Saturday, February 9, 2008

Katie, bar the door!

Doug Farmer statistics....

Jan 07

Listings Sold: 134
Listings Expired: 81
Avg Square Footage: 1937
Avg Days on the Mkt: 193
Avg Sale Price: $ 442,866.
Active Listings Jan 31: 1610

Dec 07
Af
Listings Sold: 103
Listings Expired: 252
Listings Pending: 126
Avg Square Footage: 2216
Avg Days on the Mkt: 196
Avg Sale Price: $ 439,598.
Median Sales Price: $ 339,000.
Active Listings Dec 31: 1809

Jan 08

Listings Sold: 94
Listings Expired: 100
Avg Square Footage: 2009
Avg Days on the Mkt: 179
Avg Sale Price: $ 387,897.
Median Sales Price: $ 307,500.
Active Listings Jan 31: 1881



Oh, shit. Katie, bar the door.

I was told by a friend today that my latest blogs have been too bleak.

But, hey, this blog was always about MY obsessions, and I never really expected that anyone else would find them interesting. So, after the initial freshness of it, (some idiot blogging about business without being overly secretive), I sort of expected people would lose interest. After all, how many people really have the time to spend on this shit as I do? I guess, anyone still reading can believe me when I say, I'm honest because, well, I never expected anyone to read this in the first place....

So, back to my obsessive issues....

I'm kicking myself for being a dumbass. I saw this *@^$^$ disaster coming, but didn't really believe it. I blogged all about it, and then didn't follow my own &%*%** advice.

I'll do O.K., Ill survive in the end, but I was really hoping to move beyond O.K. and simple survival.

Maybe I'll be lucky, and it will won't be so bad.

I remember looking at the savings and loan debacle, and thinking, oh, shit.

I looked at the 1987 stock market drop, and thought, oh, shit.

I looked at the Nasdaq collapse, and thought, oh, shit.

Somehow, in the end, they didn't seem to affect me all that much. Maybe this will be more of the same.

Nevertheless, I'm cutting expenses as quickly as possible. I normally hibernate this time of year, anyway. So I can sit back and see what happens. It's not too late.



Still...maybe it's time to adjust the ongoing odds of Armageddon again.

I think there is zero chance (rather than 10%) that we'll skate.

I think there is a 35% chance we're looking at a disaster of mid--1980's--Bend-- proportion. (rather than 10%, or a later guess, of 20%).

And that leaves a 65% chance of a downturn, of which I believe most will be in the higher percentile of disaster.

Like I said.

Oh, shit.
Posted by at

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Carpet Bagger's are going to Strip Bend to the Bone: 2008 will be the year of Commercial RE implosion. All job draws will cease.

****

Buster has said that those days were his fondest, the dark days of early 1980's walking downtown, when everything was a bar, ... HW stores,.. The best of times, ... I loved Bend, then and I would love it to return, but I fear that the endless malls on I97 & I20 make that not possible, sure downtown will be all plywood, I see that coming, most of the new stuff coming up now will halt, todays (08FEB08) WSJ announced complete collapse in commercial building, there will be no more draws, there will be no more cash-flow for BENDS white elephants.

I fear this time will be different, Bend was a logging town went bust, it was a small town, I fear that when these carpet baggers start leaving they're going to roll up the carpets and take everything, its not going to be the quiet Bend, its going to be thousands of empty houses full of the very riff-raff that you assume would have left in the 1980's cuz those were hard time,

I to am looking forward to a 40,000 pop or smaller Bend, but I'm not looking forward to 1,000's of methlab crap-shack STD's.

Do you know in some communitys they are already burning down new excess homes and selling the empty lots back to the homeowners for yards!!!

Those are most likely the kind things that must be done here!

The 1980's crash was a simple time we went from nothing to nothing,

Now we're going to get from HUGE to a giant MESS. We possibly have 1,000's of homes sitting empty that if NOT destroyed, they'll be destroyed, and its better to destroy individually before some meth-head burns down a whole sub-division, this is the kind of stuff we must deal with ASAP.

KURATEK is walking with $2.6M of our money, there are 100's of guys in Bend like him, they'll be carpet-bagging everything. All these homes, and commercial businesses will be stripped bare, and everything hauled off to PDX warehouses for auction, the Bend of the next 5 years is going to endless cavernous shells, hulks, and in time they'll have to be destroyed, or they will become inhabited by our 5,000 homeless today, and 10,000 homeless tomorrow, note this is just the beginning NOW, whats it going to be 2 years? 20,000 homeless in Bend??

Is anybody thinking about any of this??

City-Hall is divorced from reality. Their solution to the homeless problem is to Ban 'pan-handling', that isn't going stop homelessness, nor will it drive the 5,000 (Bulletin 03FEB08) already here away, by definition they're already stuck here. If they can't pan-handle they'll turn to crime. This is a fact.

Ned, Like Homer has said the Depression in Bend has started, its not even a percentage issue anymore. I think in your biz as long as you can maintain inexpensive entertainment products you'll do fine. You have already acknowledged cutting spending to the bone. Your customers that survive have also already started the spending cut.

February 9, 2008 at 8:22:00 AM PST
Anonymous said...

Call me insane if you wish.

A BOOM&BUST economy is NOT decent way of life. Having 5,000 people in Bend live in their car is NOT RIGHT. What the HELL are we going to do about it??

During the past year I largely seen all this as an education campaign, we have gotten bruce up to speed, and others.

Lots of new blogs, hell we have even tried to get women realtor's to develop sites that tell the truth ( to no avail, perhaps an oxymoron, e.g. truth & realty )

Everyone here is now fairly well up to speed, we don't even see anymore non-believers or kool-aid drinkers. Thus I ask the question now what?

We need new blogs, we need more people involved.

1.) We need a site to focus on all the individual candidates and tell the truth about them.

2.) We need a site that covers the BULL & SORE, and critically comments on all of their obfuscation of the Bend economy.

3.) We need a site that can document the PR/Market fraud that is Bend, and paid for with the taxpayer dollar.

4.) We need a site that focuses only only one how to fix Bend, on an issue-by-issue basis, and that each thread throughly discusses the issue before we move on to the next issue.

5.) We need a site that focuses on the GROWTH issue, and that Terminate's Mike Hollern's ( Brooks Resource ) "SMART-GROWTH" ( WISE-USE ) policy. We need an intelligent solution to excess crap-shacks, NOTE today most towns are simply destroying them, and selling the land back to the neighbor as a big yard.

6.) We need a site that focuses 24/7 hard core on the SDC problem, we need more people to attend City-Council meetings, so that City-Council are not in fear of their lives of the developers. I spent the past summer at all the meetings, and I can tell all that it seems like 90% of the people that attend council and beat their chest are developers & builders. This is why the city-staff/city-hall are fearful of fair and just SDC charges, because this is a mob town ran by the developers.

Education is a slow process, the first step is education everyone there is a problem. We have done that. Now we need solutions, in time once they're known, they'll be memorized, and everyone can be in a position to offer positive solutions to our problems in Bend.

February 9, 2008 at 8:46:00 AM PST
Anonymous said...

Levits & Wickes just announced closure.

Furniture stores going belly up, ... What's Next??

February 9, 2008 at 9:37:00 AM PST

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