All those foreclosures hitting the market at once could send home values plummeting. Don’t sell enough of them, on the other hand, and they could be a drag on the market for years to come.

An analysis of recent numbers from RealtyTrac and the Regional Multiple Listing Service suggests the latter might be more of a threat than the former. In the Portland area, at least, lenders seem inclined to take their time with foreclosed properties.

The vast majority of repossessed Portland-area homes aren’t up for sale. Instead, more than 80 percent of them are off the market, many vacant and developing maintenance problems that might ultimately take a toll on their resale value if and when they do sell.

Read the rest on OregonLive.com.

Problem was, there wasn’t much to see. With the number of Portland-area homes on the market peaking near 12,000 last summer — and falling to 8,500 by January — pickings were slim, near levels last seen when the housing bubble burst in 2006.

After eight months of looking, they ended up buying a brand-new house on a West Linn cul-de-sac, an unlikely choice for a couple who owned their Southeast Portland home, built in 1908, for more than a dozen years. They decided to sell last year, seeking a different school district.

“We never thought that we would ever buy new,” Scott Viegas said. “It was the golden apple that we thought we’d never have.”

The thin inventory of homes, a quirk of pent-up demand paired with low prices that keeps would-be sellers on the sideline, has changed the way homes are bought and sold.

Read the rest on OregonLive.com.

The discord stems, in part, from Lennar’s handling of a portfolio of construction loans from the Bank of Clark County, which failed in 2009. The loans spent a year in Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation control before being sold to Lennar just over two years ago.

Now a loosely organized group of builders say a Lennar subsidiary, Rialto Capital Management LLC, has pushed many of the loans into failure and done little to work with borrowers. Some asked the Clark County Building Industry Association this week to reject Lennar’s application for membership, saying the newcomer has damaged the industry.

John Fazzolari, a Vancouver homebuilder who was developing a subdivision with a Bank of Clark County loan, attended the association’s board meeting Tuesday to share his concerns.

“They’ve basically stripped all they worked for over the last four to eight years and handed it to this East Coast corporation, all because we chose the wrong banking institution,” Fazzolari said in an interview Thursday.

Lennar announced in December it planned to build homes in the Northwest. In the Portland area, including southwest Washington, the company said it would acquire mostly foreclosed lots. That’s heightened builders’ suspicions that the company is purposefully hurting competing builders while adding to the inventory of distressed construction projects. Foreclose on other builders rather than work things out, the logic goes, and your development competition diminishes in the metro area.

Read the rest on OregonLive.com.

After fever-pitch rate of building leading up to the housing crash, they left behind hundreds of lots waiting for houses, many taken back by lenders looking to unloand them — quick.

That left one builder unusually suited to take advantage of the situation: Habitat for Humanity, the nonprofit that builds low-cost homes for low-income families.

So the organization’s Portland branch launched a fundraising campaign and started snatching up land.

In the last several months, the group has built up a five-year supply of land, enough for as many as 150 houses. It’s aiming to pump up its production by 50 percent.

“There’s a real window of opportunity here,” said Steve Messinetti , the executive director of Habitat for Humanity Portland/Metro East. “We’re getting deals we’re not going to see again.”

Read the rest on OregonLive.com.

The on-again, off-again downtown Vancouver movie theater, shuttered since June, shows its age in its cracked leather seats, a few broken window panes and a thick coat of dust.

But the owner of the theater is getting ready to cue the lights again. Bill Leigh and a team of volunteers have launched a $300,000 project with the goal of restoring the Kiggins and reopening early next year.

The Kiggins closed June 1 because of low attendance for its second-run double features. When the theater reopens — likely early next year, said Seanette Corkill, a partner in the project –it will have a new focus on independent film, with an eye toward providing a venue for musical performances. An upstairs bar will provide a gathering spot.

“That was a business model that doesn’t work anymore,” Corkill said of the previous approach. “Commercial films in 3D you go see in a commercial theater. If you want to experience independent cinema, you come to see it in an independent theater.”

