Hood River Real Estate and Columbia Gorge Real Estate

At the Risk of being wrong, here are my predictions for 2008 and Hood River Real Estate.

(Caveat-Assumes no explosions of Financial Toxic Waste)

1. Real Estate prices remain the same. Quality products are still finding quality buyers.

2. Less than perfect properties will get hit on value, but still be in line with the rest of the market.

3. The “buy it and flip it” crowd will go away.

4. The Fly by Night Contractor crowd will go away as well.

5. At least ONE of the major land developers (more than 10 lots of inventory) will fail.

6. There will be a slight gap in housing starts, then it will pick up again…..

7. By the end of 2008, we’ll all be strapping on the running shoes trying to keep up again. (With sales volume, not price increases. They will be another year out.)

8. One of the developers in town will go out because of contractor liability, after finding that their houses are not sellable.

9. I’ll have three kids.

10. Copper West is going to grow. Alot.

Well, Toxic event #1 has just been cleared away, given the BOA/Countrywide deal. If that goes through, well, that will be a big loss for strained homeowners (I doubt BOA wil take that obligation on, or the pending legal actions….) and probably remove the chance to have a resetting event…….but it sure should calm some nerves………

Calm nerves are helping here, but I’m certain that it had nothing to do with the fact that 50% of the inventory in the Sieverkropp addition just went sale pending last week. Guess what, that’s a big number in this narrow marketplace. Looks like the inventory overhang is beginning to clear out………