Sunday, July 22, 2007

Here's an irony, at least for us 'bubble busters.' But the Bulletin feels it necessary to defend itself from slanted coverage of the real estate market -- for being too negative!

Funny. But we bubble busters don't buy ads, do we?

When I first saw the drop in building permits, the 67.1% didn't seem enough; 143 starts vs 434. But the math is right.

There is the little matter of Bend's starts dropping 74.3% however.

I'm trying to imagine what I'd feel if I saw my future business dropping almost 75%. I'd be looking for an out, that's for sure.

Those are some horrendous numbers.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Most developers and builders have known about this since last fall.

The game is over. Everybody has been trying to dump their project at cost, e.g. to sell for what they paid.

Now its too late, many are now asking 50 cents on the dollar, there have been no counters. It will go down to 1 cent on the dollar for all this speculative land that has gone up an astronomical percentage.

The problem for The Bulletin is everybody has spent the normal PR dollar for July-August and there are still little to no closing's on the books.

July 2007 will lead to massive layoffs in the RE and MTG sectors for Bend. 90% of all staff are un-needed. Certainly the media could have done the job, but it was a bubble, the media blew the bubble, and once the greatest moron had bought the highest priced property it was game over.

Even humpty-dumpty couldn't put the Bend RE market back together again.

Again given that the entire bubble was PR and Media induced, it must be quite surprising that your PR dollar no longer buys you anything. Now the next after RE & MTG to close, will be the PR firms, because its now clear that its just good money chasing bad.

No amount of PR, No amount of positive storys in the BULL are going to fix a busted balloon. Once it pops all you can do is find a new balloon and start blowing and blowing all over again.

The blame-game has started as I predicted months ago. All you need to do is look in the mirror to find the party responsible for the bubble. The fact that we have NO control over suckers outside of our region to come in and purchase our over priced desert dehydrated swampland is NOT our fault. Nothing can bring it back, except a long time, and amnesia.