Read the rest on OregonLive.com.

His winery was one of just a few at the time. But as the budding industry grew, county officials started to grow wary of letting wineries — with their proclivity for large events and tastings — open under the loose regulations governing agricultural land.

By earlier this year when Michele Bloomquist was preparing to open her winery, Heisen House Vineyards, the county had changed its tune.

“I was told, well, you can have a winery and you can have a vineyard, but you can’t have people go there,” she said. “Of course, that’s not how the wine business works.”

The county, now home to about a dozen wineries and expecting more, is considering new regulations aimed at easing concerns about safety and the impact of winery visitors on rural infrastructure while still fostering the growing industry. The county asked vintners to weigh in to ensure the policies are winery-friendly.

Read the rest at OregonLive.com.

“We should be generating some critical mass here (that) I think was needed,” said John Ott, who owns not only the Berry Building but several others in the North Village and downtown.

The Berry Building started out as a wholesale grocery store and warehouse built by its namesake, L.W. Berry, in 1925. When Berry died shortly thereafter, the building was sold and has since operated primarily as a storage facility, with occasional retail uses.

“It’s been kind of an eyesore for many years,” Ott said.

Now, the building has been cleaned up inside and out. Renovations are finishing up this month. The first tenant, Wilson’s Fitness, is scheduled to open a gym in the building’s basement in early December. Ott is looking for tenants to occupy the Berry Building’s retail storefronts on Walnut Street, restaurant space on the building’s north side and loft apartments on the top floor.

The building’s warehouse look has been preserved. Ott said he has taken advantage of some of the warehouse aesthetics, using its many windows for natural light and retaining the original post-and-beam supports.

The building’s new purposes are starting to take shape, too. Storefronts now line Walnut Street, and the restaurant’s patio overlooks Orr Street. The top floor has been partitioned into 12 lofts: nine one-bedroom and three two-bedroom apartments designed for young professionals and empty nesters.

The North Village was once a busy district for Columbia artists, but shops closed and traffic slowed as shoppers went elsewhere, such as the Columbia Mall. But as people and businesses have returned to the downtown district, some say the North Village is on track to make a comeback, too.

“The more going on in our part of town, the more it benefits everyone,” said Tracy Lane, director of Orr Street Studios. “I think there’s a very good thing happening.”

Orr Street Studios opened across from the Berry Building in 2007. Lane said nearby developments will help bring the studios within reach of downtown traffic.

“It’s just an extension of downtown now,” she said. “When the studios first opened, they were sort of out there by themselves. Now … there’s more traffic and more people, so there’s more awareness for everybody.”

When the Berry Building is complete, Ott hopes it will complement the developing art district’s feel. He said he plans to install outdoor art projects near the building, and he’s looking for creative retail or service tenants that match the neighborhood.

“There are just some businesses that aren’t a good fit,” Ott said. “You want stores that are true to our district.”

Ott owns and recently developed several other nearby properties. Cafe Berlin moved this month from its location on Providence Road to a former service station nearby, at Tenth Street and Park Avenue. The Artlandish Gallery opened next to the Berry Building earlier this year, and an office building across Walnut is nearing completion. Ott also renovated the building at 1013 Walnut St. that now is home to Rock Bottom Comics and Mizzou Records.

And there’s room for more. The Downtown Leadership Council, created by the Columbia City Council to find opportunities for downtown renewal, identified the area as a priority in a May report.

“People have deemed that area for years to be the North Village,” Downtown Leadership Council chairman Randy Gray said. ”I think it has such identity, and even the possibility for a stronger identity.”

Next, the council plans to conduct a “design charrette,” a planning process that brings together stakeholders — including business owners, property owners and residents — to discuss their vision of future development in the area.

“The idea is to get input from everyone involved to determine what the future of downtown is to be,” Gray said. “How should it function? How should it feel? How should it look?”

