The Bulletin has this report from Oregon. "Linda Laws and her husband have been trying to sell their little 712-square-foot rental house on west Bend's Northwest 12th Street since June. The price, after a drop from the initial listing price, is standing at $349,000, still a tidy profit on a house they bought for $135,000 in 2002, then renovated."

"The Laws want to wheel their gains on the house and another one they own on Baltimore Avenue into an investment property they have already bought in another state. But there's a problem: Hundreds of other people have the same idea this summer."

"The number of homes for sale in Bend has risen 249 percent since the first of the year, overwhelming the flow of buyers that has remained strong through most of the year, but not strong enough to keep 'For Sale' signs from cropping up like summer dandelions.

"Buyers have plenty of choices, and some are hanging back to wait for prices to drop, broker David Foster said. Some sellers, meanwhile, are getting frustrated. 'I think we're at the point now where we'll just make this thing work, and maybe take the houses off the market until the market gets better,' Laws said Wednesday. 'I'm not sure.'"

"Month-to-month sales volumes in the region's priciest markets, Bend and Redmond, skidded in July from June. Bend posted 162 sales, down 32.5 percent from June. They lagged far behind the torrid pace of 2005; 41.7 percent off of July 2005's sales in Bend, and 34 percent off in Redmond. The average listing price for homes on less than one acre on the Bend market dipped from $566,212 in June to $530,385 in July, down about 3 percent since the first of the year."

"The regionwide average sale price dipped from $393,000 in June to $371,000 in July, Berger said, a drop of 5.6 percent in a month. 'For that to come down to $371,000 in one month, that was a fair-sized drop, and I think we are going to see that coming down some more,' broker Bill Berger said. 'My take on it is that we are going to see some fairly significant price decreases for the next couple of months before we see it start to level out.'"

"Others 'think it might take a couple of years for prices to shake out,' (realtor) Foster said. 'I don't lean that direction. I think Bend is a little more special than that. But it's really hard to say.'"

"Inventory has built rapidly in the once-tight Bend market, Berger and other market watchers say, for one key reason: Speculators are trying to bail out at the top price. Their houses are crowding a market that's already full of the normal traffic. Bend alone had 1,322 active listings on July 31. It had 387 listings on July 31, 2005."

"George Hale of Bend-based WoodHill Homes, said the inventory buildup is causing him to trim his production plans this year, but he's still bullish on the long haul. WoodHill sold about 25 percent of its homes to investors in 2005, Hale said, but those buyers 'are pretty much gone.'"

"It's hard to tell how sellers will react to the upwelling of inventory, Foster noted. Some are selling because they have to sell. Others are just testing the waters at intentionally high prices, trying to see whether a buyer 'with a bucket of money and a box of stupid' will show up to pay too much."

"Stevi Hjertstedt's 1,427-square-foot house is listed for $309,900. The Hjert-stedts paid $185,400 for it when they bought it in 2004. As in most Bend neighborhoods, she's competing with some investors and speculators who are also trying to get out. A bigger house one street over, bought by an Oakland, Calif., resident in 2001 for $213,746, is listed at $348,900; price reduced. Another, owned by a Bend investor, is priced at $298,000, up 68.6 percent from the $207,000 purchase price in February 2005."

"'When we bought two years ago, we thought it was outrageous,' she said. 'But when they told us what they were going to list this house for I was shocked. I said, 'We're stealing.' But, you know? It's priced appropriately for the market.'"