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Live In Bend Oregon
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Check us out at www.DeschutesCountyHomes.com
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The Best Places to Raise Your Kids 2009
Oregon
Bend
Nearest city: Bend
Population: 69,349
Median household income: $62,868
The mountain town, on the eastern edge of the Cascade Range on the Deschutes River, is a popular destination for adventure tourists. Popular outdoor sports here include hiking, camping, rafting, fishing, skiing, and rock climbing.
Runners-up:
Hillsboro
Springfield
Courtesy of Business Week
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Really, What Are The Numbers?
Some facts to know:
• More than 1000 banks closed in 1930 – only 14 U.S. banks have been taken over in 2008
• There are 76 million households in the U.S. that own their home - 24 million of these homes are free and clear
• There are 52 million homes with mortgages - 97.2% of these are not in foreclosure, 93.8% of these homes are current on their payments
On a sobering note:
• Over 20% of homeowners with a mortgage owe more than their home is worth
• 40% of all foreclosures are non-owner occupied
How did we get here?
Decade Homes Sold High Homes Sold Average
1970’s 3.9 million 3 million
1980’s 4 million 3.3 million
1990’s 4.9 million 3.9 million
2000’s 7.1 million 5.6 million
Resale numbers – the above does not include new home sales.
Sources: Wall Street Journal / Moody’s Economy.com / RealtyTrac / NAR / Forbes
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Is now a good time to buy?
Have you ever heard of CyberHomes.com? If not you need to take a look. You can follow statistics for a community or neighborhood in your area to get a larger picture of the overall economic outlook. I found this buy/sell indicator the other day for Bend and thought it would be wise to share this with my friends.
This is an outlook going back to 1970. As you can see the horizontal line is an indicator of the housing market at any given time. Above the line indicates a sellers market, below the line is a buyers.
Please click on the link below to get a different perspective than what you think I can give you.
Cyberhomes.com
HAPPY HUNTING
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Obama ushers in new era
By Michael D. Shear and Robert Barnes / The Washington Post
Published: November 05. 2008 4:00AM PST
President-elect Barack Obama walks on stage to deliver his victory speech at his election night party at Grant Park in Chicago, Tuesday night, Nov. 4, 2008.
AP Photo/David Guttenfelder
WASHINGTON — Barack Obama was elected the nation’s 44th president Tuesday, riding a reformist message of change and an inspirational exhortation of hope to become the first African- American to ascend to the White House.
Obama, 47, the son of a Kenyan father and a white mother from Kansas, led a tide of Democratic victories across the nation in defeating John McCain, a 26-year veteran of Washington who could not overcome his connections to President Bush’s increasingly unpopular administration.
“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer,” Obama told a throng of supporters during a victory celebration in Chicago’s Grant Park at 9 p.m.
He added: “It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change is coming to America.”
Obama became the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter in 1976 to receive more than 50 percent of the popular vote and made good on his pledge to transform the electoral map.
McCain congratulated Obama in a phone call shortly after 8 p.m. and then delivered a gracious concession to his supporters in Phoenix. “We have had and argued our differences,” he said of his rival, “and he has prevailed.”
“This is a historic election, and I recognize the special significance it has for African-Americans and the special pride that must be theirs tonight,” McCain said.
Democrats take reins
Obama’s victory also ushered in a new era of Democratic dominance in Congress, even though the party fell short of the 60 votes needed for a veto-proof majority in the Senate. In the House, Demo- crats made major gains, adding to their already sizable advantage and returning them to a position of power that predates the 1994 Republican revolution.
Democrats will use their new legislative muscle to advance an economic and foreign policy agenda that Bush has largely blocked for eight years. Even when the party seized control of Congress two years ago, their razor-thin margin in the Senate had allowed Republicans to hinder their efforts.
Obama overpowered McCain in a pair of states — Ohio and Pennsylvania — that the campaigns had spent months courting as the keys to victory, and he passed the needed 270 electoral votes just after 8 p.m., with victories in California and Washington state.
The Democrat easily won most of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states that normally back Democrats, including New Hampshire, and ran strong in states that are normally solid for Republicans, such as Virginia, Indiana and Florida.
Bush called Obama at 8:12 p.m. to offer his congratulations, the White House said. “Mr. President-elect, congratulations to you,” Bush said, according to the White House. “What an awesome night for you, your family and your supporters.”
A massive crowd of cheering supporters gathered in Grant Park, and horns blared and people celebrated in downtown Chicago when television announcers called the race for the senator from Illinois.
Obama melded the pride and aspirations of African-Americans with a coalition of younger and disaffected voters drawn to his rhetorical style, and a unified base of Democrats worried about the economy and frustrated with the war in Iraq.
The election was in many respects a referendum on Bush, who polls show is the most unpopular president since such surveys began in the 1930s, because of his administration’s handling of the economy, Hurricane Katrina and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush has not been seen with McCain since May, and the president has made no public appearances since late last week.