The council will hire planners to take public input and turn it into drawings, renderings and possible guidelines for fut

ure development. The North Village, in particular, has a lot of potential for community involvement.

“Who’s to say you couldn’t have more artists involved in the creation of funky designs to distinguish the streetscape in that area?” Gray said.

COLUMBIA, Mo. — In his five campaigns for mayor, Darwin Hindman was untouchable. After winning a six-way race for the office by more than 4,000 votes in 1995, Hindman has twice run unopposed, and he won by enormous margins in the two elections in which he was challenged.

But after Hindman’s Thursday announcement that he would not seek election to a sixth term, the mayoral race is wide open. The announcement touched off a flurry of speculation about possible successors.

Hindman has previously waited until early January to announce his election intentions but said Thursday that he hopes an early announcement this time will give possible candidates a chance to consider their decision.

“I hope there will be a vigorous campaign,” he said.

With no incumbent, there’s a good chance the field will look similar to that of 1995.

Hindman said he hadn’t spoken to anyone interested in mounting a campaign for  mayor. But his decision not to run was kept under a tight lid, he said. Other than family, he hadn’t told anyone before Thursday.

Community members said Hindman has set a high standard for successors.

“Whoever is elected mayor following Mayor Hindman will be judged against him, and that will be a very high bar to get over,” said Jim Loveless, who has served as councilman for both the Second and Fourth wards.

Don Stamper, executive director of the Central Missouri Leadership Council, said that group will be active in the search for new candidates for mayor.

“The tone of the community is set by leadership, and that is a tone we are very interested in,” Stamper said. “We’ll be working with other groups such as the Chamber of Commerce and (The Columbia) Board of Realtors.”

Former Columbia Mayor Mary Anne McCollum said that as the city grows, so does the mayor’s responsibilities.

“The next mayor will have to obviously be someone who can be as dedicated to the job as was Mayor Hindman,” she said. “It does require increasingly more time.”

McCollum said that one of the biggest changes since she was mayor in the late 1980s and early 1990s is the level of communication constituents expect.

“Many of the citizens who contacted me did so by calling me and leaving a message on my recorder at home, and I also responded to a lot of letters,” she said. “Over the past 20 years the role of both the mayor and City Council has increased. With the newest technology, constituents expect more immediate response from their elected officials.”

City Manager Bill Watkins said the next mayor should be someone familiar with the city and how to work within the government.

“We need someone who has knowledge of the workings of the community and willingness to lead and work with the staff, City Council, interest groups and community groups,” Watkins said.

Sixth Ward Councilwoman Barbara Hoppe said the next mayor should be someone who understands the community and its history.

“Someone who has the foresight for the community of the future, which includes growing in sustainable ways that are in sync with environmental realities,” Hoppe said. “Also a person who is a good spokesperson, open-minded and good at allowing people to express ideas and conversation.”

Jeff Barrow, chairman of the Columbia Planning and Zoning Commission, said the next mayor also must brace for the problems that come with Columbia’s growth. Some big-city background would help, he said.

Barrow noted that the city is in a position to take the next step in growth, with downtown on the cusp of redevelopment and MU developing a research park that it hopes will be strong in the life sciences.

“The new mayor needs to be poised to take advantage of those opportunities that need to be merged,” Barrow said. The mayor should be “progress oriented, future oriented. Darwin Hindman was a wonderful native son – a great mayor – but I think the new mayor is going to have to face (new kinds) of challenges.”

Several potential candidates for mayor have refrained from committing to the race. Fourth Ward Councilman Jerry Wade confirmed Wednesday that he has been considering a mayoral run for months but that he wouldn’t speed up his decision because of Hindman’s announcement.

Retired bank executive Bob Roper, who has been widely discussed as a possible contender, told the Missourian on Wednesday that he would be “highly unlikely” to enter the race.

John Clark, who has run twice against Hindman, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Arnie Fagan, a real estate agent and owner of Cool Stuff, said he is considering running for mayor.

