Sunday, August 17, 2008

IHTBYB Comes Out Of The Closet!

OK, I'd bettter come out and admit something that may well affect the future of this blog:

I am an Olympics Junkie.

Now you know.

When the Olympics are on, I can do little else than pee, eat, sleep, and watch the Olympics. I can barely form coherent sentence, I show up to work in a sleep-deprived fog, I sometimes don't shower for days.

Why do I have this problem? I don't watch football, baseball, or basketball, or any other professional sport, except on rare occasion. I think watching sports on TV is actually pretty lame.

But I can't help but enjoy what are for the most part, fairly regular-World people, gather together & compete in events that largely define these peoples entire lives. It's really more a real-World drama than sport.

And I don't have a particular favorite sport, person, or team that I am watching, or cheering for. I like ALL of it, I like watching everyone, winners & losers alike. American TV is naturally slanted wildly towards American athletes, so it's hard to get unbiased coverage on this or any broadcast really.

And the Olympics have been sort of commercialized & overrun with "Pros" like Kobe, etc., who you KNOW are going to win. Even the Grama swimmer Dara Torres employs a small scale army to get her in shape. This is probably my least favorite thing about watching the modern Olympics. Too commercial, and loaded with country-switching Pros. Yuk.

But I still love watching. I remember watching the US beat the Ruskies in 1980, one of a precious few things that stays with me after that many years. I remember watching & thinking, "I am watching a historic moment here, and it'll be recounted till I am dead".

And it was. And it is still easily the Greatest Thing I have ever seen on a TV screen. Maybe that's when I contracted this addiction.

Anyway, if you've wondered here I've been, I've been glued to my TV. Can't help it, and I offer no apologies. OK? Sorry.

So it may be for a week or two that you guys have to carry the day. I'm going to try to limit my Olympic fever to a few hours a day. Try.

OK, that said, I busted out of my myopic Bend-addled fog last week, and went for a long drive last week in points beyond.

And I guess it was curious to see this RE problem from a different perspective. I figured it was at it's worst here, and existed in far milder versions elsewhere.

No. Well, yes & no. It is damn bad here. But it is Really Bad All Over.

The truly strange thing that caught me off-guard was the "Commercial Development" seller. You know, because Bend is absolutely chucked full of them: The useless hunk of ground, butt-ugly, too ugly for homes in fact, in some semi-industrial Death Zone, with a For Sale sign on it declaring it fit for "Commercial Development".

My God, this sort of thing is EVERYWHERE. It's along empty highways, next to schools, in neighborhoods, everywhere.

I saw several worthless plots declared fit for Commercial Development in some of the most bizarre places. Empty grasslands, with not a soul for miles. It's like these people paid a few hundred bucks for scrub MORE USELESS than the badlands East of Bend, and all of a sudden decided that it's worth $2,000,000.

Of course none of it is selling, you can tell by the weathered appearance of the signs. This stuff has been for sale for a few years.

And then there is the VAST inventory of acreage properties. I guess living in Bend, and watching the stratospheric take-off of acreage properties made me think there is some sort of shortage, or groundswell in demand for these properties.

No. Well, there may be decent demand, but there is a wave of supply. And it seems to be the same root cause. People either HAVE TO sell for some reason, or there is a gold-rush mentality to it. They think they can get 10-20 fold what they paid a few years ago.

I suppose it was just strange to see that Bend is not that different. We do have a lot for sale, but the problem is far larger than I have ever seen it. I got a new appreciation for how mired in a quagmire the nations RE market is.

It's hard to see how large the problem is until you actually lay eyes on the hundreds & thousands of properties that are out there, and are clearly not moving. Bend is not alone in its inventory problem.

Oy, now for the tech-dregs. I got this from Buster or one of his clones:

BESIDES it being fucking stupid, the CUNT must spend ALL his time looking at the fucking analytic data points, but then again, he's a fucking MBA, he can spreadsheet this generated data, and beat-off.

Note one of the worst that HOME-BOY has enabled is urchin, this SHIT is really NO fucking different than what BENDBB does, its just that homer gets away with it like HBM says, about the masses BEING FUCKING STOOOPID.
...
127.0.0.1 imageads2.googleadservices.com
127.0.0.1 imageads3.googleadservices.com
127.0.0.1 imageads4.googleadservices.com

As I thought, this are /etc/hosts entries so that certain domains go to your local loopback address. This is perfectly fine with me. Disable any or all src or href attributes you want, that is fine with me.

You'll find, if you take the time to View Source & search for the above terms ("googleadservices", for instance), you'll find they don't exist on this site.

I'll go one better: Go find an anonymous proxy somewhere & only surf this or other "suspicious" sites using anon-proxy. I'd give you the one I use to surf BendBB, but then it'd be banned... this happens on occasion when they figure out that they are not getting your real IP.

So go ahead & mislead, redirect & generally fuck with the system, it's all good with me. Some of these comments seem to imply that I give a shit about the identity of commenters. I have no unilateral way to convince anyone unambiguously that is not true, but I can urge you to take measures to keep your identity private.

There also seems to be this implication that I somehow "profit" from posting youtube, or other "off-site" crap on here.

Oh yes, I shall soon retire on the vast wealth I am accumulating from my youtube embedded videos. Oh yes. I'm really watching the money pile up from that. That & the craigslist RSS feeds. Woof. You have no idea how many mansions & Lamborghinis that has paid for.

OK, now for the non-borderline schizo's: OK, I just blog for my own enjoyment. I don't make dink, I DO have googles Urchin web analytics on the home page, something I check about never. I looked after I got "Pat-dotted", and got many thousands of hits out of nowhere. But that's about it. I don't care about IP's. I don't censor based on the offensiveness of anything. Hell, I encouraged people to go look at BendBB's "outting" post, cuz I knew that'd be gone before long.

This is just a little blog for posting what Bend media won't regarding Bend RE, and business in general. That's it.

I agree with the commenter, "Only the paranoid survive", and if you feel you are being "outted" here, you can modify your /etc/hosts file, or surf this site anon proxy. I NEVER go to BendBB except via anon proxy because it has been made clear via IP-banning policy that he IS keeping track of IP's over there. I HATE that.

This thing is meant to be open, free, yet respect individual privacy. So I am more about obfuscating your identity than anyone. Type "free anonymous proxy" into google, and find one you like, and bookmark it.

We ALL have a duty to Stick It to The Man in this regard.

Speaking of Sticking It To the Man, it seems the Al Haig moment sprouted some other Bend RE-bubble blogs.

http://benddenial.blogspot.com/

Of course it is impossible for me to assert anything absolutely about who is doing what, but this appears to be a site fired up by our own dearest marge! Good going marge. Keep it up, and feel free to copy/paste stuff over here, URL's and all.

http://angrybendbitch.blogspot.com/

OK, I think this was started by Buster-Clones, as some sort of marge-proxy weirdness. Seems they didn't post since last March, until recently. This one is good if only for the horrible picture on the sidebar.

The top one is classic Cali-Banger. My Lord. That is a real person, not animated horror. And almost certainly of Cali origin.

http://bendbubble3.blogspot.com/

Yup, this one is pretty good, featuring Post WWII apocalyptic pics. Anyone know who this is? Buster? In my Olympics-addled state, I'm finding it hard to keep up.

Anyway, I've been saying for some time that I am all for someone else taking over the reins (reigns?) of this thing, so that we can get a new perspective. I hope one or all of these blogs does well, and someone can take the lead on the Bend RE issue.

My primary objective has been "outting" Bend media as horribly slanted towards Bend RE, to the point of simply being PR whores. Some have not sold out so entirely. But if they are big & in broadcast or print, they almost certainly have.

Finally, before I head back to Olyimpificating my life:

tim said:
I thought we had seasonally peaked on inventory a couple weeks ago (like every other year), but looking at Clive's chart, I'm beginning to wonder if 2008 doesn't mark the emergence of a new kind of desperate late-summer seller.

anon said:
Could be we hit the sweet spot in GREATEST FOOL THEORY, remember it was supposed to come back for two years no. I think that all but the BEND-DEAD know its NOT coming back, sell now while you have a prayer, that is what's going on.

Yeah, I'm starting to question the validity of many Long Held Beliefs regarding the Bend RE market. Used to be you listed early Spring, sold in the Summer, and hibernate in the Winter. Easy, predictable.

But we're entering a new phase here: Forced Selling. People are not going broke according to the seasons around here. And if you go to RealtyTrac.com, you'll see that foreclosures are what is fueling the local market. NOT the seasons.

I figured the local inventory situation would look like a fairly gently rising sine wave, higher peaks & higher valleys. But I'm wondering if the coming valley fails to really materialize. And turns into more of a flat plateau. And next year begins a new wave up from there.

This market is coming apart. It's hard to even predict things that have held for decades, like Bends yearly cyclicality. It think it'll remain, but it'll flatten & ramp up into a monotonic rising wave.

My own view of the RE market outside Bend tells me that NO ONE is coming here to save us. They CANNOT sell what they have. As blindly myopic as I thought Bend sellers were, the rest of the country is pretty close. EVERYONE in this country is selling, or trying to, and they are not succeeding.

The RE market seems well & truly screwed for many, many years.

One more quick thing:

Rent & Invest The Difference still rolls on as my favorite investment theme for Bend.

There were occasional cries of "Invest in what?" several months ago, a legitimate question.

Hopefully, I've answered this criticism. I DO NOT believe RE is a prudent investment for what may well be the rest of my working life. Medians would have to fall to parity with rents for me to become interested, and we're NOT EVEN CLOSE.

Bonds, whether gov't or corporate, are an unknown quantity. Read the comments and you can see that these things are based on the re-payment capacity of some very marginal borrowers. And I believe there will be a cascading effect that we haven't even seen the beginning of.

And as Buster said, Price Ain't The Problem. Banks are ONLY loaning to FICO 800, 75% LTV, pristine borrowers. That's a rare bird these days, and getting rarer. No one borrowing, no one loaning, and everyone throwing around homes like hot potatoes, dropping prices to no avail.

It Ain't Price. We are tapped out or BK as a country. Every last dollar that could be borrowed, was borrowed and now we're coming to find that we can't pay it back.

It'll take a few more years, but RE will hit & drag bottom for a few years. But don't buy it yet.

Personally, I plowed into some spec stocks in July, and am doing OK. I think stocks are the Last Bastion of Safety, which is just strange. Stocks have traditionally been the Flight FROM Safety investment when things get uncertain.

But the usual Flight TO Safety instruments (bonds of all maturities) are suspect. The Full Faith & Credit of the US is now MORTGAGE BACKED. OK, WHY we are BUYING this crap is beyond me. Bear Stearns gets KILLED in the mortgage-backed market & the US Gov't decides NOW is the time to JUMP INTO THE MORTGAGE MARKET.

I don't get it. The outcome seems simple: INFLATION. More specifically, STAGFLATION.

We will print our way "out of this thing". Of course this NEVER WORKS. And maybe sometime I can show graphically why I think that as interest rates go up, stocks actually become the Best Investment Bet.

OK, so I must now return to my butt-cheek carved place on the couch, and watch the Olympics. I promise I'll try to comment more this week, and actually dedicate a brain cell or two to thoughts of RE and the like.

But meanwhile.... Phelps awaits.

387 comments:

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IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Region's economy down, but not out
Housing continues to be a negative force, but job growth, while sluggish, remains up

By Jeff McDonald / The Bulletin
Published: August 17. 2008 4:00AM PST

Editor’s note: The Bulletin has partnered with the University of Oregon’s College of Arts and Sciences and Department of Economics to produce the Central Oregon Business Index. The index provides a regular snapshot of the region’s economy using economic models consistent with national standards. The index, exclusive to The Bulletin, appears quarterly in the Sunday Business section.

Central Oregon’s economy in the second quarter of 2008 continued to suffer withdrawals from the housing market’s plunge and, looking forward, fundamental income and credit challenges make a repeat of the boom years unlikely, a University of Oregon economist said after releasing a quarterly report that measures the region’s economic health.

Housing remains the dominant negative force in the local economy, said Timothy Duy, adjunct assistant professor in the University of Oregon economics department.

Duy authors the Central Oregon Business Index, which provides a seasonally adjusted snapshot of the region’s economy based on nine economic variables, including Deschutes County building permits and housing units sold, Redmond Airport boardings and arrivals, and unemployment claims.

The index has dropped to 154.1, down 5 percent from the same quarter of 2007, according to the report. It’s the third consecutive quarter the index has declined.

“Clearly, economic activity has slowed quite a bit,” Duy said. “On a local level, a recession is classified as a period of negative job growth. You haven’t had that yet, but it is a significant slowdown that’s creating recession-like conditions for many people.”

Real-estate related indexes dropped during the second quarter. The number of building permits, seasonally adjusted, fell to an average of 27 per month in Deschutes County, the lowest monthly average since at least 1996, according to Duy.

At the peak of the housing boom in the third quarter of 2005, an average of more than 400 permits were issued each month, according to Duy’s report.

A continued downturn will not likely lead to an “end-of-the-world” scenario, Duy said. Also, a reversal of the downturn won’t produce another real estate boom like the last one, he added.

“The reality is going to be somewhere between those two outcomes,” he said. “Over time, economies tend to grow, especially those that have fundamental positive attributes.”

Central Oregon’s future growth could be measured more on livability factors such as roads, schools, transportation, and clean air and water, and an appropriate balance between taxes and services, Duy said.

“Any community that can make itself a nice place to live will grow over time,” he said.

Credit has tightened nationally along with expectations among speculators that housing values would appreciate in markets such as Central and Southern Oregon, and the Oregon Coast, Duy said.

Some houses are still priced too high to sell, said Tom Greene, president of the Central Oregon Association of Realtors.

Bend has more than a 19-month inventory of homes on the market, which is how long it would take to sell all the listed homes under current market conditions, Greene said. Anything more than six months of inventory is considered a buyer’s market, according to Greene.

“Definitely the market has slowed down,” he said. “The facts are the numbers are down.”

In the second quarter, the median sales price for a Bend home — the price at which half the homes sold for more and half for less — was $307,000, according to the Central Oregon Association of Realtors. Duy thinks a more realistic median home price would be closer to $200,000.

“The price of housing is still too high to clear out inventory,” Duy said. “The type of housing that was built may be fundamentally inconsistent with the income profile in town.”

There will always be well-heeled people who move to the region or buy second homes for the quality of life and other factors, but overall, the speculative market has dried up, Duy said in explaining why he thinks Bend’s median sales price should be lower.

Greene advised sellers to be realistic in a market where housing prices have dropped as much as 25 percent to 39 percent from the peak of the housing market in summer 2005, he said.

Buyers are in the driver’s seat, able to shop around until sellers give them the price they are willing to pay, Greene said. But there is still a lot of buyer hesitation to get into the market, he noted.

“I think we’re in for a rough fall and winter,” Greene said. “For the homes that are selling, the prices haven’t really gone down that much. But we still have so many homes that are overpriced. Those aren’t going to sell.”

Despite the troubles that the housing market downturn has wrought on the region, some aspects of the Central Oregon economy — particularly the growth at Redmond Airport and vigor of the region’s aircraft, technology and medical sectors — offer long-term support for growth, Duy said.

“What you have going for you is the existence of an airport that’s relatively well-used. It makes doing business easier — it’s another plus going forward,” Duy said.

Last quarter, passenger activity declined to its lowest level since the second quarter of last year, according to the report. Further declines are anticipated as airlines reduce capacity at smaller, regional airports.

Job growth has remained positive, although it has paled in comparison with the boom period, said Stephen Williams, regional economist for the Oregon Employment Department, based in Salem.

Despite sluggish 1 percent job growth in June, Deschutes County still had stronger growth than Medford, Salem, Corvallis, Eugene and Portland, Williams said.

Overall, the state had a 0.1 percent job growth in June, Williams said.

“The state has taken a hit in housing, manufacturing, lumber — and the tech sector is not robust,” Williams said. “A lot of the same forces acting upon Central Oregon are acting upon the state.”

Unemployment claims are down 19 percent from the first quarter of 2008, an indication that the biggest layoffs may be behind the region, at least in manufacturing, Williams said.

But job growth has slowed significantly from the expansion period, Williams said.

Payrolls, which peaked at 8 percent annually in the second quarter of 2006, are up only 1.4 percent from a year ago, according to the index.

“What we’re seeing is a definite slowdown,” Williams said. “We don’t know when we’re going to hit a bottom and start climbing out of this thing. It’s nowhere near the job growth that we’re accustomed to.”

Some sectors are still faring well.

The number of retail-based jobs were still up 4.8 percent in June over June 2007, a reflection of some of the national chains that continue to open new stores in Bend and Redmond, Williams said.

Jobs in education and health services rose 5.8 percent in June, he said.

Construction, manufacturing, information and financial activities jobs, however, took the biggest hits in June in Central Oregon, he said.

Job growth in leisure and hospitality, a category that includes restaurant and lodging services, rose 1.5 percent in June, down from 8.2 percent the same month the previous year, he said.

The “other shoe that could drop” is professional and business services, which include housing-related jobs such as architecture and landscaping, and temporary help services, Williams said.

“Those are the first to go when the economy slows,” he said.

Soft national economic conditions and higher prices, particularly for food and energy, also are weighing on the local economy, Duy said.

Lodging revenues, calculated from room-tax collections, also dropped 7.6 percent in the second quarter when seasonally adjusted and adjusted for inflation from the same quarter in 2007.

There is no silver bullet for the economic problems, said Doug La Placa, president and CEO of Visit Bend, which markets tourism for the city.

A lot of what is happening locally is happening nationally as well, La Placa said.

“What we’re seeing locally in the tourism industry is the net result of the cumulative results of the economy,” he said. “Prices have gone up, the cost of living has increased. With the challenges in the real estate market, a big source of the discretionary income that has helped fuel tourism growth over the last several years is no longer there. It’s undoubtably having an impact on the local tourism economy.”

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

The number of building permits, seasonally adjusted, fell to an average of 27 per month in Deschutes County, the lowest monthly average since at least 1996, according to Duy.

