Friday, December 19, 2008

On hold.

So much is on hold, right now.

The Christmas season is in play. I've been saying the second half of December is the whole deal, but if you want to get down to brass tacks, it's really the 6 days before Christmas and the day after. In other words, starting TODAY.

Lots of other things happening. The whole 1031 mess is something I'd love to comment about; but I want to get the full info first. Interesting that it all blew up on the blogs a full day before it hit the media. But I do have one comment: a lot of people seem to be challenged by the concept of 'cause and effect....'

Amazing to me that so many stores have chosen to open in the last week, or so. And what a shock the middle of February is going to feel to them.

I'll be interested to know how Borders does this Christmas; a couple of years ago, the independent comic community was all but calling for the demise of comic shops in favor of the mega bookstores. "Look how well Manga is selling at Borders!"

Falls under the rubric of "Watch out what you wish for...."

I'm torn about taking my usual half Friday and the weekend off. It will be almost my last chance to have days off. But I do have the following weekend, so I'll probably work most of Friday, and most of Saturday, and open early and close late on Sunday.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

No more taking days off dunc, from now on you have to work.

I'm not sure you'll ever have the full story on 'Bend' 1031, at least not from the BULL.

Given that over 80% of the blog folks don't even know what a 1031 is, its been a rather boring frenzy.

You'll never know the full story. I'm sure the BULL waited for the same reason as you. I find it most interesting that across the country when 1031's blow-up, its because of a criminal complaint. Here there was none. Instead it was simply that the 1031 outfit announced they were closed, on their website. That left tons of un-educated bloggers to guess what meant, again given the BULL is a source of information, they could at the very least educate people about 1031's. When a community makes no attempt to educate its citizens the result of misinformation, should be a surprise to no one.

What we do know is that the here in BEND, the way the 1031 racket was played, was 1031-101 on HOW NOT TO DO IT, e.g. Never Commingle Funds, and NEVER let the 1031-agent keep the interest. Given those two items which are ripe to fraud and well documented its rather surprising that so many folks in Bend got duped.

When a 1031 fund collapses a lot of people are hurt. Many of these people are Bend renters waiting for a purchase, now with the down payment gone they're stuck renting. Insult to injury the tax on the gain is now due ( 180 days ), and they don't have the cash to cover the IRS bill, and they don't have the home to use as equity to raise the cash. The pain.

To me there doesn't appear to have been a crime. Too many professional realtors in this town were teaching too many '1031 classes' and getting too many non-sophisticated people signed up to avoid taxation. All one has to do is google "1031 fraud", and you can get a good idea of the racket. It seems that Bends bubble years produced endless seminars on how to avoid taxes, but none on how to prevent losing your principal.

Just another small item on the Bend Bubble. Bubbles always end this way.

The end result of this Bend fiasco is less able buyers to purchase Bend real estate, which means that its only going to take longer to recover.

The other tangents on this story are suspicious real estate transactions, loans for over-priced property, and peeling away water rights and selling them from the purchased propertys. If these other items were in fact true, then it could even make the 1031 story more convoluted.

I'm only laying out stuff, because in my humble opinion nobody will ever in Bend tell the whole story, and thus you triggered me to lay out a little. I surely know the BULL will never cover the issues above nor will any other Bend media.

Instead we'll get "Who could have known?", "Who could have guessed?"
That's all we ever get from the people who run this town.

In summary it will be a cold day in BEND ( HELL ) before you ever can speak up DUNCAN, because if your waiting to be told you'll die of old age, until then OMERTA.

December 19, 2008 at 11:01:00 AM PST
Duncan McGeary said...

Nah, I'll just let you tell it.

Good post.

December 19, 2008 at 11:21:00 AM PST

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