So based on the idea that we built too many domiciles, I'm going to make some predictions. You can tell me how far off I am when they do or don't happen.

While the rest of the country, thanks to the Fed and a -- can't kill it stock market --, shakes off the effects of the 'bubble' in a year or two, Bend will see a decline that will continue for 3 or 4 years, then stagnant for another 3 or 4 years (a few rich people will begin quietly buying up property), then see a slow improvement (that won't be noticed at first, because by that time we will be so beaten down) for another 3 or 4 years. Somewhere around 8 to 12 years down the road, someone will announce a modest sub-division and we'll all be amazed.

Projects currently being built will be abandoned -- landscaping unfinished, houses half-built, turned into rentals. Many more projects will be quietly dropped without comment. There'll be a couple of spectacular bankruptcies, and Bend will gain a reputation as a place that really screwed up.

Rich people don't move to towns that screwed up. Rich people move OUT of towns that screwed up. Some of the major events will run out of capital, others will just cease. Les Schwab theater will start getting B and C acts, instead of A and B acts, etc.

Our population (our army) of real estate agents, title company workers, mortgage agents, bankers, builders, sub-contractors will start to drift away to greener pastures. Bend will actually lose population for a few years down the road.

But before that happens there will be a steady drumbeat of; "why can't you be positive? If we were all positive, everything would be o.k., we just need to be positive....which will turn into anger. It's all you negative peoples fault this happened. None of which will have the slightest effect on reality.

Housing prices will drift down. In another 3 or 4 years, prices will be about 1/3rd lower than the high.

New retail buildings in downtown Bend and the Old Mill will sit half empty, and then start to fill with the kind of businesses that don't normally go there. Restaurants and high-end stores will open and close on a constant basis. 3 close, 3 open, 2 close, 2 open but it takes longer, 4 close, 2 open and two sit empty for a noticeable time, 5 close, 2 open but both of them are 'antique' (i.e. junk stores....). Rents will start to drift down, eventually you can get a 'deal' with hidden incentives, even if the rents really go down only 25% or so. NO ONE will be kicked out.

Bend will slowly but surely become livable again. The jerks will leave, cause they were only here because it was cool.

For the vast majority of Bendites, who have jobs in schools and hospitals and so on, the traffic will get better, the snobs will become more humble, the fancy restaurants will be glad to seat you in your working clothes.

We'll have our poverty with a view paradise back.


Edited to add a couple more:

A couple of the better designed and capitalized 'destination resorts' will come on line and have modest success. (Phase 2's will be postponed). I expect them to be the Bauhofer and (despite BendBust's hard-on for Hollern) Brooks Resources. A couple of others will never be built. And a couple others will be part of the 'spectacular bankruptcies I mention above.

The west side will gain a 'toxic' reputation. Too many badly built immediately falling apart look alike faux craftsman crap built too close together. Your neighbors (five feet away) won't be other rich or middle class, but whoever the landlords can rent to. The bungalows on Columbia will revert to being huts. People will stop bragging about living on the west side.