At the peak of the housing boom in the third quarter of 2005, an average of more than 400 permits were issued each month, according to Duy’s report.

A continued downturn will not likely lead to an “end-of-the-world” scenario, Duy said. Also, a reversal of the downturn won’t produce another real estate boom like the last one, he added.


Right. That's only a 93% decline in permits. That's not "end-of-the-World" at all.

We'll end up somewhere between -93% and 0%. Like -90%.

Good job Bulletin, in spinning -93% as Just Fine.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...


“Any community that can make itself a nice place to live will grow over time,” he said.


This is the sort of meaningless platitude that couldn't survive even half a second of critical scrutiny. I can think of THOUSANDS of examples where this is not true.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

“Definitely the market has slowed down,” he said. “The facts are the numbers are down.”

You heard it here FOLKS!

Tom Greene, president of COAR is all over this DEVELOPING SITUATION.

Stay tuned!

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Look at the "print" version of this story for all the graphs, especially permits & housing units sold.

Note the graphs go back to 1997, and we have easily eclipsed decade-old lows. Easily.

Anonymous said...

never seen so many moving sales

Anonymous said...

The moving sales just show that the Best time To Buy campaign has worked.

People are moving up from crap shacks to NorthWest Crossing.

The end is over, here comes the new boom.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

The number of retail-based jobs were still up 4.8 percent in June over June 2007, a reflection of some of the national chains that continue to open new stores in Bend and Redmond, Williams said.

Jobs in education and health services rose 5.8 percent in June, he said.


OK, retail don't buy homes.

Even education ain't the fountain of wealth.

That leaves health care, much of which is nursing, and this is something that I think is one of the few depression-resistant industries here. Not depression-proof, though.

You can easily see the 100% CONTRADICTORY BULLSHIT being meted out by the Bulletin:

vigor of the region’s aircraft, technology and medical sectors

Vigor? Really?

Construction, manufacturing, information and financial activities jobs, however, took the biggest hits in June in Central Oregon, he said.

Wait. I thought manufacturing had VIGOR. I thought technology & information had VIGOR.

Uh huh. These sectors WERE doing OK, for about 18 months during the biggest mega-boom of this regions existence. It's over now, and NOW info-tech, manufacturing & construction are 100% DEAD for our LIFETIMES.

Nice neighborhoods, my ass. People care about jobs & working & making money, and the infantile HEDONISTIC lifestyle (Cali-banger) of Cent OR will pass forever into the history books as one of the most UNSUSTAINABLE & EMBARRASSING chapters in the places existence.

The scrub will overtake Eastsieeeeeeede STD's, then it'll overtake our fantasies of nirvana.

See... I get moody when the Olympics aren't on....

Anonymous said...

I have a friend that is a garage sale junkie. Many of the outer lying sales are renters that are moving into the core town area as they can't afford to drive anymore. Bikes are going to have a hard time in the winter no matter how close you are to work.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

“The price of housing is still too high to clear out inventory,” Duy said. “The type of housing that was built may be fundamentally inconsistent with the income profile in town.”

Huh. Where have I heard that before, about 100X?

Now, where was it.... Hmmmmm.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

In the second quarter, the median sales price for a Bend home — the price at which half the homes sold for more and half for less — was $307,000, according to the Central Oregon Association of Realtors. Duy thinks a more realistic median home price would be closer to $200,000.

Well, he's not totally off his rocker. But why he thinks a 1/3rd haircut in the value of most peoples largest (LEVERAGED) asset is NOT going to produce some sort of Armageddon is beyond me.

On our way to sub $200K medians, this place will turn into a HELL HOLE. Meth, no police or fire services, pot-holed streets, robberies....

It's going to get so much worse before it gets better, and best of all we are going broke blowing up solid rock in Juniper Ridge. Capell has got to feather the KR nest, so he can retire like his FAMOUS valley brother, in style. Bend Nepotism rolls on even if it bankrupts us...

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

From Duncs blog & last weeks comments:

Bend Bulletin, August 15, 2008.

A BIGGER DOWNTOWN FOR SISTERS?

Plans to develop a 10-acre property at the north end of Sisters could create four new city blocks with a mix of housing and commercial space next to the city’s new post office, city and real estate officials said Thursday.

The development, called Black Butte Crossing, would include 32,000 square feet of commercial space and up to 243 apartment units comprising roughly 340,000 square feet when built out over four to seven years, according to representatives of the project and plans filed with the city of Sisters...


You really have to read the whole thing. It makes look Juniper Ridge look like a realistic project.


Sisters really is The Land of The Idiot. Those people are morons. They are trying to resurrect that scrub dogshit North of town. It was supposed to be a BUSINESS PARK, an idea that has so totally FAILED, they don't even mention it & assume no reader has ever heard of it.

Now, they cannot GIVE AWAY that crap. This whacky idea shall also pass. Sisters has ZERO sustainable industry & costs 4X what it used to just to get there by Valley drones trying to escape for the weekend.

Sisters will crash harder than ANYWHERE in the US. Mark my words. If we go down 50%, Sisters will implode 75%... especially the acreage crap.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Housing or jobs: Which comes first?

By Bill Mintiens

Susanna Julber, Consulting Planner, has been working with the Sisters City Council to help them formulate a long-term housing plan.

In her presentation at a council workshop, August 7 at City Hall, Julber pointed out what can happen to communities when a lack of affordable housing exists.

"A lack of affordable housing can cause distress on families who cannot easily find a place to live," she said. "It reduces supplies of low-cost labor sources and employers have difficulty recruiting and retaining their workforce.

"It can also negatively affect economic development efforts and reduce local school enrollment. It can also increase demands on transportation systems as workers travel longer distances between jobs and affordable housing. And it also can contribute to an unstable local economy."

Sisters appears to be suffering these symptoms right now, evidenced by the labeling in March as a "severely distressed community" by the state's Economic & Community Development Department.

Michael Anderson, economic analyst with the Oregon Economic & Community Development Department, based in Portland, explained back in March, "the agency uses both state and federal data that are available annually to look at counties statewide in four areas: percentage of the population with a bachelor's degree age 25 or higher; unemployment rate,;percentage of the population below poverty and per-capita income."

Sisters received the "severely distressed" designation for being below the state average in all four categories, according to the Economic & Community Development Department.

About 21 percent of Sisters' population age 25 or higher had a bachelor's degree in 2000, which fell below the threshold average of 25 percent statewide.

Sisters' unemployment rate of 5.7 percent in 2000 was above the threshold of 5.5 percent; its $17,847 per-capita income fell below the $19,000 per-capita income threshold; and 10.4 percent of the population were considered living in poverty, just above the 10 percent threshold, according to the data.

Although poverty doesn't appear on the surface in Sisters, it exists in pockets, said Michael Robillard, President of the Sisters Area Chamber of Commerce last March.

"There are a disturbing number of people who are utilizing our city's food banks," he said. "It is alarming. We need to strategize on getting businesses here that pay living-wage jobs."

There is a classic chicken and egg conundrum at play in Sisters: Which should come first - an affordable housing plan or an economic development plan emphasizing the attraction of employers with living/family-wage jobs?

City Council President Bill Merrill, during the August 7 housing plan workshop, spoke to this point:

"Do we continue to be an expanded tourist economy or do we concentrate on attracting people who can afford the more expensive homes, perhaps these are people who also have home-based employment with one or two employees?"

Right now in Sisters, no one person or group is creating or executing an economic development plan.

Merrill added "I don't know who or how it's (economic development) going to get done."

Councilor Shawna Bell understands the need but also sees the Council's mandated duties.

"We need to figure out how to attract and retain employers with living-wage jobs, but it is in our comprehensive plan that we have a 'housing plan' in place. This is why we are spending time on this plan," Bell said. "We cannot stop one to start the other but perhaps need to let the elected officials know that there is a strong sentiment for economic development so they will prioritize this at the goal-setting session for 2009-10.

"Once it hits the top four to five goals for the city, then there is action taken.

Bell added, "The housing plan needs to continue forward for those people that need housing such as teachers, city employees, fire fighters, bank employees, etc.... We do have enough people working in our city that would like to live here that need homes in the $175-$225k range that we need to figure out how to make this price range of housing profitable for builders to consider this as a viable option for them."

Councilor Sharlene Weed agrees.

"It would be nice to attract living/family-wage jobs but at the moment it is a more desperate situation to house employees of businesses that are already here. Last I remember, well over half of Ray's Food Place employees did not live in Sisters... how many teachers, city, and service workers commute? The survey done by the Chamber last year reported that 67 percent of the town's employees were commuting.

"We need to house the people that make our town work. As gas prices rise, how many people are going to continue to commute to Sisters? How many businesses will be able to provide enough pay to attract employees to drive from other towns? Research shows that you need to earn $80,000 to afford the median priced home in Sisters. How many folks that make our town run earn that kind of money?" said Weed.

Mayor Boyd, speaking to the common problems shared by communities, said, "We're not alone in this. Other towns are in the same boat. Show me the model of how to do it (economic development in other communities) and we'll look at it."

The City Council will continue to work on creating a Housing Plan with a target completion date of September 30.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

67 percent of the town's employees were commuting.

ie: 67% of the towns employees burn through MOST of their paycheck commuting.

you need to earn $80,000 to afford the median priced home in Sisters. How many folks that make our town run earn that kind of money?"

None, except for a very few business owners: Liquor store, Quilt shop, and Best Western. That's all.

This town will disintegrate with 4 gas prices. Totally implode.

Things are FAR WORSE in Sisters than any news piece will dare indicate. NO ONE who lives there or works there can afford it.

Sisters will ultimately implode.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

"... figure out how to make this price range of housing profitable for builders to consider this as a viable option for them."

"Figure out?"

Huh? Don't "figure it out" you stupid fucking liberal dumbfucks! Let the market take down prices to the coma point. THAT is what will take care of it.

Cripes... I smell another tax-payer fueled builder boondoggle....

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Sisters continues to wrestle with 'affordable housing'


"Affordable housing" is defined as housing in which residents spend no more than 30 percent of their gross household incomes on housing-related expenses. Households are considered "cost-burdened" if they pay more than 30 percent of total household income on housing costs.

Housing-related expenses are defined by HUD (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) as follows: For homebuyers, housing-related expenses include mortgage principle and interest, taxes, property insurance, mortgage insurance, and essential utilities. For renters, housing-related expenses include rent and utilities.

For a "for-sale home" to be considered affordable in Deschutes County, based on the 2007 AMI (Area Median Income based on a family of four - $58,800), it would need to be less than $180,500.

How many Sisters-area homes are now on the market with a list price of $180,500 or less right now? Zero. There are approximately 239 homes listed above that selling price, according to a July 25 listing report.

Working wages for many jobs in Sisters make it a stretch for local workers to live in the community (see data previous page).

As of January 2008, the average price of homes listed on the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) within the Sisters City limits was $361,763. The median home price for the same period was $314,900. Based on the MLS listings, there were no homes that are considered "affordable" for a household earning the Deschutes County AMI within the Sisters City limits.

The lowest-priced listings in the city in January 2008 included two townhomes priced at $199,990, and the July 25 Sisters-area listing report shows no homes under $198,000.

Workforce Assessment estimated that the maximum affordable rent for a family earning a median family income was $1,058.75 in 2006. According to a rental survey in early 2007, 36 percent of available rental units in Sisters were not affordable to a family earning median family income.

Anonymous said...

vigor of the region’s aircraft, technology and medical sectors

I wonder how many people actually are employed in our mighty aircraft and technology sectors. The "aircraft sector" basically is one company, isn't it?

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Two very interesting facts:

For a "for-sale home" to be considered affordable in Deschutes County, based on the 2007 AMI (Area Median Income based on a family of four - $58,800), it would need to be less than $180,500.

How many Sisters-area homes are now on the market with a list price of $180,500 or less right now? Zero. There are approximately 239 homes listed above that selling price, according to a July 25 listing report.


$180,500 is AFFORDABLE in Deschutes County. There are ZERO homes in Sisters at or below this price, which is surprising because if you drive around town, you'll find some truly dismal domiciles (I hesitate to call them "homes").

In searching COAR, you'll see 22 homes in Bend at or below $175K (that's the closest cutoff price). These are the true DREGS. No one would aspire to want to own one of these fucking shithole dumps. I'd rather live in the woods. I don't mean Deschutes River Woods... I mean The Woods.

I'll say it again: If your home has been on the market for 60 days with no offers, you need to cut price 5% every 10 days. Even then it'll take MONTHS to sell.

But it's better than waiting till Bend goes broke, crime & meth becomes Job 1, and the median hits $175K. Sales are down 70%!

If you haven't had an offer in the past 60 days, YOU WILL NEVER SELL AT THE CURRENT PRICE. This market is RUNNING AWAY to the downside.

If you are going to "teach us all a lesson", de-list your fucking piece of shit overpriced house, you fucking lunatic. You are only making things worse.

If schizo idiots would just de-list their wildly overpriced crap shacks, we'd clear out 60% of the inventory. The rest are foreclosures...

But no... it's actually coming online faster than ever...

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

The "aircraft sector" basically is one company, isn't it?

You mean Epic?

Fuck, India's Liberache yanked funding on them & is gaming them against their arch rivals. He'll end up destroying both probably, and swooping in on the resulting BK's....

That $200 mill was a pipe dream, and Epic is still clinging to it...

Anonymous said...

On our way to sub $200K medians, this place will turn into a HELL HOLE. Meth, no police or fire services, pot-holed streets, robberies....

Kinda like Newark, NJ with a view, eh?

But the hypesters will still be calling it PARADISE.

tim said...

>>never seen so many moving sales

Or outbound U-Hauls.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Note that Fannie Mac have given up the lion share of the post-traumatic gains of the past month.

Fannie threw a quick double from $7 to $15, and is now back to $7.91.

FRE went from $5.26 to $11, and is now back to $5.85.

We ain't outta the woods on this bailout/implosion.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Great post by The Dunc-ster:

http://pegasus-dunc.blogspot.com/2008/08/you-make-your-bet-ill-make-mine.html

Anonymous said...

I'm enjoying the Olympics too (mostly) BUT NBC devotes too much time to boring events. For instance, right now the US women's basketball team is beating New Zealand by approximately 106 points (okay, slight exaggeration) but NBC stays with the game instead of cutting away to something else. And last night they showed THE ENTIRE WOMEN'S MARATHON, more than two hours of it.

I mean, WTF???

Bewert said...

The raw footage at nbcolympics.com is awesome. Just tell them you use AT&T when they ask.

What is kind of funny in a bad way about those low permit numbers is where they are being built (Canyon Breeze, Eagles Landing, etc.), and what's good is the valuations are coming down (whether that will be the asking price or not is another thing):
61628 Gorge View St. $330,852
2926 NE Dogwood Dr. $198,515
19627 SW Hollygrape St. $164,535
20018 SW Millcrest Place $163,372
2978 NE Red Oak Dr. $159,274
2075 NE Redbay Lane $159,274
2099 NE Redbay Lane $159,274

ETC.

Source: http://www.ci.bend.or.us/depts/community_development/building_division_2/docs/BPWeb0708.htm

Bewert said...

Want to see something scary, especially when it comes to revenue versus expenses, basic cashflow over the upcoming months with the SDC deferrals and general economic situation, check out the latest financial report and look at the contingency lines, budget versus actual: http://www.ci.bend.or.us/city_hall/meeting_minutes/docs/Financials_July_2008.pdf

Note a couple of other things:
Page 1
SDC Revenue Annual Budgeted $8.1M
Property Sales $16.1M
Debt Issuance Proceeds $31.3M

The first two are (1) deferred, so won't be coming in for a "while", and (2) since $10M is at JR, may not happen if ODOT doesn't approve making their State Hwy 97/Cooley intersection an utter and complete failure for years to come, a precedent-setting decision if positive.

The third is also problematic in today's credit climate.

And on Page 34, the last page:
Reserved for Major Maintenance $50K

Yeah, $50,000. Let's hope no big pieces of important equipment blow up.

Bewert said...

Forgot to add--those problematic revenue items add up to over $55M, well over 25% of budgeted revenues.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, $50,000. Let's hope no big pieces of important equipment blow up.

$50,000 wouldn't even buy one stinkin' truck.

Prediction: The City of Bend will declare bankruptcy within a year. Mark my words, as Homey would say.

Anonymous said...

HBM,

At least put in a word, and let the SORE ONCE in awhile let us post?

To block all us including da pussy?

Why? HBM why?

Anonymous said...

HBM,

We have ALL been saying that BEND would BK since day one here, and they're doing it on poipose.

The question we should be asking is, whats in in for the HOGG to BK Bend?

Anonymous said...

The entire $10M at JR was to force Les Scwhab to complete the deal, that KURATEK would get his $3M of LS money in cash. The city can payout the $10M indirectly to Knife-River for 'shovel-ready' excavation work.

It's like the other BIG NEWS, $400k budget for City-Hall to have lawyers to protect them from personal nuisance lawsuits. They're BKing the the town, and all they're doing is turning city hall into a bastion.

Watch for bullet-proof vest orders, and personalized security detail. Our politicians are going to get very paranoid, guilty, and resign.

"Who would have guess?" We'll hear that over & over as the Bend Titanic SINKS.

The GOOD NEWS is they NEVER have to worry about KURATEK suing them for $3M, he got his money, and they can just continue to have the BULL cover their ass, the BULL got its from $10M in land from Brooks back in 1998. Everything is looking cozy for the cold-dark years to come.

They approved themselves a $400k lawyer retainer, to get themselves protected, the next thing to watch for is a golden-parachute.

Maybe HOLLERN will start Brooks Foreclose&Bankruptcy Action house and give all our city-hall folk a job.

Bewert said...

Haven't checked the numbers in a while, but it has happened--NODs have breached 1000.

1031 as the close of business Friday.

I'll take a quick peak for any interesting ones.

Anonymous said...

HBM,

Why don't you post on the SORE site for us? They seems to have completely locked down all new comments for the two subjects of SDC & JR.

I mean they're your slut friends? You got connections what the point of starting a thread and locking down comments?

Anonymous said...

We have ALL been saying that BEND would BK since day one here, and they're doing it on poipose.