McCain’s top strategist acknowledged the team’s difficulties as the candidate returned to Arizona from his final campaign stop in New Mexico.
“I think we did our absolute best in this campaign in really difficult circumstances, we had a — we had some tough cards to play all the way through, and we hung in there all the way,” senior adviser Steve Schmidt told reporters.
During a sometimes chaotic race, McCain promised voters that he would reform a broken and corrupted Washington, and bring change that he said the American people demand. But his economic and national security proposals largely echoed Bush’s policies, a charge that Obama made repeatedly.
Republicans watched Tuesday as the electoral map turned blue in places where they have labored for a decade to cultivate a permanent, conservative voter base that would ensure presidential victories.
How we voted
The president-elect will immediately confront a national financial crisis, an unpopular war and a world reeling from economic uncertainty.
Obama is the fifth-youngest man elected to a first presidential term, after Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Ulysses S. Grant. He is the 16th senator to ascend to the office, and the first since Kennedy’s election in 1960.
In a sign that Obama’s ethnicity did not hold him back, he won as large a share of the white vote as any Democrat in the past two decades, although he still fell short of a majority. Preliminary exit polls showed him winning about 43 percent of white voters, while Sen. John Kerry won 41 percent in 2004 and Vice President Al Gore won 42 percent in 2000.
McCain styled himself as a maverick but ran a largely traditional Republican campaign that eroded his brand among independents, the majority of whom voted for Obama on Tuesday. Obama won 60 percent of self-described moderates, who had once formed the core of McCain’s support.
Obama appeared to have made huge gains among Hispanic voters, earning about two-thirds of their support, according to exit polls. He also captured 96 percent of black voters.
Obama also captured a majority of both men and women, a rarity for a Democrat in a presidential campaign.
McCain appeared to have performed more poorly than his Republican predecessors, especially among young people. He earned about 30 percent of voters aged 18 to 29; in 2004, Bush captured 45 percent of that group.
Staff writers Michael Abramowitz and Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report.
Thank you to all the people and parties that contributed to this article.
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What does Warren Buffett say??
Buy American. I Am.
By WARREN E. BUFFETT Published: October 16, 2008
THE financial world is a mess, both in the United States and abroad. Its problems, moreover, have been leaking into the general economy, and the leaks are now turning into a gusher. In the near term, unemployment will rise, business activity will falter and headlines will continue to be scary.
So ... I’ve been buying American stocks. This is my personal account I’m talking about, in which I previously owned nothing but United States government bonds. (This description leaves aside my Berkshire Hathaway holdings, which are all committed to philanthropy.) If prices keep looking attractive, my non-Berkshire net worth will soon be 100 percent in United States equities.
Why? A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. And most certainly, fear is now widespread, gripping even seasoned investors. To be sure, investors are right to be wary of highly leveraged entities or businesses in weak competitive positions. But fears regarding the long-term prosperity of the nation’s many sound companies make no sense. These businesses will indeed suffer earnings hiccups, as they always have. But most major companies will be setting new profit records 5, 10 and 20 years from now.
Let me be clear on one point: I can’t predict the short-term movements of the stock market. I haven’t the faintest idea as to whether stocks will be higher or lower a month — or a year — from now. What is likely, however, is that the market will move higher, perhaps substantially so, well before either sentiment or the economy turns up. So if you wait for the robins, spring will be over.
A little history here: During the Depression, the Dow hit its low, 41, on July 8, 1932. Economic conditions, though, kept deteriorating until Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in March 1933. By that time, the market had already advanced 30 percent. Or think back to the early days of World War II, when things were going badly for the United States in Europe and the Pacific. The market hit bottom in April 1942, well before Allied fortunes turned. Again, in the early 1980s, the time to buy stocks was when inflation raged and the economy was in the tank. In short, bad news is an investor’s best friend. It lets you buy a slice of America’s future at a marked-down price. Over the long term, the stock market news will be good. In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.
You might think it would have been impossible for an investor to lose money during a century marked by such an extraordinary gain. But some investors did. The hapless ones bought stocks only when they felt comfort in doing so and then proceeded to sell when the headlines made them queasy. Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value. Indeed, the policies that government will follow in its efforts to alleviate the current crisis will probably prove inflationary and therefore accelerate declines in the real value of cash accounts.
Equities will almost certainly outperform cash over the next decade, probably by a substantial degree. Those investors who cling now to cash are betting they can efficiently time their move away from it later. In waiting for the comfort of good news, they are ignoring Wayne Gretzky’s advice: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.”
I don’t like to opine on the stock market, and again I emphasize that I have no idea what the market will do in the short term. Nevertheless, I’ll follow the lead of a restaurant that opened in an empty bank building and then advertised: “Put your mouth where your money was.” Today my money and my mouth both say equities.
Warren E. Buffett is the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, a diversified holding company.
