Seattle Bubble Forum Archive

Someone is selling this house in Bend, OR.



Immaculate 4 bedroom 2.5 bathroom 2,400 sq.ft. home with triple car garage (double bay on one side). Minutes from Mt. Bachelor, river trails and downtown. Backs to Parks & Rec. open space and trail system. Hardwood, granite, crown molding, and many other upgrades throughout. Price reduced to sell and willing to rent back.

They want to get their equity gain and then RENT from the buyers. I love it. I wonder who is going to buy a negative cash flow property. I wonder how the sellers are going to spin it.

"Oh yeah, we saw massive appreciation. You will too. Even if you are losing $1k a month. Why are we selling? Oh, we just prefer to rent."

Don't know much about the Bend area, but I'm willing to bet that it doesn't have much of an economy-maybe mostly seasonal, or a getaway type of local like, say, Cour d'arlene Idaho?

ok, just looked it up: poulation 75,000. They also claim to be the 7th fastest growing metrolpolitan area in the US.

Metropolitan!?

My guess is those statistics are due to: 1. recent overbuilding based on speculation, and 2. the small size of the area to begin with. (i.e. if someone was to throw up an acres worth of tract-homes in the middle of nowhere, than it would certainly be counted among the fastest growing area, no?)

This is a good example of the areas that were most overvalued when you look at the local economy, i.e. income potential/# of jobs. Seems this home should be worth about $250K given the area. Somebody got royally screwed!!

Bend is a retirement/vacation area. It has mountains, rivers, national parks, skiing and other stuff that people like. It is also a dry-as-hell desert. I have a friend who purchased land there maybe seven years ago for around $80k. They could sell their land today (yesterday?) for $700k. That sort of appreciation has attracted all of the speculators and Bend is considered by some to be one of the bubbliest places in the country.

I keep trying to get them to sell, but they want to retire there and are afraid of being priced out forever. OR has a law similar to CA prop13 so their property tax is basically fixed at a low rate. The appreciation has blinded them and now they are talking about leveraging the value in their land to buy more land in Bend, build houses, and sell them. They are even talking about quitting their job to do this.