Nah, you give 'em too much credit. I just chalk it up to stupidity and short-sightedness.

That, and the deeply ingrained habit of giving the GOBs whatever they want without regard for the long-term well-being of the city and most of the citizens.

As for posting on the Source site, I wasn't aware any of you had been blocked. But Aaron doesn't like to let people rave on obsessively and repetitiously like some people here (ahem!) tend to do.

Anonymous said...

I really all along think the BEND BK could have been avoid, there reasons that NO financial fiduciary responsibility has taken place.

On the national level, and local, a long held Repug theory is that if you BK the country, and local, you can flush out all the entitlements other than CORP-WELFARE ( aka schwab,knife-river,brooks).

Anonymous said...

A recent theory if you read the shit. Is that during the BK, Bend buys all the Brooks inventory for low income housing.


Post BK the city has to sell the assets, and brooks buys back low dollar when market improves, and all else in town at fire sale prices.

Let's remember that the HOGG's created the bend-bubble, and now they're BK'ing the city, this can only be rational, unless the goal is buy out all the town you can at the bottom of the BK.

Homers Williams a Bend tier-1, Hollern buddy, and orgianator of Broken-Top in PDX, Homer sells his shit to the city in good times and buys back in bad, homer has made 100's of millions this way for years, making him the richest man in PDX, and most likely if you don't count Hollern or JD-Gray the richest man in Orygun.

Hollern, is certainly going to do the PDX Homer-Williams play, get the city to pay top dollar for all his inventory. I think that's why he has dozen's of high-density apartments going in all over in 2009, he knows that the city will buy this shit, for top dollar.

Then after BK, the city will have to sell, and guess who will buy it back? The boss-hoggs have been playing this game in ORYGUN continually post WWII.

Anonymous said...

New post at http://benddenial.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

BEND BK they're doing it on poipose.

Nah, you give 'em too much credit. ...

That, and the deeply ingrained habit of giving the GOBs whatever they want without regard for the long-term well-being of the city and most of the citizens. - hbm

*

Same play book, all over HBM, your GOB's funneled millions to the Bush-Tribe, this is what is meant by starting wars. The bush-tribe wants to BK the USA, as everyone knows to shutdown SS other entitlements.

If it were 'stoopidity' all would have ended long ago, as somebody in chamber-of-comm or bend-biz would have come forward and said enough is enough. The fact that this late in the BK fall, that Bend city-hall is still throwing good money at Schwab,Brooks,Hap-Taylor(KR), is proof that the politicians know they'll survive if they VOTE for the GOB's, but the GOB's want BEND to burn, so they can all create a "NEW WORLD ORDER" out of the ashes.

Nobody is really 'stoopid', just self interest, with ALL in the real-estate biz in city-hall all are doing whatever can be done to keep the patient alive, trouble is the patient has long been dead. You can call that stupid, but when the whole town watches in horror year after year, there is something else going on.

Anonymous said...

HBM,

If all of a sudden, soon as the SORE post's stuff on JR & SDC, and none of us here can post comments, then that means NOBODY can post comments.

Which means is that the SORE is back to their standard old bag of tricks of being just like the BULL.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

But Aaron doesn't like to let people rave on obsessively and repetitiously like some people here (ahem!) tend to do.

Think about the page views....

Anonymous said...

HBM,

You BEM, me, HOMER, et-al, all the living in Bend, know the average RE-HO doesn't 'get it', that the Bend bubble is OVER.

Repetition will end when the BULL & SORE 'get it', and the fact that they ban any opinion other than party-line is indicative that they still don't 'get it'.

Now its time to admit we have a problem. Too tar&feather the guilty. To move on.

tim said...

Heard a lady in the business say that everyone's expecting that things will turn up soon. "It'll just take a few buyers to get it started."

I don't know if they really believe it, or they just like to say it.

Bewert said...

Re: Aaron...rave

My comment was not a rave.

It was about how the JR editorial was written before the latest vote to give JRP a new option agreement, with a guaranteed 6% on any sales the city made at JR, up to 50 acres.

For this, they pladged to "assist the city" in a laundry list of items.

The utter lack of accountability, such as absolutely no production of receipts or invoices for the settlement agreement, just pisses me off.

Bewert said...

...guest editorial...

Bewert said...

Re: ...heard...

Still at the bargaining stage. Bad sign.

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biP2JOf5euo&feature=related copy and paste this how millions will lose their homes

tim said...

http://www.cnbc.com/id/26261254

Fannie and Freddie likely to be recapitalized by the Treasury (taxpayer).

So expect the prices of those stocks to keep going down, as the Treasury is unlikely to be interested in making the shareholders whole again.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

3:24 AM

!

Anonymous said...

On the national level, and local, a long held Repug theory is that if you BK the country, and local, you can flush out all the entitlements other than CORP-WELFARE

Yeah, they call it "starving the beast." And the Republicans actually have been trying to do it on the national level, with considerable success. But I don't believe our local GOBs -- much less the local politicians -- are smart and sophisticated enough to formulate and carry out such a strategy.

HBM's Razor: Don't invent a conspiracy to explain something that can be explained by simple stupidity.

tim said...

>>!

You snooze, you lose.

Bewert said...

Re:
HBM's Razor: Don't invent a conspiracy to explain something that can be explained by simple stupidity.

Or lack of interest/time in prepping to make decisions. Maybe too much trust in staff. Especially. Read the issue summaries and related data, and things really start to stand out.

The sale to Pete Wilkerson of the corner of 14th and Galveston is a good example--the City sold land at $22 sq ft (losing $72,000 in the process) to a developer that owned the adjacent property, which he paid $80 sq ft. The stated purpose was to combine the properties into one retail location, with a rendering produced by Pete Gramlich's firm. The city land had already had demolition and asbestos abatement done, which Pete was planning on doing on his property.

The issue was presented to the Council by John Russell, with a recommendation for approval. It hinged on an appraisal performed by Pete's appraiser (Pete is a mortgage broker) that was received by the City earler in the day and never ben reviewed.

I had done some research earlier that week and had a spreadsheet with the asessed RMV's and recent sale prices of properties adjacent. I objected, stating that it was obviously underpriced, and listing my figures. Russell responded to CC questions by stating an appraisal showed the market value to be $22 sq ft. It passed overwhelmingly.

I managed to make a copy of the main parts of the appraisal after some objections by Russell, and asked the appraiser about the valuation process, particularly the choice of comps. Additionally, even though Russell stated it was a market value review, it was actually a value in use appraisal.

After some back and forth about raw land, the value in use appraisal without including the recent sale price of the adjacent to be combined land (at one point he asked how it was known that it was to be combined and I reminded him that his appraisal stated so, plus Pete had given a rendering of the proposed use showing thus), etc.

My last question was:
Now while we read [in your appraisal] what Mr. Wilkinson values the adjoining parcel at, and that combining the parcels would enhance that value, yet you make absolutely no reference to this in determining the Value In Use [of the appraised property] to Mr. Wilkinson.

What is your reasoning behind this?


Simple question.

Mr. Darrel Deglow stated:
By the nature of your questions and tone of your messages, you obviously have no understanding or background in complex commercial real estate valuation. I don't know who you are or what your objectives or motivations are. I have no obligation to spend an in-depth amount of time explaining any more of this to you. If you would like me to explain all of this in intimate detail to you I would be glad to do so. I charge $250 per hour for consultation services with a minimum of four hours.

My questions were not that difficult, they were simple things, like why was land out on Brookswood and on the north side used as comps when there was adjacent land, Mt. Bachelor bus lot land, Newport property, etc. that was closer, had sold recently, was not included as comps.

Anyway, long story short, the CC spent several hours talking about $70K for maintaining the bus through the fall, and spent 15 minutes giving away at least $100K with of profit to a developer with self-proclaimed "inside connections" to the City.

The email string is kind of funny. And seems to confirm that it was a setup.

tim said...

Tell me this, Bruce. Why isn't The Source covering this sort of crap (apparently clearly crappy deal on 14th & Galveston)?

So far I can't tell that you've done any good, Bruce, despite your efforts. Are you just making people angry? Or do you think maybe they'll think twice about this kind of crap before they do it again?

Bewert said...

Tim, good question. I think I'm being ignored, but that if I keep pushing maybe some MSM will start covering stuff like this.

This was one little deal brought to the table on a night when everybodies focus was somewhere else i.e. the bus saga/infighting. By the time it came up most people were tired and just wanted it to be over. I argued for delay and review, but although Capell asked about the appraisal (conducted by a certified appraiser, although the city had never used him before, according to Russell) and Clinton stated that he thought that city parcels should be put out to bid (not an option on such a special little property, access issues, etc according to Russell) it was quickly voted on and passed.

Pete's got some financing issues, though, and has acquired additional debtload of over $2M since last September, mostly secured by his own residence. I just checked and the Galveston/14th sale still hasn't been recorded.

Anonymous said...

Or lack of interest/time in prepping to make decisions. Maybe too much trust in staff.

And yet the staff warned against the builder handout (SDC deferral) and the council went ahead with it anyway.

The council listens to the staff unless the staff's advice contradicts what the GOBs want.

Anonymous said...

The sale to Pete Wilkerson of the corner of 14th and Galveston is a good example--the City sold land at $22 sq ft (losing $72,000 in the process) to a developer that owned the adjacent property, which he paid $80 sq ft. The stated purpose was to combine the properties into one retail location, with a rendering produced by Pete Gramlich's firm.

Conflict of interest? Did Gramlich recuse himself?

Anonymous said...

Bruce, I suggest you call Eric Flowers at the Source (383-0800) or shoot him an e-mail (editor@tsweekly.com) and tell him about the Wilkerson deal.

Bewert said...

Re:
Conflict of interest? Did Gramlich recuse himself?

Yes, Pete was very upfront about it. He also stated in a conversation a couple of weeks ago that he thinks Pete is having financing issues.

Re: Email Eric.

Will do later today, as I imagine he's pretty busy closing this weeks issue right now.

Bewert said...

Re: And yet the staff warned against the builder handout (SDC deferral) and the council went ahead with it anyway.

Actually not, according to the Issue Summary:

STAFF RECOMMENDATION: Staff recommends approval of the proposed resolution adopting a one year SDC deferral program for builders in the City of Bend

Source: http://www.ci.bend.or.us/city_hall/meeting_minutes/docs/IS_Economic_Stimulas__SDC_Deferral.pdf

Talking with Sonia that night, she is clearly very worried about cash flow going forward. I got the feeling she felt pressured to go along. Her name was on the IS.

Anonymous said...


HBM's Razor: Don't invent a conspiracy to explain something that can be explained by simple stupidity.


LOL

Anonymous said...

From The Oregonian, excerpt:

Rise in suicide rate shadows turbulent times
Monday, August 18, 2008
The Oregonian

The recent deaths of at least three developers facing significant financial setbacks from central Oregon's wilting housing market were investigated by police as suicides.

One of the most talked about is of Lynn McDonald, a 58-year-old former emergency room doctor who was found July 7 in the Deschutes River. In addition to grief, his wife also has to cope with the December auction of The Shire, a southeast Bend residential development designed with a Hobbit theme.

While bloggers and cocktail conversationalists are picking apart the details of these deaths trying to figure out who's to blame, the bigger issue is being lost:

Suicide isn't just a teen phenomenon. Depressed baby boomers facing money problems, mental illness, substance abuse, unemployment or failed romances are ending their lives in record numbers.

Among 45- to 54-year-olds, the suicide rate has increased nearly 20 percent -- 31 percent for women in that age group -- according to a recent five-year analysis by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"When we talk about a declining economy, we also need to think of it in terms of what are the health implications," says Mark Kaplan, a Portland State University professor and a well-respected national expert on suicide. "Men are more prone to engage in self-destructive behaviors when faced with these really dire financial situations."

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/renee_mitchell/index.ssf?/base/news/1218869710173870.xml&coll=7

Anonymous said...

Klamath Falls, the New New Boulder?
_________________

National Geographic says Klamath Falls 'next great town'

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. (AP) - National Geographic Adventure magazine has named Klamath Falls one of "the 50 next great towns" in its September issue.

The magazine calls Klamath Falls a "hot bargain" that "has shed its lumber town origins."

The magazine notes some of the attractions include OC&E Woods Line State Trail, a 95-mile protected path through pine forests, deep valleys and ranchlands.

Another top attraction mentioned is Upper Klamath river, with more than 30 Class III and IV rapids over seven miles.

http://www.koin.com/news/state/story.aspx?content_id=77a44310-362d-4709-9d03-5b967995439c

Anonymous said...

The utter lack of accountability, such as absolutely no production of receipts or invoices for the settlement agreement, just pisses me off. - BP

* ( HBM, says GOB, the use of HOLLERN is an incorrect term )

Take that & shove up it Aarons arse HBM, a angry pussy is a terrible thing to waste. Much needs to be said about Bend. Why is it OK for realtors to say over&over everyday its coming back tomorrow or next week? Is that not redundancy? So that's not it. Whenever the SORE writes crap about SDC's I like to remind folks its not $12k/home missing, its $60k and more missing. HOLLERN got Billions during the BendBubble years, and millions went to the bush-tribe to ensure the bubble kept going, all the while Bush-Tribe ran its world war on Bend's nickel.

We're in a MESS because the BULL&SORE are owned by TEAM-HOLLERN, which is a FRONT for TEAM-BUSH. Germans Lost, Nazi's Won. Team-Bush is largely financed by people like HOLLERN all over the USA who are allowed to rape&pillage towns so long as the the gold is forwarded to team-bush.

For Aaron to put his head the ground doesn't change the fact that this town is going down. Just like the BULL, the SORE continues to ignore whats going on, and tell cutesy story's. Thus inspite of HBM's presence on this shit-hole blog, the SORE is exactly what it always has been, the left-wing of Team-Hollern, just like the BULL is the right-wing, and just like city-hall has a right&left HOLLERN-wing. Everything in Bend is clean & tidy, just like the best of days in Nazi Germany.

Anonymous said...

Finally this is a turning point, it took what over 30 fucking days for the Oregonian to print a story about Bend developers dying en-mass? Note they have to put a spin "note everybody dying now, not just teens".

Who would have fucking guessed? Now place your bets, when will the BULL run with this copy: "National Suicide on Rise, Real Estate Not Involved".

Anonymous said...

HBM's Razor: Don't invent a conspiracy to explain something that can be explained by simple stupidity.

LOL

*

There MIGHT be a fucking argument here if it were happenstance, a one time 'sh shucks' they're stupid. But NOTE this dog&pony show ran by the BULL&SORE, and now apologetically saying that they were stupid? Its been ten long years, and they're still doing the same shit over&over. Insane? Yes. Criminal? Yes. Stupid? NO, a big fucking bend-suicide NO.

Anonymous said...

HBM's RAZOR is More like "Silver Spoon Cali inherits mill town in desert in 1960's, does dog&pony for 40 fucking years, becomes richest man in the PNW, just stupid."

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, he's stupid.

What does that say about HBM? If Hollern is STUPID, what is HBM?

Anonymous said...

HBM's Razor: Don't invent a conspiracy to explain something that can be explained by simple stupidity.

Or lack of interest/time in prepping to make decisions. ...

*

Long ago in the LS-sales agreement we assert that both staff&electables don't read. That said, this town is one trick pony, and the only trick that city-hall & city-staff KNOWS is say yes to boss-hogg, otherwise your OUT.

Now is WHO is stupid? The HOGG? The STAFF? THE electables? Or the fucking tax-payers?

Fuck me once, my fault, fuck me twice, your fault, fucking three times and over & over, and I be YOUR PUSSY.

IN BEND ALL THE TAXPAYERS ARE CUNTS, BUY CUNTS ALREADY KNEW THAT!

tim said...

HBM's Razor is strikingly similar to its kissing cousin, Hanlon's Razor:

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

Anonymous said...

On the national level, and local, a long held Repug theory is that if you BK the country, and local, you can flush out all the entitlements other than CORP-WELFARE

Yeah, they call it "starving the beast." And the Republicans actually have been trying to do it on the national level, with considerable success. But I don't believe our local GOBs -- much less the local politicians -- are smart and sophisticated enough to formulate and carry out such a strategy.

HBM's Razor: Don't invent a conspiracy to explain something that can be explained by simple stupidity.

***

JEEBUS fucking XMAS HBM, I was in Salem in the 70's & 80's and that was everyday MANTRA, back then east of salem was ALL GOP, you keep saying they're NOT SMART ENOUGH? They were smart enough to make BEND the #1 over-priced RE in the country, smart enough to take HOLLERN's MBA & Entitlment ( Shevlin-Hixson ) and make a RE-disneyland out of BEND, and turn it into fucking southern-california....

Now that they have made BILLIONS, and they have destroyed budgets from coast-to-coast, and the dollar is near worthless, you say they're not smart enough?

At what point do you give them credit HBM?

Everything is going according to plan. If you don't know that or see that, then its because you weren't here or chose to see what you want. Goal/Priority #1 during past 40 years was always to 'starve the entitlement system' [ your beast ].

Out of the ashes create a new NAZI paradise, BUSH#1 so call 'New world order".

Anonymous said...

Everyone including most Jews could laugh Hitler off, as a nothing, 'just stupid', stupid artist, stupid loser.

The fact is the Good Old Boyz have all the power, and they have had city-hall ALL along in their pocket on every deal. So applying HBM's razor you would deduce that the CITY has been STUPID for generations?

The STUPID argument doesn't hold HBM.

When you see & hear an orchestra, that plays the same tune over & over, look for a fucking conductor.

Anonymous said...

Applying HBM's Razor to Bend, is saying that all city-staff & city-hall are monkeys with rubber stamps that only say 'APPROVED'.

Yes, its a stupid monkey trick HBM, but somebody put the monkeys in office, and put the stamps in their hand, and somebody keeps feeding them.

Is the outcome STUPID? Hell yes.

Complete Stupidity always has a random outcome. All things equal the monkeys might have rejected somethings and approved others, but in a town where monkeys run the city, and the rubber stamp's all say 'approved', I would call that setup stupid.


