have drinking water. The exercise saves him a few dollars each day that he would otherwise spend on commercial bottled water at the nearest store in Patterson, 8 miles distant.

"When you fill the bathtub (from the tap), the water is kind of brown; it's stinky looking stuff," Rekow said. He and other residents say the water isn't fit to drink, and barely tolerable to bathe in.

On June 20, after nearly four years of enforcement letters and citations, the state Department of Public Health ordered Western Hills Water District, which is owned by Diablo Grande's developers, to install a filtration system by July 31. The agency also fined the water district $1,000. Residents have been told to use bottled water for cooking and drinking until the problem is resolved.

"The water is brown and sometimes smells," said Kristina Ross-Ortiz. "We've been told not to breathe the vapors, so I can't let my 2-year-old son play in the bathtub."

Diablo Grande, after years of lawsuits over water, signed an unusual contract with the Kern County Water Agency in 2002 to divert 8,000 acre feet of its water annually from the California Aqueduct, which carries water south from the bay delta. The huge concrete canal runs roughly parallel to Interstate 5. In western Stanislaus County, there was simply no other source big enough to supply the huge planned development.

Pumped uphill to Diablo Grande, the aqueduct water is treated in a Western Hills Water District plant operated under contract by Veolia Water North America and then stored in a giant tank intended to deliver more than 1 million gallons a day.

The distribution system, owned and operated by Western Hills, was designed to serve roughly 1,500 homes that were to be built in phase 1 of the project. But with Western Hills delivering water to only about 200 of the 350 homes that currently exist, demand is only a fraction of what the water system can supply. Consequently, water moves through the system very slowly, causing a buildup of a "disinfection byproducts" called trihalomethanes, according to the health department.

Consumed over a long period of time, these compounds are believed to cause cancer and other serious ailments, according to department spokeswoman Lea Brooks.

The maximum allowed concentration of this family of compounds is 80 parts per billion, according to public health. Diablo Grande's water has routinely exceeded this level for several years, with an eight-month exception last year, the agency said.

Veolia Water spokesman Shalen Patel says it will cost about $250,000 to put in a system to resolve the water problem, but there is widespread doubt that the developer-owned water company has the will and cash to do it. Patel said Western Hills currently owes about $4 million to Veolia, part of the debt owed to a large number of creditors included in the Chapter 11 filing.
Unpaid taxes

Diablo Grande's March 10 bankruptcy filing lists another looming obligation facing the developer: As of Dec. 10, the water company became delinquent on payments on $57 million in Mello-Roos bonds sold to finance Diablo Grande's domestic water supply.

The bonds were supposed to be paid off by assessments on the land, homes and improvements as they were built in the development. But as the housing meltdown spread and sales slowed to a trickle last year, Diablo Grande failed to make property tax payments that include money to pay the bondholders. Now, according to bankruptcy documents, the water district is obligated by law to commence foreclosure proceedings by Oct. 1 on any assets - namely the unsold lots, golf courses, clubhouse, winery and vineyards in the development - owned by Diablo Grande.

Individual homeowners are not subject to foreclosure, according to bond attorney Tom Westhoff, as long as they have paid their property taxes, which include the Mello-Roos assessments.
Rescue plans

Stanislaus County Supervisor Jim DiMartini, whose district includes Diablo Grande, is sympathetic to the plight of the developers, who got "sued to death" for years. Before it was unveiled in 1990, there was no significant development in the Diablo Range to the west of Interstate 5, he said, and "environmentalists didn't want a town (Diablo Grande) to ever get started."

Although the developers finally prevailed after some 14 years of litigation, "by the time they got started (building), the economy went south."

Today, with gas prices around $4.50 a gallon in the Bay Area - the resort development's target sales market - "You cannot keep building single-family homes out there; you can't sell them," he said.

To regain its financial footing, DiMartini believes Diablo Grande has to change its marketing plan and focus on building an already-approved resort hotel, which will make it a destination and attract more golfers to the courses already operating there.

DiMartini also believes an assisted-living center for seniors and 180 10-acre parcels for equestrians should be developed, as envisioned by Panoz. Neither of these ideas has received development approval from the county, he said.

Ultimately, Diablo Grande's fate rests in the hands of the U.S. bankruptcy court in Modesto. In March, after the developer filed papers saying it was essentially out of cash, a judge approved $1.5 million in "interim" financing through Panoz's Georgia-based Fountainhead Development Corp. to keep the operation afloat into June.

Late last month, the developer sought another $1 million to tide it over until Aug. 15 via a loan from the Bank of Scotland, which is already owed about $20.4 million by Diablo Grande's partners.

Meanwhile, most of those involved are pinning their hopes on a successful sale of the property, which is being supervised by the court. Under the "stalking-horse" bidding process, its minimum offer of $25 million sets a floor on which bidding by other interested parties - such as hedge funds and other well-heeled groups - are expected to make higher offers in the upcoming auction supervised by the court.

If no one offers more, Housing Source Partners, the stalking-horse bidder, will take over the development. And if a higher bid comes in, the Pismo Beach developer still walks away with a $200,000 "withdrawal fee," according to the bankruptcy court filings.

Anonymous said...

Yeh Homer, Diablo-Grande is BEND area all over, I have been following this for over a year.

In our area its going to the be the shit reversal problem, a lot of STD's were built uphill from the pump-station. If & when the pumps fail, and there is NO HOA to pay, as the developer is long gone, its going to be a toilet overflow.

In time we'll have the water problem. All these STD's use canal water also, and in time the canals will go underground tunnel, which means the easy water wells will go dry.

Watch Diable-Grande carefully, and you can see the future of ALL HOLLERN's dozen's and dozen's of remote siberian tracts, including Brasada.

It just takes time.

The city has now been begging developers NOT to build tracts downhill from a pump-station, but well you know, the developer gets his/her way in this region.

We'll have the water problem in time, the table is dropping like a rock. All these 'bledsoe' super developments up @highlands and elsewhere pump 100's of gallons an hour 24/7 for irrigation, its like this every where on the large lots.

All tracts are supposed to have shit pipes that run down-hill to the shit-pump-station, but tracts get around this by having their own lowest bidder pump-station, but the shit up hill. These pumps will fail about the time the developers all go BK, or exit.

The Bend area will be full of shit, and a little later short of water.

When the canals go under-ground, then all the folks on wells in the area will be fucked, as its established that leakage from the canals is what feeds the well water table.

Thus in the longer term, siberians homes in BEND will be un-saleable, no water, and shit over-flowing from the toilet.

Welcome to Bend.


I guess you can go east of the bad-lands, like juniper-acres, and live in a trailer, and have an outhouse, and bring out potable water by barrel. That is how much of the region will live in a few years.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Wish I had a bit more dry powder for buying MRK here. Over $38 on Mon, down to $31's today.

Gotta love the near 5% yield there...

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