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Money Market Recap and Forecast
MMRecap for Oct. 20
Signs that the credit markets may be clawing their way out of the deep freeze had a negative effect on Treasuries. Buoyed by the Dow's 900+ point gain on Monday, investors believed the worst was over, as was the need for safe havens. After a holiday Monday, bonds opened Tuesday to a selling frenzy, sending yields, which move inversely to price, above 4% -- the highest since July. And mortgage rates rose with them.
But the worst wasn't over, as evidenced by huge equity losses on Wednesday. Weak economic reports had little impact on Treasuries, which were warily eyeing multi-billion dollar auctions of government debt to fund the bailout.
Wednesday's first report, the September producer price index (PPI), which checks for inflation in wholesale prices, posted a second straight decline -- down 0.4%. But the core rate, which excludes food and energy prices, rose by a stronger-than-expected 0.4%.
Retail sales in September were dismal, registering the biggest drop in three years. Sales fell a steep 1.2%. Excluding auto sales, they were down 0.6%, with furniture, home furnishings, electronics and department stores hit hardest. And the NY Empire State index of manufacturing conditions hit a new low, falling to -24.6 from -7.4 the previous month.
These two reports spurred some buying in Treasuries, but the inflation warning from the PPI core rate curbed traders' enthusiasm for bonds.
Thursday was mixed, with first-time unemployment claims falling for the second straight week. Claims were down 16,000 to 461,000 during the week ended Oct. 11 after spiking at 497,000 two weeks prior. But the four-week average continued its climb, hitting 483,250, as did continued claims, which rose to 3.7 million. Separately, the consumer price index, which checks for retail inflation, found none in September and the closely watched core rate rose by only 0.1%. But two horrendous reports followed.
Industrial production for September withstood its biggest decline since 1974, falling 2.8%. Yes, the hurricanes and the Boeing strike factored in, but production is down. And the Philadelphia Fed October index of manufacturing conditions backed that up, posting its largest one-month drop on record. It fell to -37.5 from +3.8 in September. Treasury yields slid.
Friday's housing report revealed huge declines. September housing starts hit a 17-year low. The annual rate fell to 817,000 units -- down from 892,000 in August, while building permits plunged to 786,000 from 845,000. The University of Michigan/Reuters' preliminary consumer sentiment survey defied analysts' expectations of 64.5 by plummeting to 57.5 from 70.3 three weeks ago.
The Mortgage Bankers Association noted that during the week ended Oct. 10 volatility in the market held mortgage rates down early in the week, but when yields began climbing, refinancing dried up. However, refis rose 12.5% while purchases edged down 0.3%.
There are only three reports due this week, but with the markets moving on every news item regarding the credit crisis, it likely will be active.
Leading economic indicators, due Monday, take a look at the nation's economy three to six months ahead. There has been no indication the economy will pick up, and the September outlook reinforces that notion. Economists predict a 0.3% decline -- a slight improvement over the 0.5% drop in August, but not a trend-changing number.
The next report comes Thursday: first-time jobless claims for the week ended Oct. 18. Even though claims have dropped for two consecutive weeks, high numbers indicate severe problems in the labor market.
The final report, existing home sales (EHS) for September, is expected to show a slight increase. Analysts believe sales will edge up to an annual rate of 4.93 million units from 4.91 million in August. This, paired with an up tick in pending home sales, offers hope that monthly EHS declines may be behind us.
Courtesy of Dana J Bruce
Mortgage Banker with
Cascade Capital
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Private Acreage in the Pine Forest
To view this home’s VIRTUAL TOUR visit us here….
LiveInBendOregon.com
To schedule your private showing contact me anytime.
John Ropp
Principal Broker, GRI
Century 21 Gold Country
Bend, Oregon
541-771-6564
Licensed Oregon Broker/Realtor
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PRICE REDUCED 2.7 ACRES CLOSE TO TOWN
ASKING $398,098
Come view this custom home located in Bend’s popular NW neighborhood of Whispering Pines. Situated on 2.7 elevated acres overlooking the Central Oregon high desert this home is ideal for the city goers looking for small acreage close to town. Approximately 15 minutes from downtown, the local airport, shopping and the Medical District. Features include 2244 square feet of living space, 3 large bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, separate living and family rooms, large office space, a double attached garage, fully covered wrap-a-round front, side and back deck, new hot tub, kid’s play structure, tile, wood and carpeted floors and tile and marble countertops. 1 acre is fully fence-in perfect for letting kids play and dogs run wild. A fenced off garden area keeps the deer out. Easy access to highway 97 and traffic noise CANNOT be heard from this property!
To view this home’s VIRTUAL TOUR visit us here….
LiveInBendOregon.com
To schedule your private showing contact me anytime.
John Ropp
Principal Broker, GRI
Century 21 Gold Country Bend
Bend, Oregon
541-771-6564
Licensed Oregon Principal Broker/Realtor
ASKING $398,098
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