People like HBM like to suggest that bloggers are into 'push button thinking', but assertions that all motivation and outcome in BEND can be reduced to stupidity shows why HBM is groveling for min-wage from the second lousiest paper in Bend.

Anonymous said...

HBM's Razor is strikingly similar to its kissing cousin, Hanlon's Razor:

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

*

Generalizations are only useful if they scientifically advance the predictability in analysis.

You can say the same thing in war, that the winner is the one with the less FUBAR's. Tactically that's a generalization that wouldn't get your very far at West Point.

There is NOTHING stupid about BEND's pet monkeys that work city-staff, or currently all hold office in city-hall. HOLLERN has their balls, in his hand and they know it. Perhaps he also has HBM's balls which is why he can say 'stupidity' is BEND, which is saying nothing.

It's this kind of thinking that makes Bend what it is, where a little slogan is all people need to go on with their lives and feel they completely understand Bend.

BEND RE#1 is a three legged stool. LOW SDC's ( HOLLERN ), PR&MARKETING( HOLLERN), BUSH-TRIBE easy-money ( HOLLERN FUNDED ). HOLLERN put together the BENDBUBBLE. BEND RE was #1 04-06 in the WHOLE USA because these three created the perfect RE storm. There was NOTHING stupid about this man-made storm.

Perhaps the problem is that watching the monkeys is why the idiot HBM thinks they're stupid??

It's a meaningless assertion to critical thinking.

Anonymous said...

STUPID->SMART

Bend is going down, and for months the SORE banned everyone here from posting on their site.

Finally today the Oregonian tells the SUICIDE story, something we have discussed for months.

A few weeks ago the SORE started letting us post comments again, and then this weekend shut it down, and then a week ago, they send HBM over here to start 'edooocating' us about what is BEND, and how BEND operates.

We now know that ALL 10k pages we have written on the bend-bubble, including the pussy's 100k page manifesto complaint, can be reduced to one word according to HBM "STUPID".

We can all go back to our lives now, HBM has solved the BEND problem. Some time in the next few days the BULL&SORE will be telling US how to be SMART, this is coming.

Anonymous said...

Applying 'hanlons' rules to Bend, per the critical thinking of timmy, it can be said that allowing HOLLERN to run bend is stupid&industrious; now this assertion I agree, that said, why has the taxpayer allowed it to be so for 40 fucking years??

*

A practical observation on the risks of stupidity was made by the German General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord in Truppenführung, 1933: "I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately!"[5]

Anonymous said...

But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately!"[5]

*

SO there you have HOLLERN comes to Bend in the 60's and build's black-butte ranch, and inherits BEND, and with his FRESH cali-mba, does a lot of INDUSTRIOUS SHIT, and in the end called stupid.

Given that the good people of Bend have played this same dog&pony show for 40 fucking years, at what point is change useful?

Anonymous said...

We played a long with you last week HBM, with your plan about giving all the needy & qualified in BEND $14k to buy a home, trouble is there is no money, thus we could in SORE rhetoric give you idea the 'boot', in fact even call it 'stupid' as its a non-starter given that bend is broke.

Would it be better to give qualified&needy folk $14k rather than Hollern? Hell yes.

Anonymous said...

ALL 10k pages we have written on the bend-bubble...can be reduced to one word according to HBM "STUPID".

Yes!! This is correct!! There are no patterns here!! It's just pure randomness!! Chaos!!

Get ready to hear:
MISTAKES HAVE BEEN MADE!!!!

tim said...

>>Bend is going down, and for months the SORE banned everyone here from posting on their site.

That's a good point. I had two posts that I spent time on and were perfectly reasonable (in my opinion) deleted from there. I've not picked up a Source or been back to the site since.

If you train me to think I'm wasting my time at your site, I will not show up.

As bad as the Source is, the Bulletin is even more ridiculous in its comment system, which requires you to be a subscriber and to identify yourself. Yeah right.

Has anyone checked how many of the Bulletin's articles are commented on? It seems to me that nearly all articles score a perfect zero in the comments field. (Currently, I see four articles on their front web page that take comments. Let's add them up... and we get... zero.)

The Bulletin's comment feature was not worth the web developer's time.

tim said...

>>I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid.

Makes sense.

There are 10 kinds of programmers, you know.

Anonymous said...

Tim,

Brings up a GOOD POINT HBM, and maybe you can rub it into AARON's arse or face, whatever end is up.

That NOBODY is going to pickup a SORE, or visit your website, if they're Tolstoy editorial is just going to the bit NULL bucket.

Tim, I'm very old, what are the ten kinds of programmers? Is it in Brooks Man-Month-Myth?? I don't remember ten? I remember 7, there's always the magic 7.

The BULL ain't cool, and HBM knows BEND is going down, and HBM is close enough to Aaron to convince him, not to go down with the BULL.

Have a talk, if you can pull the frisbee out of his ass, and convince him that freedom of speech is good for Bend.

tim said...

There are 10 kinds of programmers. Those who understand binary and those who don't.

tim said...

>>Have a talk, if you can pull the frisbee out of his ass, and convince him that freedom of speech is good for Bend.

Free speech will happen with or without the Source. They get to decide how big a role they play.

Personally, I will not go back or pick up a Source until I hear that they have a new policy of deleting only illegal posts.

Bewert said...

Re: There are 10 kinds of programmers. Those who understand binary and those who don't.

Ah, a little levity :)

Bewert said...

Re: Personally, I will not go back or pick up a Source until I hear that they have a new policy of deleting only illegal posts.

It's not deleting, it's pre-approval, like Dunc. I'm OK with Dunc, as he puts up anything coherent and somewhat enlightening.

The SORE only puts up HBM's comments.

I think that's called a circle-jerk, but I haven't any experience in that particular area.

Bewert said...

Musharraf quits as Pakistan president

Our credit crunch just reached a new level. Between this and Russia in Georgia, there is going to be real conservtism among the money guys.

Bewert said...

From Bloomberg: Fannie, Freddie Fall on Likely Need for a Bailout (Update7)

...Fannie slid 22 percent, while Freddie dropped 25 percent after Barron's reported that the Bush administration is anticipating the government-chartered companies will fail to raise the equity they need to offset credit losses, prompting the U.S. Treasury to act. The companies' stock market values are well below the minimum of $10 billion in capital that each would need to raise to ``have any credibility,'' Barron's said in its story.

``We agree with the call for Treasury intervention and think it is very, very likely to happen before the end of the third quarter,'' Ajay Rajadhyaksha, the head of fixed income strategy for Barclays Capital Inc., said in a telephone interview today. ``Without government help, we think there is very little chance of Freddie completing a significant capital raising.''...

Bewert said...

More from Bloomberg: The government plans to recapitalize Fannie and Freddie with taxpayer money should their capital raising fail, Barron's said, citing a person in the Bush administration it didn't identify. A rescue of the companies, which own or guarantee 42 percent of the $12 trillion in U.S. home loans, would include preferred stock with a seniority, dividend preference and convertibility that would wipe out common stockholders, Barron's reported.

So how much is that going to cost taxpayers? $5 billion? $10 billion?

But, putting it into BushCo terms, that's not even a month in Iraq.

So we can afford it.

tim said...

>>It's not deleting, it's pre-approval, like Dunc.

OK. But to me it's the same feeling of helplessness either way.

If I spent ten minutes thinking about a post and Duncan didn't bother to pass it through, I probably wouldn't try again.

Bewert said...

Exactly, Tim. I've given up on posting comments on the SORE.

tim said...

An irritating (to the commenter) comment system is probably worse than no comment system at all.

Bewert said...

Hey, it looks good to management...

I wonder who actually approves comments there.

tim said...

>>I wonder who actually approves comments there.

Not sure at the Source.

At the Bulletin, well, they can fight over that job when the first comment comes in.

Anonymous said...

None of us can afford that which is coming in the mortgage and economic levels that will level many here and across the country. We also can't not afford our voices to not be heard. Maybe we can push this site more by checking out other business and bend blog websites and send them a link to here. If we each found 2 a day..wouldn't take too long..and do include RE sites. With the number of us here we could spread the truth quickly.
What do you say?
I will not read the SORE again until they report the truth. I will also ask my cohorts to stop advertising and monetarily supporting them.

Duncan McGeary said...

I've actually only not let only one comment go through, because it was soooooooo offensive.

Which took a lot.

Otherwise, I don't really care. Except I'm noticing all the nasty language is showing up on the search engines under the BMWJAMAGEH name, even though it was a commenter not me.

Not enough to scare me, but still interesting.

So...comment away.

Bewert said...

RE: With the number of us here we could spread the truth quickly.

Yes, we could.

Why do you think the Oregonian had the Bend suicide article?

Powerful forces will be pissed, though.

Do you care as much as I do?

Anonymous said...

Bruce,
Who is that powerful?
You sound scared, if that is true the afore question remains. Are you afraid you could lose your job? If that is true we all ought to be in your corner and out in the pubic (sp) eye. Unless someone is in debt to some grime reaper of another world, what is the fear?
Oh, I know, my peers, will cut my hands off..not. My retirement will go away....not. Maybe I am just lucky for not joining MSlife.
Soo what do you suggest Bruce? Sorry, I can't call you the p-word:)
And why did the Oregonian report the suicides? Cuz they read this blog?

tim said...

>>grime reaper

Explain.

Anonymous said...

The SORE only puts up HBM's comments.

Bullshit. There are dozens of comments from other people.

I don't control what gets put up and what doesn't, but I know Aaron doesn't like repetitive rants that run on longer than "War and Peace" and repeat the same themes over and over again.

tim said...

>>I don't control what gets put up and what doesn't, but I know Aaron doesn't like repetitive rants that run on longer than "War and Peace" and repeat the same themes over and over again.

Thanks so much for he incredibly helpful tip. I'm taking notes.

1. Number of words in post at Source <= number of words in War and Peace.

2. Point can be made, and made over, but must not be made over and over.

Anonymous said...

HBM is a loser, liberal liar.

He or his minions delete posts that:
1) he disagrees with
2) criticize his logic (or what he thinks is logic)
3) criticize his looks

The comment section, like the rest of SORE, is worthless.

As is hbm. A worthless, washed up hasbeen liberal loser liar. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

inspite of HBM's presence on this shit-hole blog, the SORE is exactly what it always has been, the left-wing of Team-Hollern, just like the BULL is the right-wing, and just like city-hall has a right&left HOLLERN-wing.

I'm just glad this blog can be the asshole of something.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...


Why do you think the Oregonian had the Bend suicide article?


Yeah, that'd be a hell of a coincidence.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

A worthless, washed up hasbeen liberal loser liar.

C'mon Buster, stop holding back & tell us what you really think!

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

The Council’s Builder Bailout

Finance Director Sonia Andrews predicted that deferring SDCs might mean the city will be unable to make its annual debt payments.

From The Source, is there a source on this "quote"? Who did Sonia say this to?

This is freaking UNBELIEVABLE. Our finance director thinks we will go bust, and we re approving this bondoggle anyway.

Please tell me there will be perp walks after this.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

>>grime reaper

Explain.


It's a new cleaning product of some sort.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Wholesale prices: Highest annual rate in 27 years
The Labor Department reports that its Producer Price Index increased by 1.2% in July and by 9.8% in the past year.
By Catherine Clifford, CNNMoney.com staff writer
Last Updated: August 19, 2008: 10:04 AM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- In another indication of growing inflation, wholesale prices increased in July to the highest annual rate in 27 years, according to a government report released on Tuesday.

The annual Producer Price Index for finished goods rose 9.8% in the 12 months that ended in July.

The jump in wholesale prices is the fastest rate of increase since a 10.4% bump-up in June 1981, according to Joseph Kowal, economist at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Labor Department also reported that PPI rose 1.2% in July, after increasing 1.8% in June. Analysts polled by Briefing.com had expected the index to increase only 0.6% in July.

The so-called core PPI number, which excludes food and energy prices, rose by 0.7% - more than the 0.2% increase analysts had expected.

The index for finished goods other than foods and energy has advanced by 3.5% in the past year, according to the report.

Food and energy: The indexes that measure producers' food and energy prices increased in July, but at a more moderate pace than in the previous two months.

Energy prices rose by 3.1%, after a 6.0% jump in energy prices in June and a 4.9% jump in May. In the 12 months through July, prices for finished energy goods have surged 28%.

Food prices rose by only 0.3% in July, after increasing by 1.5% in June and 0.8% in May. In a year- over-year comparison, prices for finished consumer foods have increased by 8.7%, according to the report.

The government reported last week that the the Consumer Price Index jumped by 0.8% in July, which was twice the increase that economists had expected.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...


The jump in wholesale prices is the fastest rate of increase since a 10.4% bump-up in June 1981


What's this you say? Running the printing presses at full bore morning, noon & night has upped inflation?

To paraphrase Bend builders: Who could have guessed?

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Merrill Lynch & Lehman continue their run for the bottom...

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Wow, in cycling thru some of these craigslist postings, it's clear MOST people here are denying reality, and pricing like it's All Still Good.

These prices are just insane.

Good job Bulletin. Keep reporting the Pollyanna slant, so prices & expectations are kept unreasonable, and nothing ever sells again.

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

marge @ benddenial

If you are a seller there is no one coming to rescue you. NO CALiVARY. Just move your crap out and send the keys to the bank. The only chance you have of selling is finding a buyer with a FICO over 780 and 10% real skin in the deal at an affordable median price of about $200k.

CALi-VARY... I like that

Anonymous said...

A worthless, washed up hasbeen liberal loser liar.

C'mon Buster, stop holding back & tell us what you really think!

*

Homee, not all anonympuss that use SPLAT(*) are buster.

Anonymous said...

Ex-IMF economist sees large U.S. bank collapsing: report

By Steve Goldstein
Last update: 4:34 a.m. EDT Aug. 19, 2008Comments: 89
LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Kenneth Rogoff, the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, reportedly said Tuesday that a large U.S. bank will collapse in the next few months. "We're not just going to see mid-sized banks go under in the next few months, we're going to see a whopper, we're going to see a big one, one of the big investment banks or big banks," Rogoff told a conference in Singapore, according to a Reuters report. The whole nation is screwed not just bend. anyone ready to wager which bank?

Anonymous said...

the amenity migrant experience on NPR (excerpts):

Some newcomers are shocked at how hard it is to find a decent-paying job.

Mattson said she thought she could make a new, simpler life for herself in Flagstaff, and make a positive contribution to the community. Instead, she scraped by on a series of low-paying jobs, many of them found while searching for jobs online with a used bookstore's free Wi-Fi.

Mattson says she wasn't surprised it was tough to find work.

"I was surprised that even once you found it, you weren't getting paid enough to stay in Flagstaff," Mattson said.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93709452

Anonymous said...

If I spent ten minutes thinking about a post and Duncan didn't bother to pass it through, I probably wouldn't try again.

*

A week ago they were letting everything through, then they started the 'approval', but the fact is nothing is being approved. Its easy to make aliases and change IP's ( for me ), and I noted that after last week, nothing went through. I even did a "I think the Source is a fine paper, ...", and that didn't go through.

Thus for the past week, I can say that all comments on the SORE website are going straight to the bit-bucket. Which as we all know is quite sad.

There is ONLY one person running the website and that is Aaron. I suspect what happened is that months ago they turn comments back on and then over the last few weeks with the suicide issue raising its ugly head, they got complaints from the Boss-Hogg. Thus Aaron just shut it all down, ...

"STUPID"? Lazy, but not stupid.

Anonymous said...

A worthless, washed up hasbeen liberal loser liar.

C'mon Buster, stop holding back & tell us what you really think!

*

I like HBM, just like I like BP.

I asked News-Junky to write a history on HBM for all, I begged HBM to write a long history of himself in Bend, and his view of the pre-slide to BK. Neither have done so.

It's quite interesting, that both will delete OUR TOLSTOY manuscripts, but neither will write their own.

Tim, is there a word for this??

I personally think it all gets back to 'stupid', so long as the SORE is generating 'stupid content' all boss-hoggs are happy.

If HBM or News-Junk actually wrote a historical essay on the Bend collapse, they might actually have to say something that wasn't stupid.

So when HBM & Aaron say BEND is STUPID, what they're saying is that media in this town is PAID by the boss-hogg to BE STUPID.

Anonymous said...

A comment on the Oregonian suicide article.

As we know, there is an epidemic on a per-capita bend basis of developers.

What the Oregonian actually says here is that the random adult suicide is no worse in Bend, than any other teen-age population in USA in todays economy.

That is besides the point, the POINT is we have lost FOUR developers in a month, that is a fucking EPIDEMIC.

Lastly, as I have said all along here, the OREGONIAN is NOT your friend, they're owned by KKR(JUNK_BOND), which is/was FINANCED BY OPERS(oregon government employees). Homer Williams runs PDX, like Mike Hollern runs Bend. The common asshole of Hollern&Williams is Government protection at the highest levels in the state.

In summary read the Oregonian article about bend developer suicides carefully its a riot of stupidity, just like HBM is paid to do, and the BULL has perfected.

Anonymous said...

He or his minions delete posts that: 1) he disagrees with 2) criticize his logic (or what he thinks is logic) 3) criticize his looks

I don't delete any posts, and I don't have any "minions."

And "criticize his looks"? Are you fucking FOR REAL???

The comment section, like the rest of SORE, is worthless.

Because it doesn't repeat every word of your repetitious, obsessive drivel, I guess.

As is hbm. A worthless, washed up hasbeen liberal loser liar.

Fuck you, fuck you very much. But at least I have the balls to put my name on my posts.

Anonymous said...

I begged HBM to write a long history of himself in Bend, and his view of the pre-slide to BK. Neither have done so.

Why the FUCK should I do YOU any favors, especially when you call me a washed-up loser?

You seem to think the whole fucking world revolves around you and your obsessions. You have some real mental issues, dude. I mean it. You should take your eyes off your computer monitor once in a while, get up, take a walk outside. Unless your legs have atrophied.

Anonymous said...

Why the FUCK should I do YOU any favors, especially when you call me a washed-up loser?

*

HBM, I didn't call you a washed up loser.

