Back at the height of the boom, I'd be talking to a tourist about the housing bubble, and they'd say, "Oh, yes. It's happening where we came from."
And it always sounded lame when I'd say, "Yeah, but Bend is a bigger bubble than anywhere else."
But I think we were. At least we were head to head with Naples, Florida and a few other places.
And don't give me the old line about Bend being 'special.' This graph is relative to local conditions, which makes that whole argument moot.
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No accident that Bend is 6.5X of income for Real Estate prices per graph from portlandhousing.blogspot.com.
Well engineered post 1998 by Hollern of Brooks Resources.
All things were equal. But Bend was special.
1.) Easy money, no down, everyone got to buy four home, that was true every where. BUSH post 911, 2nd term re-election Greenspan gift to real estate lobby.
2.) SDC deferrals lobbied by HOLLERN ( Brooks Resources ) brought builders from all over the country to Build in Bend, that is why today we have a horrible inventory problem.
3.) City of BEND PR&MARKETING paid with Taxpayer dollars COVA,COBA,CORA, ... www.visitbend.com
No other city in the USA had 2&3, all had 1, some had a little (3), but BEND went full out with (2), and today we're $2B in the RED on infrastructure. WE have 10-30 years of inventory. At the current rate of sales of homes over $500k it would take generations to liquidate.
No BEND-ORYGUN was a carefully engineered real estate fraud with FED & Local government assistance, and the best lobbyists money can buy. Interesting that all the builders that came from the valley to build post 2002 have gone bankrupt.
Bend is still the most over-priced in the country even today.
The little TOWN that PR&MARKETING built. In 2009 we can expect the city to go bankrupt, and COVA to shutter its doors. Brooks Resources barely survived the 1983 recession where they were CASH starved but land rich, today they are CASH starved buy own BILLIONS on ten's of thousands of empty rotting siberian tract homes all over Central Oregon.
Today Xmas 2008, BEND is everything to everyone, but nothing to nobody. A town created on DEBT, in a economic climate where DEBT is no longer available.
The three legged stool, above (1) easy-money is gone, (2) SDC's are now deferred to the point of free, but still no building boom, and the City issuing more (3) Press Releases to the world about how Bend is the only resort in the west than any other time in its history.
(1) easy money made it all possible, but now gone, (2) SDC deferral now doesn't mean shit with 10-30 years of inventory, and (3) well we're facing the greatest depression in over fifty years, not a time fleece suckers.
It's over, the time of 'FEAR' has arrived for little Bend Orygun and the BOSS-HOGGS that engineered the great bubble of post 1998.
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