Look lava said the other day, everytime there is an anonymous post, BP thinks it buster.

All I can tell you HBM, is that I asked that you write a HBM-History-of-Bend, and I didn't say you were a loser.

That said, I have said that everyone on this board is a renter-loser, but I know you own your own home.

Anonymous said...

I have the balls to put my name on my posts.

*

Perhaps BP&HBM are joined at the hip, this is a washed up old argument.

We all long ago concurred that public posting is 'STUPID', one of your favorite assertions to all subjects.

Anonymous said...

I begged HBM to write a long history of himself in Bend, and his view of the pre-slide to BK. Neither have done so.

Why the FUCK should I do YOU any favors, especially when you call me a washed-up loser?

*

That's an interesting slant. A favor? A favor to me? An anonymASS!

NO, a big no HBM, the favor is NOT to me, the favor is to all of BEND, the favor is that we need to tell history of BEND, and how it was fucked.

You say that I'm an atrophied idiot-dude, and yet I have written 1,000's of pages of history on Bend during the last two years. I'm simply asking you to share your perspective.

In these types of forums your always going to get crap hurled from some 12 yr old, don't let it stick, all of us here have thick skin.

I have been called worse than 'washed up loser', I think a few months ago somebody called me a 'old dog', and I still don't know what that means, I love dogs.

HBM, I'm a liberal more than a conservative, like Tim&BP. I think you care about BEND, I know you care about BEND.

Then the other assertion in your attempt to destroy this blog, like the powers that be tried allegedly to OUT homer a few weeks ago, how do we know that your not calling your self a washed out loser? In an attempt to discredit buster?

NOW that this blog is the ONLY fucking news of BEND in the world, I'm sure all you fucking gate-keepers will do what ever it takes to shut this blog down.

I am NOT your enemy HBM, you may not even be the real HBM how do we know? This is one of the reasons I have asked that you post history, then I would know. Thus perhaps your right it would be a favor, but the original request was for the newbies of Bend to learn more about how we got to where we are today.

tim said...

It's hard for me to stay interested in this fight, since I stopped reading The Source's board a year ago, and I'm sick of HBM's repetition of themes.

But I couldn't resist taking a look at the bulletin web site again today. Four more stories on the front page of the web site, some with hundreds of page views.

And once again, zero comments. Tumbleweeds.

Anonymous said...

You should take your eyes off your computer monitor once in a while, get up, take a walk outside.
- hbm maybe

*

I do HBM, and all I see in the woods of Bend is "NO BOB",

aka 'bob woodward' a creation of the SORE, a man best known for promoting the outdoor Bend that was over-sold to the world.

A few weeks ago when you showed up here, and the SORE starting allowing comments again, I thought you folks had seen the light, but its clear now that darkness prevails at the SORE.

Just like you inability to take criticism of 'BOB', none of YOUR ROYAL CROWNED EX-MAYOR's of BEND's good old boy liberal team will ever speak bad about one another, but its YOUR TEAM that allowed BEND to be destroyed by TEAM-HOLLERN.

YOUR TEAM IS/WAS on his payroll, good paying PR&MARKETING JOB's.

Look what we have learned from you after two weeks.

1.) Bend is stupid

2.) That Bend will go BK

#2 is NOT new to us, and #1 is a worthless comment given that BILLIONS of dollars of wealth were created and evaporated in the last ten years of Bend. That kind of money-velocity doesn't happen by stupidity. Maybe it does where you sit at the SORE. Promoting endless events to tourists, who then are suckered to BUY CONDO's. That is the Bend I see.

Anonymous said...

It's hard for me to stay interested in this fight, since I stopped reading The Source's board a year ago, and I'm sick of HBM's repetition of themes.

*

Tim, in the area of 'print' media, the SORE is our only hope, that they'll turn around and REP the people.

It's clear that said, from what HBM is writing that he in actuality despises us, and what we're trying to accomplish.

Regarding HBM's boring dribble, how would you feel writing in this town, when the ONLY subject the BOSS-HOGG will allow is weeds, and after the fact explicit mention of council meetings.

I remember over 3 years ago busting HBM's balls for NEVER fucking attending council meetings, and his comment was "I'm too busy, that is the BULL's job".

Of course the BULL doesn't cover meeting's either, well from the outcome for HOLLERN point of view.

Bend is fucked. There is NO consensus. We don't get along, we can't even discuss how to fix Bend.

Weeks ago when he showed up I asked all to list fixes, and of course TIM did so, and nobody else.

I don't think that HBM wants to fix BEND, I think he wants to just BITCH like a typical liberal.

That said, like a typical liberal he knows to keep his mouth shut on most topics, so he gets invited to all the liberal 'bob woodward&co' party's in Bend.

Anonymous said...

Tim,

The debate isn't about the SORE or HBM.

The debate is about the print-media of BEND, and how it has become so fucking lame.

Cowardly, ...

Even HBM admits BEND is BK, yet do you ever see him write on the subject? HELL NO!

This is what we're talking about HBM, and you say you got ball's, but you got NO BALLS, because your afraid to write about the very things that you allege to believe.

TIM its NOT about the SORE or BULL, its like the guy that got fired at the BULL this spring for not writing positive RE story's, this town is intellectually killing its writers.

HBM write what you believe in, tell people the truth. Try to fix Bend, just don't make fun of the problems.

My suspicion is that BEND was FUCKED before HBM got here, and thus never did nor ever will try to correct its course.

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

August sales not lookin too Good.
So far we are behind July by over 30% on solds SFR's.
August typicaly beats July and then the seasonal slow down occurs.

Anonymous said...

July SFR's hit lowest PPSF since June 2005 at %152.00

tim said...

Oh yeah, writing in Bend would be death. There's no journalism that I can see happening in Bend, but it does happen sometimes ABOUT Bend in stories from Portland (Oregonian) or New York (WSJ). Sometimes we see it on the web at NPR's website. If I were still a journalist, obviously Portland would be the only decent place to be in Oregon.

I know Bulletin people. About half I know are itching to leave, waiting for an opportunity. About half seem content to make their living and not think about what journalism is and should be. That's my impression--I'm not clear on what goes through their heads when they think about their jobs. There's nothing wrong with the people, from what I can tell. There's something wrong with the bosses or the habits or the expectations. Newspapers are sad enough places right now even in the best of towns.

A gray blandness happens a lot in smallish papers. People try to avoid awkward situations, so it's all about school sports, "human interest" stories, restaurant openings, and so on.

A brilliant Sacramento Bee newspaper reporter (way smarter than me) once asked me why people despise "the media" so much. When you're inside, you really don't know why. You're busy with deadlines. Your baffled by the anger and disdain directed at you.

I've given up on the Source. It's the absolute lamest "alternative" paper I have ever seen. It's a poser. It's a Summit High freshman wearing the latest urban rap ghetto clothes he bought with Grandma's birthday money at some expensive shop at the Old Mill, making gang signs and calling you "dog."

It has the trappings of an "alternative rag," but it ain't one.

You go ahead an make kissy faces at HBM. Maybe you really can get Aaron to start showing this town as it is.

And if you succeed in that, maybe you can try making Popsicles out of fire.

I'm disgusted with HBM's repeated line about what kind of posts are rejected. Mine, I assure you, were models of pith and wit.

I must admit I'm out of the loop over there (the comments were "turned off" then "turned back on"--WTF?). But I'm going to fight back my curiosity over their flip-floppiness and just keep ignoring them. The Source is a distraction. Rooting for them to grow balls would be like rooting for a Ponderosa pine to grow roses on its branches.

News Junkie said...

>>it's NOT about the SORE and BULL

*

Then I suggest you turn off the Perpetual Shouting Machine. Stop the incessant SHOUTING in our faces about the SORE and BULL!

Bewert said...

IHTBYB, you off watching long legs in short shorts jumping up and down right now?

Regarding alt media, the web is the place to do it right now. I've been thinking about that a lot lately.

On another note, ODOT Bob (Bob Bryant, ODOT Region 4 Manager) just sent me the agenda for this weeks meeting. Looks like Eric and Ron are making a case for JR on Thursday, so I'll go up and see what they have to say to ODOT.

Anonymous said...

The NPR piece is basically the story of Bend. It's worth reading the whole thing:

Morning Edition, August 19, 2008 ·

Summer vacation season is winding down, and memories of nice weather and scenic vistas are prompting an urge to move to the beach or the mountains. An increasing number of workers are translating that urge into a reality.

More and more Americans are flocking to resort-like cities, places like Flagstaff, Ariz., a quaint college town near the Grand Canyon. For some, it's a move to paradise. But it can come with a steep price.

For centuries, the San Francisco Peaks mountain range, just north of Flagstaff, has been a beacon soaring nearly 13,000 feet above the desert. First Native Americans, then early pioneers, were drawn to the cool, pine-blanketed mountains.

And now the Flagstaff high country is luring a new wave of settlers. For the past eight years, this college town has been Mary Stone's home away from home. She makes the two-hour drive from the Phoenix valley up to her second home here every chance she gets.

Recently, Stone walked into her spacious living room, where huge windows overlook the Coconino National Forest.

"As soon as I came to Flagstaff, I felt at home in a way I hadn't felt probably anyplace else I've ever lived," Stone said.

"It's the people, it's the arts, it's the free exchange of ideas, the natural surroundings."

Stone and her husband are planning to retire in Flagstaff. In fact, she is already spending much of her time there. One local group named her its volunteer of the year for 2007.

"Right now, my driver's license has my Flagstaff address, and I'm registered to vote in Flagstaff. I care more about Flagstaff," Stone said, laughing. "It sounds terrible, because I've had a home in the valley for 16 years now."

Newcomers like Stone have been flocking to Flagstaff and other picturesque resort and college towns since the 1970s. But in the past decade, their numbers have exploded.

Kenneth Johnson, a senior demographer at the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute, has a name for people like the Stones: "amenity migrants."

"Like many of us, they would say, 'Boy, when I can, I would really like to live in one of these beautiful, scenic areas,'" Johnson said. "And as they get close to retirement, they can fulfill those wishes" — either in full retirement or by working a more flexible schedule.

Johnson has identified 300 recreation or amenity regions attracting new residents, from Western ski towns to New England and the lake country of the upper Midwest.

While other small towns are struggling, these communities are booming. They're growing two to three times faster than other rural areas, even faster than many metro areas. And as the baby boomers retire, Johnson says, the migration will accelerate.

"You get the wave of the baby boom, which is bigger than the wave before it, and on top of that, the baby boomers are more likely to purchase these second homes, or amenity homes, or move to these areas," Johnson said. "And so you get, essentially, a demographic perfect storm."

The newcomers can bring a lot of expertise, even new businesses, to their adopted hometowns — what Johnson calls "human capital." But not everyone welcomes the changes.

One of the critics is Jim Babbitt, who grew up in Flagstaff with his brother, Bruce — who went on to become Arizona's governor and U.S. secretary of the Interior.

Their family's century-old sandstone building, two blocks from Flagstaff's historic train station, is now a camping gear store. A sign on the 1880s building still reads, "Ranchers, Merchants and Indian Traders."

"People come to the nice little mountain town. So pretty soon, guess what, they want to live here or at least have a part-time home," Babbitt said.

The first thing many of them want to do after arriving, Babbitt said, is to "start to change it into the place where they came from: another park, or some walking trails near their home or, God forbid, a Starbucks."

A popular bumper sticker around town reads, "Don't Phoenix Flagstaff." More than one out of every four homes sold in Flagstaff now is bought by a second homeowner.

Longtime Flagstaff resident Dereck Turner says they're partly to blame for Flagstaff's high cost of living.

"They certainly push the housing market up and the people who want to live here and stay here full time can't afford the houses," Turner said. "So either they struggle or they're forced to move somewhere else."

In fact, the city's median home price has more than doubled in the past eight years. Even the national housing crash has barely affected prices in Flagstaff.

The gap between that median home price and the average household income is twice as large as the national average. Some newcomers are shocked at how hard it is to find a decent-paying job.

"One-income families here, [city officials] might as well put up a sign that says stay away," said Sue Mattson, who moved here four years ago from the Boston area. "Because unless you come with wealth, it's hard to make it here."

Mattson said she thought she could make a new, simpler life for herself in Flagstaff, and make a positive contribution to the community. Instead, she scraped by on a series of low-paying jobs, many of them found while searching for jobs online with a used bookstore's free Wi-Fi.

Mattson says she wasn't surprised it was tough to find work.

"I was surprised that even once you found it, you weren't getting paid enough to stay in Flagstaff," Mattson said. "People would give their eyeteeth to stay in Flagstaff, and they are giving their eyeteeth to stay in Flagstaff."

In the end, Mattson left Flagstaff. But for others, Flagstaff's quality of life is worth the sacrifices — even if they're sometimes extreme. Nine years ago, Colleen Barnett and her husband drove up from Southern California for vacation.

"And one of the things that struck us was, in Los Angeles, in the big metropolitan areas, you're kind of anonymous," Barnett said. "And here, you're walking down the street, and people are saying hi to us and nodding and making eye contact" and asking how they were doing.

"And you know it was a little uncomfortable at first because we're not used to this," Barnett said.

The Barnetts bought a piece of property for retirement. Then Colleen found a job as a loan officer at a Flagstaff bank — with a 30 percent pay cut from her Los Angeles job. But her husband wasn't ready to leave his job as a chief financial officer with a large corporation.

"So here we are, and my husband is still working in California and commutes back and forth," Barnett said. "He flies out on Monday evening and comes home Friday morning, so he's home for the weekends. ... Meanwhile, I'm up here living in paradise."

So is her son, who followed his parents to Flagstaff. He's now an officer with the city's police department — exactly the kind of newcomer with "human capital" that demographer Kenneth Johnson talked about.

But like many other middle-class residents, he can't afford to buy a home.

Flagstaff business owner Jim Babbitt said he doesn't expect the housing situation to improve as the city continues to grow.

"The Chamber of Commerce and the boosters have sought growth for as long as I can remember," Babbitt said. "And boy, they've got it now. And you know, along with growth comes rising prices, gentrification. I've thought, 'Be careful what you ask for.'"

That's a problem that Flagstaff and towns like it don't have much time left to solve: how to accommodate the growth they know is coming without losing the small-town character that attracted everyone in the first place.

Anonymous said...

Then I suggest you turn off the Perpetual Shouting Machine. Stop the incessant SHOUTING in our faces about the SORE and BULL!

*

Given that News-Nazi is a BULL/SORE rep, I guess it is about the BULL/SORE.

The BULL/SORE tag team, is the BIGGEST SOURCE of RE boosterism in Bend. Yes, your right, we do have a BULLSORE problem.

Anonymous said...

Homer,

You missed the bendbubble blog order.

1.) Bendbubble.blogspot.com the 'hobbit' innocent years of shire-bend.

2.) Bendbubble2.blogspot.com, the denial years

3,) Bendbubble3.blogspot.com, the aftermath, the dark years, the suicide years of Bend.

Out of BB grew angrybendbitch, bem's new blog, bendindenial ( while very few are still in denial ).

Anonymous said...

BEND SUICIDE

I think that the real story about Bends 'exceptional' builder suicide is the public-denial, and public lying to one another.

Note that the Audia suicide happened on the day of the SageBrush Classic the gluttony day of golf. Certainly Audia would have attended being the top golfer in town.

That day per the BULL he would have to told everyone "Best time to sell disposable homes in Bend in 20 years", he probably told that lie all day long.

Nobody believed but everybody agreed, right out of another anonymous poster Carrol Lewis aka "Alice in Wonderland", or an Emperors New Clothes.

Then at the eve Audia went home, so they say sent his girlfriend out for some aspirin, and she returned to find him with a bullet hole in his skull.

This type of crap wouldn't be happening if this town had a support structure, and told the truth. If people didn't have to go to GLUTTONY party's at $300/head and tell lies to each other, there would be no suicide.

The BULL/SORE perpetuates all the lies, and many people of good hearts bet the farm, because with so many of Bends TOP-CITIZENS all going with the charade, there must be truth NO?

The media of Bend is 100% responsible for Bend's Suicide of Developers. CORA & COBA who force their members in public to keep a straight face and say everything is the 'best in 20 years' are also 100% responsible.

Anonymous said...

BP, the difference between Flagstaff & BEND. Is that flagstaff didn't get the RUN-UP on RE %.

Note that while BEND was #1 nationally for RE appreciation, quite often Sedonna, and Prescott, which are a little south of Flagstaff, and both 1-1/2 hour to PHOENIX so #2 RE national appreciation.

I'll say this that 20+ years ago BEND & FLAGSTAFF were exactly the same, dusty dirty nasty little towns in the winter.

Flagstaff has a wonderful urban down-town walkable UNIVERSITY. Thus Flagstaff really is a nice town. Two hours west of Flagstaff is Kingman, which last week you confused with Page.

Anonymous said...

Then I suggest you turn off the Perpetual Shouting Machine. Stop the incessant SHOUTING in our faces about the SORE and BULL! - A Swishler

*

I really think that the BULL&SORE are taking this personally?

Throughout history, even butchers saw themselves of noble effort. I'm sure deep inside of all at the BULL&SORE they really do think that everybody in Bend is going to get rich.

The greatest fool theory in Bend is over. Marge says Cali-Vary NOT coming to rescue Bend RE. Bend long depended on the white hatted cowboy from cali with the silver saddle, coming up and buying worthless desert lots from boss-hogg. Now its over, even if the taxpayer does fund free SDC hogg-trough for every cali, they ain't coming.

Anonymous said...

The scary thing in Bend, that today like 1/2 the remaining jobs are PR&MARKETING jobs, aka CORA, COBA, COVA, ... taxpayer, ...

Given that all is now futile, we could see lots of Bends MOST beautiful people without a job.

Think how quick the pollyanna good talk about BEND will end when all the REHO's on salary ain't getting paid to hawk Bend to non-existent buyers??

Anonymous said...

Regarding alt media, the web is the place to do it right now. I've been thinking about that a lot lately.
-BP

*

There is just something about print, like TIM says, its rather sad that Bend doesn't have an alt-paper, an alternative to BULL.

The censorship of the net is coming BP, if McCain wins, your going to see massive control of discussion, using the terrorism, and other straw-dogs as justification.

Your right, I mean the BULL&SORE are actually like fish out of water, wallowing in their OWN death before us, they're no longer credible, and of NO financial use to the HOGG.

I think that's why you see the HOGG's paid HO's here today bashing us on the front line.

Artie said...

>>CORA, COBA, COVA

I*'ll start COLA if someone else will start COMA.

Bewert said...

Buster, that's one thing I have never figured out--why did the U get put on top of a hill way away from everything at the time? Seems like prime residential land to me.

Anonymous said...

why did the U get put on top of a hill way away from everything at the time?

Brooks-Scanlon Timber Co. donated the land to COCC for a campus because it was too steep to log, at least with the techniques of the era. They didn't foresee that it would become prime residential real estate.

Anonymous said...

HBM, I didn't call you a washed up loser. Look lava said the other day, everytime there is an anonymous post, BP thinks it buster.

Sorry, but I can't tell the various Anons apart. Maybe you should invent a distinctive nom de plume.

That said, I have said that everyone on this board is a renter-loser, but I know you own your own home.

I do. We bought it in early winter 1985. It used to have a nice view before Pahlisch threw up The Ugliest Development in Bend right next door.

Anonymous said...

I'm disgusted with HBM's repeated line about what kind of posts are rejected. Mine, I assure you, were models of pith and wit.

LOL!

But seriously: If anybody has a problem with the posting policy, take it up with Aaron: aaron@tsweekly.com. Since I don't make the policy I don't see why it's my job to defend it.

Speaking personally, Aaron gives posters a lot less leeway than I would. As long as it isn't obscene or libelous I don't give a damn. But he cherishes the dream of having "intelligent dialogue" on line. It won't ever happen IMO -- there's something about the Web that seems to bring out the worst in people. (Or maybe it just brings out the worst people.)

Bewert said...

Re: The scary thing in Bend, that today like 1/2 the remaining jobs are PR&MARKETING jobs, aka CORA, COBA, COVA, ... taxpayer, ...

Don't forget, the city wants to add a Communications Coordinator to help the Communications Manager. They are pitching the CC tomorrow night. Along with a Financial Analyst and Accounting Tech (person who you pay your bill to).

The only position that will pay for itself is the Accounting Tech.

But that's OK, we're not out of money yet.

Anonymous said...

I'm sure deep inside of all at the BULL&SORE they really do think that everybody in Bend is going to get rich.

I sure as hell know I ain't.

Artie said...

Aaron, perhaps, is not familiar with how discussions work all over the Internet. Attempts to mold human communication are, at best, quaint.

If you take out the nuts, you no longer have Cracker Jacks. You just have sickening sweet carmel popcorn.

Anonymous said...

The media of Bend is 100% responsible for Bend's Suicide of Developers. CORA & COBA who force their members in public to keep a straight face and say everything is the 'best in 20 years' are also 100% responsible.

Uh, that adds up to 200%, Buster.

The suicides are the responsibility of the people who committed suicide, nobody else. But it's true that if you live a life of phony smiley-face optimism (which American society expects -- indeed, demands -- of everybody these days) reality has a nasty way of whomping you upside the head. "Hope for the best, expect the worst" is a pretty good life strategy, IMO.

Anonymous said...

Aaron, perhaps, is not familiar with how discussions work all over the Internet.

Oh, I'm sure he is. But he's an idealist.

Anonymous said...

Given that all is now futile, we could see lots of Bends MOST beautiful people without a job.

Well, Mollie Hogan, who went to Bend High with my daughter, used to work in real estate and is now a professional hula hoop instructor. No kidding.

See, there's always something.

Anonymous said...

The censorship of the net is coming BP, if McCain wins, your going to see massive control of discussion, using the terrorism, and other straw-dogs as justification.

I suspect you're right. "Protecting kids from porn and predators" will be another straw dog.

tim said...

Hula Hoop Instructors, like Latin Dance Instructors and Pilates Instructors, are superfine hotties.

It's all about the core.

Anonymous said...

Buster, that's one thing I have never figured out--why did the U get put on top of a hill way away from everything at the time?

*

I hate it when you call COCC a 'U' BP, its always been a piss poor little city-college.

Bend sadly WILL NEVER have a 'U' in our lifetime, for that matter the few "U's" they have in eastern-orygun are all failing.

The only decent U's in Orygun are UofO, & USO ( eugene,&corvallis) psu sucks, the ONLY good school in ORYGUN is Reed College, and dat is private.

What's worse about the the site of COCC is its on the eastern side at 40degree slope, which means a little ice/snow and it all shuts down.

I'll keep demanding the the SMITH old-mill becomes UofO@Bend, but I know there is no money, just like $14k/person aka HBM qual-hand-out, dar is no $$$.


Thats the said thing about the bendbubble, had they ten+ years ago said the old-mill will be UofO@Bend, today we would have something, now all we're going to get is the largest prison in the PNW located at JR.

Anonymous said...

I suspect you're right. "Protecting kids from porn and predators" will be another straw dog.


*

And death threats, don't forget them death-threats a few weeks ago it was all the BULL could talk about, we need cops watching the Bend-Broadband all the time for bogeys.

I think the founder of Smith College for women back east said it best 100 years ago "Whenever you hear men talk of protecting the women and children, run & hide, there is a rape about to take place".

Anonymous said...

BP&HOMER, if you want to see how Gold-Sachs, and Tribe-Bush with the best HOLLERN-DOLLARs that Bend can send home to uncle Bush are spent, read this to understand all about 'expensive fuel'.

This guy engdahl has been writing for 30+ years about artificial manipulation of the oil market.

***

More on the real reason behind high oil prices / Part II


By F. William Engdahl, 21 May, 2008



As detailed in an earlier article, a conservative calculation is that at least 60% of today’s $128 per barrel price of crude oil comes from unregulated futures speculation by hedge funds, banks and financial groups using the London ICE Futures and New York NYMEX futures exchanges and uncontrolled inter-bank or Over-The-Counter trading to avoid scrutiny. US margin rules of the government’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission allow speculators to buy a crude oil futures contract on the Nymex, by having to pay only 6% of the value of the contract. At today's price of $128 per barrel, that means a futures trader only has to put up about $8 for every barrel. He borrows the other $120. This extreme “leverage” of 16 to 1 helps drive prices to wildly unrealistic levels and offset bank losses in sub-prime and other disasters at the expense of the overall population.

The hoax of Peak Oil—namely the argument that the oil production has hit the point where more than half all reserves have been used and the world is on the downslope of oil at cheap price and abundant quantity—has enabled this costly fraud to continue since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 with the help of key banks, oil traders and big oil majors. Washington is trying to shift blame, as always, to Arab OPEC producers. The problem is not a lack of crude oil supply. In fact the world is in over-supply now. Yet the price climbs relentlessly higher. Why? The answer lies in what are clearly deliberate US government policies that permit the unbridled oil price manipulations.

World Oil Demand Flat, Prices Boom…

The chief market strategist for one of the world’s leading oil industry banks, David Kelly, of J.P. Morgan Funds, recently admitted something telling to the Washington Post, “One of the things I think is very important to realize is that the growth in the world oil consumption is not that strong."

One of the stories used to support the oil futures speculators is the allegation that China’s oil import thirst is exploding out of control, driving shortages in the supply-demand equilibrium. The facts do not support the China demand thesis however.

The US Government’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) in its most recent monthly Short Term Energy Outlook report, concluded that US oil demand is expected to decline by 190,000 b/d in 2008. That is mainly owing to the deepening economic recession. Chinese consumption, the EIA says, far from exploding, is expected to rise this year by only 400,000 barrels a day. That is hardly the "surging oil demand" blamed on China in the media. Last year China imported 3.2 million barrels per day, and its estimated usage was around 7 million b/d total. The US, by contrast, consumes around 20.7 million b/d.

That means the key oil consuming nation, the USA, is experiencing a significant drop in demand. China, which consumes only a third of the oil the US does, will see a minor rise in import demand compared with the total daily world oil output of some 84 million barrels, less than half of a percent of the total demand.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has its 2008 global oil demand growth forecast unchanged at 1.2 mm bpd, as slowing economic growth in the industrialised world is offset by slightly growing consumption in developing nations. OPEC predicts global oil demand in 2008 will average 87 million bpd -- largely unchanged from its previous estimate. Demand from China, the Middle East, India, and Latin America -- is forecast to be stronger but the EU and North American demand will be lower.

So the world’s largest oil consumer faces a sharp decline in consumption, a decline that will worsen as the housing and related economic effects of the US securitization crisis in finance de -leverages. The price in normal open or transparent markets would presumably be falling not rising. No supply crisis justifies the way the world's oil is being priced today.

Big new oil fields coming online

Not only is there no supply crisis to justify such a price bubble. There are several giant new oil fields due to begin production over the course of 2008 to further add to supply.

The world’s single largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia is finalizing plans to boost drilling activity by a third and increase investments by 40 %. Saudi Aramco's plan, which runs from 2009 to 2013, is expected to be approved by the company's board and the Oil Ministry this month. The Kingdom is in the midst of a $ 50 billion oil production expansion plan to meet growing demand in Asia and other emerging markets. The Kingdom is expected to boost its pumping capacity to a total of 12.5 mm bpd by next year, up about 11 % from current capacity of 11.3 mm bpd.

In April this year Saudi Arabia's Khursaniyah oilfield began pumping and will soon add another 500,000 bpd to world oil supply of high grade Arabian Light crude. As well, another Saudi expansion project, the Khurais oilfield development, is the largest of Saudi Aramco projects that will boost the production capacity of Saudi oilfields from 11.3 million bpd to 12.5 million bpd by 2009. Khurais is planned to add another 1.2 million bpd of high-quality Arabian light crude to Saudi Arabia's export capacity.

Brazil’s Petrobras is in the early phase of exploiting what it estimates are newly confirmed oil reserves offshore in its Tupi field that could be as great or greater than the North Sea. Petrobras, says the new ultra-deep Tupi field could hold as much as 8 billion barrels of recoverable light crude. When online in a few years it is expected to put Brazil among the world's "top 10" oil producers, between those of Nigeria and those of Venezuela.

In the United States, aside from rumors that the big oil companies have been deliberately sitting on vast new reserves in Alaska for fear that the prices of recent years would plunge on over-supply, the US Geological Survey (USGS) recently issued a report that confirmed major new oil reserves in an area called the Bakken, which stretches across North Dakota, Montana and south-eastern Saskatchewan. The USGS estimates up to 3.65 billion barrels of oil in the Bakken.

These are just several confirmations of large new oil reserves to be exploited. Iraq, where the Anglo-American Big Four oil majors are salivating to get their hands on the unexplored fields, is believed to hold oil reserves second only to Saudi Arabia. Much of the world has yet to be explored for oil. At prices above $60 a barrel huge new potentials become economic. The major problem faced by Big Oil is not finding replacement oil but keeping the lid on world oil finds in order to maintain present exorbitant prices. Here they have some help from Wall Street banks and the two major oil trade exchanges—NYMEX and London-Atlanta’s ICE and ICE Futures.

Then why do prices still rise?

There is growing evidence that the recent speculative bubble in oil which has gone asymptotic since January is about to pop.

Late last month in Dallas Texas, according to one participant, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists held its annual conference where all the major oil executives and geologists were present. According to one participant, knowledgeable oil industry CEOs reached the consensus that "oil prices will likely soon drop dramatically and the long-term price increases will be in natural gas."

Just a few days earlier, Lehman Brothers, a Wall Street investment bank had said that the current oil price bubble was coming to an end. Michael Waldron, the bank's chief oil strategist, was quoted in Britain's Daily Telegraph on Apr. 24 saying, "Oil supply is outpacing demand growth. Inventories have been building since the beginning of the year.”

In the US, stockpiles of oil climbed by almost 12 million barrels in April according to the May 7 EIA monthly report on inventory, up by nearly 33 million barrels since January. At the same time, MasterCard's May 7 US gasoline report showed that gas demand has fallen by 5.8%. And refiners are reducing their refining rates dramatically to adjust to the falling gasoline demand. They are now running at 85% of capacity, down from 89% a year ago, in a season when production is normally 95%. The refiners today are clearly trying to draw down gasoline inventories to bid gasoline prices up. ‘It’s the economy, stupid,’ to paraphrase Bill Clinton’s infamous 1992 election quip to daddy Bush. It’s called economic recession.

The May 8 report from Oil Movements, a British company that tracks oil shipments worldwide, shows that oil in transit on the high seas is also quite strong. Almost every category of shipment is running higher than it was a year ago. The report notes that, "In the West, a big share of any oil stock building done this year has happened offshore, out of sight." Some industry insiders say the global oil industry from the activities and stocks of the Big Four to the true state of tanker and storage and liftings, is the most secretive industry in the world with the possible exception of the narcotics trade.

Goldman Sachs again in the middle

The oil price today, unlike twenty years ago, is determined behind closed doors in the trading rooms of giant financial institutions like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank or UBS. The key exchange in the game is the London ICE Futures Exchange (formerly the International Petroleum Exchange). ICE Futures is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Atlanta Georgia International Commodities Exchange. ICE in Atlanta was founded in part by Goldman Sachs which also happens to run the world’s most widely used commodity price index, the GSCI, which is over-weighted to oil prices.

As I noted in my earlier article, (‘Perhaps 60% of today’s oil price is pure speculation’), ICE was focus of a recent congressional investigation. It was named both in the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations' June 27, 2006, Staff Report and in the House Committee on Energy & Commerce's hearing in December 2007 which looked into unregulated trading in energy futures. Both studies concluded that energy prices' climb to $128 and perhaps beyond is driven by billions of dollars' worth of oil and natural gas futures contracts being placed on the ICE. Through a convenient regulation exception granted by the Bush Administration in January 2006, the ICE Futures trading of US energy futures is not regulated by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, even though the ICE Futures US oil contracts are traded in ICE affiliates in the USA. And at Enron’s request, the CFTC exempted the Over-the-Counter oil futures trades in 2000.

So it is no surprise to see in a May 6 report from Reuters that Goldman Sachs announces oil could in fact be on the verge of another "super spike," possibly taking oil as high as $200 a barrel within the next six to 24 months. That headline, "$200 a barrel!" became the major news story on oil for the next two days. How many gullible lemmings followed behind with their money bets?

Arjun Murti, Goldman Sachs' energy strategist, blamed what he called "blistering" (sic) demand from China and the Middle East, combined with his assertion that the Middle East is nearing its maximum ability to produce more oil. Peak Oil mythology again helps Wall Street. The degree of unfounded hype reminds of the kind of self-serving Wall Street hype in 1999-2000 around dot.com stocks or Enron.

In 2001 just before the dot.com crash in the NASDAQ, some Wall Street firms were pushing sale to the gullible public of stocks that their companies were quietly dumping. Or they were pushing dubious stocks for companies where their affiliated banks had a financial interest. In short as later came out in Congressional investigations, companies with a vested interest in a certain financial outcome used the media to line their pockets and that of their companies, leaving the public investor holding the bag. It would be interesting for Congress to subpoena the records of the futures positions of Goldman Sachs and a handful of other major energy futures players to see if they are invested to gain from a further rise in oil to $200 or not.

Margin rules feed the frenzy

Another added turbo-charger to present speculation in oil prices is the margin rule governing what percent of cash a buyer of a futures contract in oil has to put up to bet on a rising oil price (or falling for that matter). The current NYMEX regulation allows a speculator to put up only 6% of the total value of his oil futures contract. That means a risk-taking hedge fund or bank can buy oil futures with a leverage of 16 to 1.

We are hit with an endless series of plausible arguments for the high price of oil: A "terrorism risk premium;" “blistering” rise in demand of China and India; unrest in the Nigerian oil region; oil pipelines' blown up in Iraq; possible war with Iran…And above all the hype about Peak Oil. Oil speculator T. Boone Pickens has reportedly raked in a huge profit on oil futures and argues, conveniently that the world is on the cusp of Peak Oil. So does the Houston investment banker and friend of Dick Cheney, Matt Simmons.

As the June 2006 US Senate report, The Role of Market Speculation in Rising Oil and Gas Prices, noted, "There's a few hedge fund managers out there who are masters at knowing how to exploit the peak oil theories and hot buttons of supply and demand, and by making bold predictions of shocking price advancements to come, they only add more fuel to the bullish fire in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy."

Will a Democratic Congress act to change the carefully crafted opaque oil futures markets in an election year and risk bursting the bubble? On May 12 House Energy & Commerce Committee stated it will look at this issue into June. The world will be watching.

Anonymous said...

I really liked the 800,000,000 word article on oil speculators. Please, post about 10 more of those articles.

Anonymous said...

Bend loses green-collar jobs, plus its sunshine is questioned:

OPB News
Bend Solar Industry Takes Hit From Congressional Inaction

By Ethan Lindsey

Bend, OR August 18, 2008 6:49 p.m.

Bend and Central Oregon boast of 300 days of sun per year. That number is unconfirmed, but the sunny weather has led to the growth of a burgeoning solar industry.

Now several of the region's biggest solar companies are struggling -- and they blame the federal government. Ethan Lindsey reports that one of the region's solar pioneers has laid off some of its workers.
_____

In May, Barack Obama stopped by to praise Bend-based PV Powered.

But now, chief executive Gregg Patterson says he had to lay off some of his company's 60 employees - fewer than 10 workers.

Patterson says a program that helped people switch to solar is in jeopardy.

The investment tax credit is set to expire in December.

Gregg Patterson: “I find it horribly ironic and paradoxical that at the same time we are struggling with energy independence, that the Congress and the current Administration can't solve this issue.”

Mike Hewitt's company, E2Powered, installs solar equipment.

He says the looming deadline has actually helped his sales - as people try to get in under the wire.

But Hewitt worries about the long-term.

The solar industry estimates it could lose $19 billion if it does expire.

Congress could pass the credit next month - but may wait until a new Administration takes over.

http://news.opb.org/article/2854-bend-solar-industry-takes-hit-congressional-inaction/

Anonymous said...

I suspect you're right. "Protecting kids from porn and predators" will be another straw dog.

*

See HBM, we do agree on shit. FYI I have never personally attacked you, I have always respected you.

There are several other anonym posters here; lava&hank are two that come to mind, that just love to shove the hot coal stick up the liberal ass. They're the ones that always give BP a bad time, and he always assumes its buster.

Most of us here are middle of the road, don't blame left or right, some here just plain can't not help but fuck with BP's head, then he asks for it.

Regarding the 'loser' I guess we can't all have gotten rich on RE during Bend's golden-years, certainly those that bought in post 1998 got fucked, more likely than rich.

I guess thats why the newbies call you a loser, they can't imagine anybody being here 20+ years ago and not getting themselves rich. That said, dunc comes to mind, he was here, and didn't get rich.

I have rentals, but hell the renters paid them off in 15-30 years, that ain't fucking get-rich-quick.

Marge is taking the nazi pic's real hard, something about her father giving her a luger post wwii, I don't see what that has to do with pic's. I know many fellow Jewish folk that believe that the pic's should be rubbed in everyones face daily, years ago they use to force german school children to view the results of their parents handiwork.

HOLLERN rob's Bend via boss-hogg control, and shares the loot with the bush-tribe who wage war on the world to control oil prices. This is the kind of shit that led to the last holocaust. Look at BB3 pic's, note similarity to abu-ghraib? Smiling fucking nazis getting pleasure out of kicking somebody knocked down! Then you have gitmo & abu-ghraib both manifestations with Repug obsession with man-on-man sexual sadism.

The Bush-Tribe are Nazis, and the BEND boss-hoggs are financing them with taxpayer dollars.

Anonymous said...

I really liked the 800 word article on oil speculators. Please, post about 10 more of those articles.


*

I'm sure you would like it even better if you read it.

Anonymous said...

Goldman Sachs? The same folks that run our treasury department?

"Who would have guessed?".

tim said...

By the way, I don't want to hear anyone bad-mouthing War and Peace. It's a great book.

However, it is a bit dated feeling, with all the breaks for Tolstoy to explain his beliefs about the inevitability of history.

If you're going to read Tolstoy, start with Anna Karenina. I think it holds up better, or at least is more palatable to the modern reader.

Anonymous said...

Bend Solar Industry Takes Hit From Congressional Inaction

By Ethan Lindsey

Bend, OR August 18, 2008 6:49 p.m.

Bend and Central Oregon boast of 300 days of sun per year.

*

This is what happens when you live&die by 'stupid'. The fact is solar days is a well published stat, any good solar engineer knows exactly how many solar hours per year you get in Bend, Oregon.

"Inaction" they call it? If they were to fund a solar area in a place with very little solar, they would be called 'stupid', instead of being called 'smart' for not wasting money they're called 'inactive'.

It's all getting back to the German Nazi thing about Stupid & Industrious people running a war.

We have say compared to Eastern Oregon ( Alvord Desert say ) very little solar energy, that doesn't stop "create new jobs in Bend crowd" from lobbying to build solar arrays in a place like Bend.

All is politics, but if you have the stomach, and interest in 'solar'. You can look at the graphs and tables, where you can see exactly how much solar hours/day average that Bend gets, and its not much better than PDX, for that matter Sisters? It used to that Bend was sunny all the time, now it seems more like Sisters or Metolious which is quite often cloudy.

Then head out towards xmas valley and find tons of SUN, but that WOULD be stupid to put in a solar-array there? So far from Bend, I mean so far from Lord-Hollern.

Desperate people will do what ever they can to float the Bend Bubble, fools will believe whatever they're told. Luckily solar engineers know exactly where the best place to locate panels is, and Bend ain't the place.

Once again when FACTS are involved over emotion, Bend loses.

Anonymous said...

I don't want to hear anyone bad-mouthing War and Peace. It's a great book.


*

I only brought it up, because inside of every 'loser' blogger is a Tolstoy trying to get out.

Here's my HBM/HOLLERN idea of the week given Bends infinite wealth, give every Bend blogger $14k for a literary sabbatical.

Anonymous said...

Actually the article by Engdahl is referenced by the issue of AOPA I got today ( aviation ), which gets back to sundays arg on Bend's aviation.

As HOMEE asserts the Indian guru who wanted EPIC, before cessna got that well, then there is lancair, which is really the employer, their gig is of course criminal, ...

The FAA lets people 'homebuild' airplanes, lancair sells kits to millionaires, who have bends poor build the planes, and then sign off that the millionaire built the plane. Someone said toxic here, and yes, the lancair plane is epoxy based, which means its volatile organic solvents, and you got people doing sub-assembly in their garages and hangars free-lancing to make the whole thing work.

This past may 2008, FAA shut it all down, but OUR ORYGUN senators begged the FAA to let lancair stay in biz.

My point is that employment in orygun, even at best there is usually someone breaking the law.

The issue with planes is FAA law is quite clear 51% must be done by owner, and writing a check to lancair or a sub-lackey ain't what the FAA had in mind.

The sad thing is that the 'looking the other way' here in Orygun, just might take away nationally every true home-builders right to build their own airplane!

ERGO once again, Bend fucks the little guy, while a few rich guys exploit a fucking loophole.

Anonymous said...

Then you have gitmo & abu-ghraib both manifestations with Repug obsession with man-on-man sexual sadism.


*

Buster tell us what you really think about Oregon's GOP??

Anonymous said...

Homee,

Do you see the comparison of Bend aviation biz, and that of a third world country?

I mean that's what they do in rural chinese villages, is let the peasants take piecework home.

Bend is supposed to be Aspen? Yet, the best we can get is jobs that skirt the law. Bend is basically rural desert.

In PDX there is no way a guy could build a composite aircraft and spray polyurethane in his garage and/or hanger legally. The fire department outlaws this stuff in PDX, other than a legal paint-shop. In Cali the materials aren't even SOLD to the public.

See where I'm going, the whole gist of Bend's aviation biz, only exists because of the lack of enforcement of DEQ & Fire laws in a desert wayside.

Lastly, on the subject of polyurethane, that shit solidify's in the lungs in the presence of water. That's why you need a positive pressure spray booth, and air hose for breathing.

This is some nasty shit going on in Bend.

I normally wouldn't want to go into these details, but they were lightly touched on sunday with words like toxic, and composite.

Anonymous said...

I guess thats why the newbies call you a loser, they can't imagine anybody being here 20+ years ago and not getting themselves rich.

When we moved here we paid cash for the house. Bob Chandler said I was a fool, that I should've mortgage myself to the max and invested in Bend real estate. If I had taken that advice I WOULD be rich now.

But getting rich has never been my main motivation. If it was I never would have left a great job in the Bay Area to come to Bend, Ory-gun.

Anonymous said...

"All is politics, but if you have the stomach, and interest in 'solar'. You can look at the graphs and tables, where you can see exactly how much solar hours/day average that Bend gets, and its not much better than PDX ..."

True; "300 days of sunshine a year" is bogus PR bullshit. I'm a little surprised Lindsey even repeated it.

Quimby said...

Props to Cornellius for publishing this tidbit in the Nugget:

More people leaving Sisters area

Artie said...

Nancy Lynch at United Van Lines in Bend has been writing a number of quotations recently for Sisters families.

"We're definitely seeing more people leaving Sisters than moving in, several have said they have to go where the work is," said Lynch.

Lynch notes that this trend is not confined to Sisters.

"I can tell you that, in Bend, there are a lot of people wanting to leave - but can't until their homes sell," she said.

Anonymous said...

"Then head out towards xmas valley and find tons of SUN, but that WOULD be stupid to put in a solar-array there?"

They have some huge electrical infrastructure left over from the decommissioned Backscatter Radar site. So it might actually make sense there.

Anonymous said...

"True; "300 days of sunshine a year" is bogus PR bullshit. I'm a little surprised Lindsey even repeated it."

It was called a boast and then called unconfirmed. Reasonable into for a solar story.

Quimby said...

RE Backscatter Radar site:

You mean this?

Also, this is interesting too:

http://www.acc.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=3863

Anonymous said...

Bob Chandler said I was a fool, that I should've mortgage myself to the max and invested in Bend real estate. If I had taken that advice I WOULD be rich now.

*

This is getting good, so given that Chandler followed his own advice, is he now 'rich', or is he in debt to his eyeballs in BEND NOD's??

Anonymous said...

1.) "300 days of sunshine a year" is bogus PR bullshit.

2.) 25% / yr APR ROI on RE always has always will be, in Bend, OR.

3.) Best time to buy in 20 years

4.) 'Bend is exceptional'

5.) 'Bend is the next Aspen'

6.) Prineville is the next Bend.

There are more ain't there?

Anonymous said...

YOU WANT HISTORY of BEND? YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH

Reality Bites: Housing market collapse leaves Bend's big projects in limbo

Written by David Fisher
Wednesday, 30 April 2008
The Old Mill area's Mercato is one of several mixed-use projects that has ground to a halt amid the housing and credit crises.
The Old Mill area's Mercato is one of several mixed-use projects that has ground to a halt amid the housing and credit crises.
Stephen Trono had grand plans for his new project, The Mercato, when he unveiled it back in the heady housing-boom days of mid 2006.

Five buildings soaring as tall as 74 feet, with brick facades and top-of-the-line interiors. A bustling ground-floor mixture of restaurants, bistros, food shops and kitchen stores. Offices on the middle floors for lawyers and architects, engineers and designers. And, capping it all off, a series of top-drawer condos, complete with million-dollar pricetags and sweeping views of the mountains beyond and the Old Mill District below.

That’s still the dream, Trono says.

But here in the muddy days of 2008, with the housing market in the tank and the banks running scared from speculative real estate deals, Trono says his land – the former site of the Brooks-Scanlon Mill’s hulking red crane shed – is likely to remain just what it is for another year: A flattened field of weedy gravel, waiting for better days.
“There is so much fear in the residential market, I’m glad I don’t have product out there right now,” Trono said last week. “I haven’t seen a market like this since the early 80s. There is a lot of confusion. A lot of fear.”

Enough so that most of the Field of Dreams ideas that flooded Bend in the latter years of the housing boom seem destined for a long wait before their first bricks rise above the ground.

Old Mill District developer Bill Smith doesn’t claim to have any insider knowledge of the big projects that are lagging around town. But the source of angst seems pretty obvious – after the collapse of Wall Street’s investor-based credit markets last summer, financing of all types has become tougher to get, and developers who can get it are finding that it’s coming with a lot more strings attached. Particularly on big projects that depend on residential condos to make their profit and cash flow scenarios work.

“Financing is just really tough right now,” Smith said. “Boy, it’s just really tough. That’s not saying it’s impossible, but if the project depends on selling condos to succeed, you’ve got a rough road ahead.”

HOLES IN THE TOWN

The pockmarks of projects that started with great fanfare, then slowed to a crawl or ground to a halt, are scattered throughout town.

There’s the scraped dust that surrounds the Bend Brewing Company’s restaurant and pub on downtown Bend’s Brooks Street. Once slated to be the site of high-end condos and retail shops, it sits empty with a “for sale” sign on it, the victim of protracted battles with City Hall and the slumping real estate markets.

Empty lots dot both ends of downtown’s Bond Street. Major projects on both sides of the Old Mill District – a $127 million hotel/condo proposal on one end, and a sprawling retail and residential condo project on the other – remain unstarted.

And in east Bend, the backers of an ambitious new retail and office project with 800 proposed condos, townhomes and apartment units at the intersection of 15th Street and Wilson Avenue are taking their time getting city approvals, partner and real estate broker Sandy Garner said, hoping to come out of the ground in better times.

As land and construction prices rose during the housing boom, particularly in the downtown corridor, residential condos became a sort of magic elixir that could make projects pencil out even as costs escalated beyond the point at which commercial rents and leases could justify them, Compass Commercial Real Estate Services principal broker Bruce Kemp said. The condo portion let the developer, in effect, sell a piece of the building, recouping equity and defraying some of the cost of building office and retail space for lease on the lower floors.

In projects like Garner’s planned community in east Bend, condos and townhome sales promised to provide quick buildouts and sales, keeping cash flows up while longer-term commercial projects were completed in the core.

That all, of course, depended on the ability to sell residential condos, and the example set by a couple of major projects set a chill on that prospect as the housing boom of early 2006 withered into the market frosts of 2007.

MARKET-BIT

Franklin Crossing, the five-story retail, office and condo complex at the corner of Bond Street and Franklin Avenue in downtown Bend, was the first mixed-use building in town to come onto the market with luxury residential condos when it gained legal approval to sell them in December 2006.

The prospects for the building’s eight upper floor units looked great when real estate agent Norma DuBois solicited “reservations” in the spring of that year. Investors and second-home buyers lined up two and three deep to put their names – but no cash – down for each unit, despite initial pricetags that ran between $500,000 and $1.4 million.

By the time all the legal paperwork was in place to finalize sales in December, though, the market had turned, DuBois said. It has taken more than a year and a quarter now to sell five of the eight units, at greatly reduced prices. One unit, once listed at $525,000, actually sold for $370,000. One of the three that remains for sale was once listed at $650,000. Now it’s priced at $590,000.

“We’re probably doing better than most of the rest of the condo projects are,” said Patrick Oliver, a commercial real estate broker and one of the building’s developers, “But I’m glad we didn’t build any more than eight of them.”

About a half a mile to the south, in the heart of the Old Mill District, real estate broker Becky Breeze and her husband, developer Tom Wurzel, did build a lot more than eight, betting, as Breeze said in 2006, that second -home buyers and retirees would flock to buy into a high-rise condo project with units on single floors and sweeping views of the Old Mill District and the Cascades.

If county records are any indication, they bet wrong.

With only four of 42 units sold by late 2007, trouble arose when a collection of contractors and subcontractors filed liens on The Plaza, the towering condo project on Bluff Drive that Breeze and Wurzel’s company, Harvest LLC, finished in July, according to records on file in the Deschutes County Clerk’s Office.

By February, Breeze and Wurzel had deeded over their interests to Plaza Bend LLC, an entity controlled by the Seattle-based real estate investment firm Goodman Real Estate.

Goodman washed Umpqua Bank out of the deal, county record trails show, taking over the $20.316 million line of credit the bank had set with Breeze and Wurzel for only about $7 million.

Breeze and Wurzel failed to return multiple phone messages left by The Source last week. But Goodman asset manager Julie Clark said Plaza Bend LLC plans to finish the interiors of the remaining condos and continue to market them to the same demographic sectors that Breeze and Wurzel were aiming for in the first place.

This time, according to county records, Plaza Bend will be armed with a $12.6 million line of credit from Australia-based Macquarie Bank Lmtd. Umpqua released its last remaining interest in the building to Plaza Bend on March 25.

“It’s a unique product,” Clark said. “An iconic product in the heart of Bend. It’s not sitting in downtown Portland competing with hundreds of other projects just like it.”

It’s also a product that was picked up, if the county records are any indication, at a price below its final production cost, a factor that will significantly reduce the risk for its new investors.

And a factor that goes a long way towards explaining why most banks, not to mention developers and equity investors, are growing considerably more cautious before they will jump into a new speculative project that includes condos in the mix.

Even if they are inclined to jump back in someday.

“The Bend market has been hit hard, there’s no question about it,” Umpqua President Ray Davis said, refusing to discuss the hit his bank took on The Plaza or on any other specific Central Oregon projects in recent months. “Still – this is just my crystal ball, and it’s no better than any other crystal ball – I think Bend will be one of those markets that will bounce back faster than most because of the overall intrinsic quality of living rhere.”

TIGHT MONEY

The national credit pinch is making itself felt on Bend’s big projects in a couple of ways, Trono said.

Equity investors – whether they are wealthy individuals or investment consortiums – are generally demanding bigger profit potentials before they’ll jump in, he said, which means they are demanding more equity for less money, jacking the typical “internal rate of return” up from the 15 percent or so they would settle for last summer to 25 or 30 percent this year.

Depending on the projects, banks are demanding higher rates of preleasing on retail and office components, Trono said, and they are slapping much tougher restrictions on the original developers’ ability to operate, requiring, for example, that no condos be sold below a certain price without prior bank permission.

“Their underwriting requirements have become such that it’s very prohibitive to do a deal,” Trono complained. “What they are really doing is taking away your tools.”

Big, speculative projects are also facing stiff competition for investor dollars from a seemingly unlikely source, Kemp said – the residential land market. With subdivisions selling off, in some cases, for 50 to 60 cents on the dollar, investors can lock in big potential gains by buying distressed properties rather than sinking their funds into as-yet unproven mixed-use projects in the city’s trendiest neighborhoods.

So that is leaving the region’s big-project developers to muddle through as best they can.

Trono said he has abandoned his initial plan to develop The Mercato himself with help from consultants in favor of looking for a development partner who has experience with similarly large projects in other markets – in other words, a big equity partner who comes with their own financing sources and a track record that could help calm the fears of other potential lenders and investors.

He said he expects to break ground late this year to make curb cuts and pull utility lines into the project. That will produce enough work on the site to keep the project’s city approvals from expiring, he said, but building won’t begin in earnest until at least 2009, shooting for a completion date sometime in 2011. If it takes longer, that’s OK, Trono said – he’d rather wait than change the project’s basic design.

“The reasons we set out to do The Mercato still exist,” he said, “but now is too restrictive a time.”

Over on the east side, Garner said she and her partners plan to file for their city permits in a month or so. If they win approval, the partners will likely start with the commercial components first, she said, rather than jumping straight into the residential fray.

Meanwhile downtown, where the old City Center Motel stood on Franklin Street, Rick Skinner and his partners are trying to come up with a new idea for their now-empty lot.

They originally planned to build more than 80 residential condos in a five-story building on it, with some retail space on the ground floor, according to plans filed with the city in April 2006. Today? It could become an office complex, Skinner said. It could get some condos if the residential markets turn around. The partners have discussed making half of it into a parking garage to help ease the downtown’s on-street parking crunch.

The partners on the City Center site have at least eight months to decide what to do with the lot before their city permits threaten to expire, Skinner said. Nothing is likely to happen before that, he said, but he said that he, too, is unlikely to cut loose from his land.

“Some of these guys are sticking their heads between their tails and running...,” Skinner said. “I have no doubt that Bend is still going to be ahead of the game, once things start to pick up.”

That may be, said the Old Mill’s Smith, who had spent a long career in real estate even before he bought the old Brooks-Scanlon Mill in the 1990s and started its transformation into the iconic retail and office center it is today. But it will take money to play.

“It’s always nice when there are lots of lenders, " Smith said, adding “The market is saying there is more bad news to come.”

So are we going to be looking at gravel lots for awhile yet?

“I’d hope not,” Smith said. “But that’s my bet.”

Anonymous said...

HBM said:
"It's nice to write for an editor who isn't afraid to print the truth rather than being a Chamber of Commerce cheerleader."

HOOOOOO-ah!

I was managing editor of The Bulletin under the late lamented Bob Chandler. Although Bob and I differed politically (he was a lot more conservative than I am) he NEVER tried to use the news columns to advance an agenda, either a political one or a commercial one. He never asked reporters or editors to spin the news to please advertisers, and if the publisher had tried it he would've bitten his head off.

But I suspect Costa isn't so much afraid of losing real estate advertising as he is of angering his pals in the local real estate business -- the people with whom, as he said a while ago, he plays golf with and serves on committees with. This illustrates the ethical peril in editors or reporters getting too chummy with the people they're supposed to cover. As a reporter, columnist and editor I always made it a strict policy to keep them at arm's length.

Anonymous said...

HBM said:
" ... the sooner we might be able to paddle out of it snd dispell the kind of crippling uncertainty that a boom and its bust tend to create."

I've lived here for more than 22 years and it seems that boom-and-bust is the "normal" pattern for Bend. There was a big bust in the late 1970s-'80s, then a boom that began in the mid-'90s and kept gathering steam until it culminated in the Great Bubble of 2005-'06, and now we're in bust mode again. God only knows how long this one will last, but I'm sure that Bend home prices are still way, WAAAAAY out of line and it will be some time before they bottom out and start rising again. If I had to guess, I'd say the turning point is still a good two years off.

Meanwhile it would be nice if Bend could figure out how to have a healthy, sustainable, manageable rate of growth that didn't outrun our ability to pay for and build infrastructure. But that's probably too much to ask -- as soon as prices tick upward again we'll probably see another speculative feeding frenzy by developers and flippers.

Anonymous said...

I highly suggest ALL YOU CUNTS to carefully PRINT&READ the prior two posts, and post on your fridge, next to HOMER's photo.

Anonymous said...

So did Costa get rich?

Did all of his bud's commit suicide?

What came of all this?

Anonymous said...

This is getting good, so given that Chandler followed his own advice, is he now 'rich', or is he in debt to his eyeballs in BEND NOD's??

Chandler is dead. Has been for about 15 years. His children are rich.

Anonymous said...

Oh, and by 1985 (when I moved here) Chandler was already rich. Got even richer before he checked out, I'm sure.

Time to go join Homer watching the Olympics. Hasta manana.

Anonymous said...

Meanwhile it would be nice if Bend could figure out how to have a healthy, sustainable, manageable rate of growth that didn't outrun our ability to pay for and build infrastructure.
- hbm

*

Let's see, we should have paid $60k for more per home during the greatest RE boom in Bends history, but only paid $12k, a major shortfall. Then well before the boom was over we dropped the cost to zero.

It's clear that in 1-2 years the city will be paying developers to build in Bend, even with 10-20 years inventory.

At this point there seems to be no rationality on the horizon, no leader has come forth and articulated a way out of the mess. The only people who get newsprint from the BULL are new project starts ( Audia ), or news of perpetual motion machines.

The next 5-10 years is going to be very interesting.

Then we given ten's of millions to sub-par company's to move HQ's here from around the region, which really changes nothing as most of the people were already commuting to these 'new jobs' in the first place.

HBM, is there any new leader on the horizon that we should know about? Do you see anybody?

Anonymous said...

So did Costa get rich?

Did all of his bud's commit suicide?

What's it like for Costa to belong to a golf & wine club where everyone is committing suicide?

Anonymous said...

Chandler is dead. Has been for about 15 years. His children are rich.

*

Yes, old man Chandler is dead, but none of the 'children' are players?

They let Costa run everything?

None of the children bet the 'farm' on the BendBubble and lost their ass doubling their bets??

Probably not, as we already know most tier-1 BEND RE investors did fine. It's the tier-3 that are killing themselves. Tier-1 clearly didn't buy into the BULLSHIT of 'best in 20', ... Tier-1 sold out by 2006, and cashed out to buy the low in 2012, like any good CPA would have directed. It wasn't rocket science to know that Bend Bubble was over.

I would suspect that all the Chandler children were well advised by the best of BEND's Good-Old-Boy investor advisers.

Still it would be interesting to note what came of all these key players.

I know they're all not fat dumb and rich, as we have said all along on this blog-site, too many doubled their bets and drank their own kool-aide.

Rich to HBM could just mean they have more money than him, which doesn't say much about how the BULL is ran today.

Anonymous said...

" post on your fridge, next to HOMER's photo"


I've got photos of homer, marge, bart, and ned all in a neat row.

Now who is lisa and who is grandpa simpson on this blog? sometimes there's a "lisa" who writes in but we haven't heard from her since homer chewed her out a couple of weeks ago.

Anonymous said...

We used to have a lisa, but she didn't last long.


Buster nabbed bart, but he should be grandpa-simpson.

BP should be krusty, dunc is ned, tim could take a char, I think tim should be the 'seen it all' 7-11 Endian.

Did the simpsons have worn out reporter? If so then we'll have handle for hbm.

Regarding lisa, with the exception of marge, women have never lasted more than a few days here.

tim said...

Thank you. Come again.

Anonymous said...

"The City has great dreams for Juniper Ridge and respects Les Schwab as a regional partner. She understands that the Council is being asked not only to vote for Bend, but to vote for the region. The vote is difficult for her because Council has been held to secrecy and been asked by the employer to put relationships with regional partners at risk. Council has only been given an hour to review the agreement and to discuss it. There is not a direct tie to the principles that Council established for Juniper Ridge. " - Councilor Johnson Dec 12, 2006

Anonymous said...

"Councilor Hummel had been leaning toward a vote of yes because he felt it would save jobs in the region. Then, Councilor Clinton raised the issue of the details of the agreement. The details of the agreement did not come close to working. Councilor Hummel believes the details are bad. It is unfortunate that Les Schwab insisted on these deal breaking terms. " Dec 12, 2006

Anonymous said...

Guiding Principles of Juniper Ridge

The following ten principles illustrate the City’s desires for the short- and long-term development of Juniper Ridge in terms of character, employment, and design. They are embodied in the Conceptual Master Plan described later and found in the Appendix.

1 Development at Juniper Ridge must be of the highest quality that matches the project’s importance to Bend and Central Oregon.

2 Juniper Ridge will attract clean R&D and compatible businesses that will provide living-wage jobs into the future.

3 Industrial land uses will be prioritized for industrial sectors targeted through the sector targeting process (study currently underway).

4 The university and Regional Educational Consortium will be a model of innovation that responds to community and Central Oregon needs while serving the needs of businesses.

5 The university shall be closely integrated with businesses at Juniper Ridge, providing opportunities for interaction both inside and outside the classroom.

6 Design, construction, and operations will follow the best practices of sustainable and green development.

7 Juniper Ridge should be a model of energy conservation, with a targeted building energy cost 25 percent to 50 percent lower than traditional buildings.

8 Land use planning for Juniper Ridge will provide for pedestrians, bicycles, transit, and the efficient use of automobiles.

9 Open spaces will be integrated throughout the project, connected by trails, while preserving the most important natural features of Juniper Ridge.

10 Only land uses that are compatible with these features should be located in the South Sector of Juniper Ridge.

Anonymous said...

The backstory on a tragic suicide inside St. Charles hospital in Bend
Posted by Michael Rollins, The Oregonian February 29, 2008 06:58AM
Categories: Central Oregon

Suicides in hospitals are extremely rare. Many take place privately or unfortunately, in front of an a startled public. All have the same outcome. Loved ones and witnesses are left behind. The Bend Bulletin sits down with relatives of a woman who jumped from a balcony earlier this week.

Cindy Powell's sisters both say her 50 suicide attempts weren't what they seemed.

"She didn't want to die; she just wanted help," said Jackie Feik, who traveled from her Port Orchard, Wash., home to Redmond to settle her younger sister's affairs.

She sat in Cindy Powell's normally tidy studio apartment in Redmond on Thursday night, wondering what went wrong when her sister committed suicide at St. Charles Bend this week.

Feik, 54, pointed out blood stains on a white and pink bedspread from Powell cutting herself in her apartment last week. Her sisters found a blood-stained knife they think Cindy used to hurt herself.

Powell jumped from a balcony in the hospital's main lobby Monday after she broke free from two escorts who were taking her to a secure mental health facility, said Robin Henderson, director of behavioral services at the hospital.

Powell, 51, had been a patient since Saturday, when she attempted suicide by overdosing on a sedative, Henderson said.

Anonymous said...

Bend Hospital Suicide Raises Questions

HEALTH

By Ethan Lindsey

Bend, OR February 27, 2008 9:07 a.m.

The Bend medical community is responding Wednesday to a suicide at the city's hospital.

The hospital says police have been notified and foul play is not suspected.

A 51-year-old Redmond woman jumped out of a second-story window at St Charles Medical Center on Monday evening.

Hospital officials cited privacy concerns and wouldn't comment further on the incident. They refused to reveal whether the woman was a medical patient or a psychiatric patient.

Shelly Brooks is a spokeswoman for the hospital. She says grief counseling sessions began Tuesday to work with employees or patients who witnessed the incident.

Shelly Brooks: “We do realize that there were some caregivers in the proximity of where this took place and witnessed the event. We have caregivers that responded to the event when it happened. So we do have a number of caregivers and members of the public who witnessed this and may have been traumatized by this event.”

Brooks also says an internal review has been started to examine how the suicide happened on hospital property. The hospital says it is the first on-campus suicide in recent history.

The hospital also defended its decision to hold off on notifying the public of the incident for close to a full day. Again, privacy concerns were cited.

Anonymous said...

Central Ore. couple facing foreclosure commits suicide

Friday, October 26, 2007

PRINEVILLE, Ore. -- Raymond and Deanna Donaca had fought foreclosure on their home and lost, but had dropped strong hints they wouldn't leave the three-level dwelling alive.

On Tuesday, Crook County sheriff's deputies went to the home east of Prineville after neighbors called with concerns that they were not answering their door, and their dogs were missing.

They walked up the driveway and smelled gas. Inside the attached locked garage, a 1981 Cadillac Eldorado sat empty, its engine running.

Then they entered the house.

They found the bodies of Raymond Donaca, 71, and three golden retrievers. Upstairs they discovered the bodies of Deanna Donaca, 69, and a fourth dog.

The family "reported to us that they'd made statements in the past that they may not leave their home alive," said Sgt. Jim Chapman.

Court records show that the couple lost the home in Central Oregon this summer following a court battle after more than a decade of financial trouble.

The couple filed for bankruptcy in 1992, 2004 and 2006 and several liens were placed against the property.

Foreclosures are up nationwide but Crook County's foreclosure rate is not inordinately high, said Judge Scott Cooper, the county executive.

"It's really sort of an anomaly," he said. "It's really tragic, really."

Raymond Donaca was a retired contractor for the U.S. Forest Service who hauled logs and cleared brush with his bulldozer, said his brother, Don Donaca who lives nearby but was not close to the couple.

"He and his wife, they sort of stuck to themselves," said Don Donaca. But he said he had heard they were struggling to keep the house.

Chapman had been to the house earlier to deliver a notice from the new owners that the couple would have to leave. Court records indicated they were to be out Monday.

"We knew that the process was in place," Chapman said. "It was the family members that made it clear to us that this was maybe their way of dealing with it."

Anonymous said...

BOOMTOWN the book about Bend killings of developers is now available online.

"murder suicide in Bend, Oregon, a resort Boom Town in the high desert east of the Cascades"

***

Private Investigator Tony Caruso lives out of his rolling office, an old Ford pickup truck, with his German-trained bomb-sniffing dog, Panzer, a Giant Schnauzer. Tony retired after twenty years in the Navy as an aviation ordnanceman, but this training might not be enough when he is hired by an old friend to look into a murder suicide in Bend, Oregon, a resort Boom Town in the high desert east of the Cascades. Was it a murder suicide as the local sheriff thinks? Or has this idyllic community been ripped apart by not only murder but scandalous sexual deviance, lust, jealousy and the quest for the almighty dollar? Follow Tony as he wades through a cast of characters as diverse as the Oregon landscape to solve this mystery.

Download Description
Private Investigator Tony Caruso lives out of his rolling office, an old Ford pickup truck, with his German-trained bomb-sniffing dog, Panzer, a Giant Schnauzer. Tony retired after twenty years in the Navy as an aviation ordnanceman, but this training might not be enough when he is hired by an old friend to look into a murder suicide in Bend, Oregon, a resort Boom Town in the high desert east of the Cascades. Was it a murder suicide as the local sheriff thinks? Or has this idyllic community been ripped apart by not only murder but scandalous sexual deviance, lust, jealousy and the quest for the almighty dollar? Follow Tony as he wades through a cast of characters as diverse as the Oregon landscape to solve this mystery.
Product Details

* Paperback: 224 pages
* Publisher: Broadhead Books (July 1, 2006)

Anonymous said...

BEST BUYER´S MARKET IN 20 YEARS!


It´s August 2008 in the High Desert and the weather couldn´t be better! The locals and visitors alike are enjoying the good life here in Central Oregon. It never ceases to amaze me how many people I meet want to live where I do. Deep blue lakes, crystal clear rivers and streams. Clean air to breath and crisp cool water to drink, right from the tap! Where eagles, osprey, and hawks ride thermals while deer and elk graze the meadows below. Thousands of miles of geologic and volcanic wonders to experience minutes from world class lodging, shopping, restaurants and entertainment. Alpine or Cross Country ski in the morning, float through downtown Bend on the Deschutes in the afternoon, than dine out at one of the many fine restaurants before retiring at a quaint bed and breakfast, vacation home or a full service resort lodge.

For those with an abundance of energy, the good life doesn´t stop with dinner out. Festivals, celebrations, sporting events, concerts and free outdoor movies on the river are next. Many are courtesy of the Businesses Community and the City of Bend.

There are a few more hours left to enjoy a typical day in Central Oregon. With the dark of night comes the moon and stars. The dim light creates silhouettes of the Three Sisters and Broken Top standing guard over the city. The river shimmers and reflects shadows of trees and buildings as it flows quietly under bridges and winds through Bend´s historic neighborhoods. Imagine an old mill worker and his grand children enjoying the summer evening. Over on Wall and Bond streets, pedestrians stroll along the sidewalks in the still warm air. A few locals can be seen heading to their cars after an extended happy hour. (Could it be Friday night?) The dark sky is a kaleidoscope of colorful constellations and brilliant stars, and when the meteor showers of August arrive, the sky will become alive with streaks of light so vivid and clear, chills will rundown your spine. But you know there is one more event to come. You can see a sliver of the eastern horizon turn from black to rose to orange to blue. For a few minutes your breath becomes visible and drifts away resembling a small cloud. Now the crisp morning air ushers in a new day on the High Desert. And here we go again. I could go on and on, but now I have to get to the point.

The "point" is the media, government, financial institutions, politicians, developers, builders, mortgage brokers, Realtors, sellers, buyers, lenders, Wall Street and everyone else has finally tired of beating the Real Estate industry to death and are finally doing something to make the problem a little better. Thank You, All!

Real Estate is local. I know about the market here In Central Oregon. With all the recent national, state and local information I have seen, other than Bend proper and a couple of price ranges, the majority of Central Oregon is at or within a point or two of a bottom. Builders have stopped building spec homes, lenders aren´t giving money away, government is bailing out homeowners as well as lending and financial institutions. The interest in Central Oregon from California and other heavily populated areas has been terrific this Summer. Those of us who really know Real Estate in Central Oregon know when the market in California picks up, and our information says it has, so does ours. After all over 50% of the people that migrate to Oregon come from California. The first two paragraphs of this newsletter tells why. And it´s been going on for 50 years! None of this is a secret to sellers or their agents. We already are seeing some price increases. Short sales and foreclosures will soon decline and Sellers will be less likely to take just any offer. The worm has begun to turn here in Central Oregon. Some say an upturn in sales and pricing by early ´09. Only time will tell.

PopGoesBend said...

We already are seeing some price increases. Short sales and foreclosures will soon decline and Sellers will be less likely to take just any offer. The worm has begun to turn here in Central Oregon. Some say an upturn in sales and pricing by early ´09. Only time will tell.

who writes this crap? I'm getting to the point where I don't feel like pointing out how wrong they are. If someone is dumb enough to listen to them then they deserve to buy now and lose their shirt.

Idiots.

Bewert said...

Re: who writes this crap?

A broker who hasn't seen a commission check in two years...

Bewert said...

Re: The "point" is the media, government, financial institutions, politicians, developers, builders, mortgage brokers, Realtors, sellers, buyers, lenders, Wall Street and everyone else has finally tired of beating the Real Estate industry to death and are finally doing something to make the problem a little better.

Better--as in demoing about 2500 STDs? That would only leave a 2500 unit overhang, not counting platted lots. We could clear that in 10-20 months when things turn around. Shit, that's nothing...

Development is a shell game in the long run, destroying what makes a place nice. More people, more houses, more traffic, numbers increasing exponentially to keep it afloat. Does it ever end well?

NO.

RE guy, when medians reach 4x, we'll be close to the bottom. I know, you've got the inside facts and all, but...

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Looks like Bend's Business Darling, PV Powered, is laying off employees...

IHateToBurstYourBubble said...

Hmmm... should have scrolled up more. Seems OPB had the PV Powered layoffs story days before The Bulletin.

Wow. Surprising.

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