“I think it’s an extremely important job, and we certainly need someone that’s got a lot of experience in the right skills and certainly somebody who’s very civic-minded,” he said.

Fagan said he has received personal e-mails encouraging him to run.

“Certainly, looking at who would throw their hat in the ring would affect any decision I would make,” Fagan said. “If there was somebody who was a good candidate, I’d be less likely to join the race. But it would be more likely if there are only lousy candidates throwing their hat in the ring.”

Loveless said that he has not given the idea of running for mayor “due consideration” but that anyone who is running will have a tough role to fill.

People commenting on the Columbia Daily Tribune’s Web site offered plenty of informal nominations, including local blogger Mike Martin, who owns and rents properties in the central city; Fred Parry, publisher of Inside Columbia Magazine; and Jeff Harris, the former 23rd District state representative who lost a bid for attorney general.

Parry said he was flattered by some of the attention, but a run for mayor would not be a “good fit for me right now.”

“At this point, I am not interested personally in running, but I am very interested in who might consider running,” he said.

Parry said the City Council has missed opportunities to curb violent crime and made it difficult for businesses to move to or operate in Columbia. That has, in turn, hurt Columbia’s schools, he said.

“People don’t want to move to a town where there is a perceived increase in violent crime,” he said.

In addition to the mayor’s seat, the Third and Fourth Ward council seats held by Karl Skala and Wade, respectively, will be up for election on April 6.

The filing period for council candidates will begin Oct. 23 and end in late January. The city charter dictates that those interested in running for mayor must collect at least 100 and not more than 150 signatures from registered voters in the city.

Missourian reporters James Patrick Schmidt and Greg Mitchell contributed to this report.

At least Dawn Buell says so. She’s the owner of Not Afraid to Sweat Inc., a corn detasseling company, and she employs a group of detasselers that calls itself The Force.

“They’re very good at what they do,” Buell said. “Not a lot slips through their fingers.”

Every year, small armies of mostly teenagers descend on fields for the brief detasseling season. The task is essential to creating hybrid corn seed, and the labor-intensive work only lasts a few weeks.

These days, most of the work is done by machine. A grower will lop off the tops of some plants to allow another breed planted nearby to cross-pollinate them, creating a hybrid.

But the machine can’t get all the tassels, and growers say leaving behind more than one-quarter of a percent will contaminate the field. The detasseling teams walk through the fields and manually pull any remaining tassels. Usually, it takes more than one sweep.

That’s where The Force comes in.

They do the second pass through the field, and usually they avoid third, fourth and fifth sweeps often needed to meet the growers’ standards.

Buell said the 45 members of The Force are the best of the best, the most experienced of more than 400 detasselers she employs. Most have been around for several seasons, and each has been picked as one of the top five workers on a previous season’s crew.

“Many of them have grown up with me, so to speak,” Buell said.

While most teams need lots of supervision and double-checking, The Force has its system down cold. The detasselers put their water jugs at the end of the row, walk to the other end of the field detasseling two rows, then walk back to detassel the next row. Then they move on to the next set.

The job is tough. The day starts about 5:30 a.m., when buses pick up the detasselers from two Lincoln church parking lots. The buses — decked out with Christmas lights and emblazoned with “The Force” in duct tape — take the detasselers out to the day’s first field.

Walking row-by-row, they snatch at the tassels as if by reflex. The tassels aren’t easy to spot. During detasseling season, the normally gold tassels are still enveloped in leaves.

Taller stalks, still wet with the morning dew, are the worst. These experienced detasselers know to wear rain gear or trash bags to stay dry, and they wear long sleeves to prevent scratches from the leaves.

And they know what to look for. Less experienced workers might miss “suckers,” the low-lying tassels that you’d miss if you were looking up, or “hangers,” tassels that have been removed but are still hanging where they might pollinate the plants.

“My very first day, I remember going from corn plant to corn plant just looking in them,” said 16-year-old Drew Hoefler, a fourth-year detasseler from Firth, Neb., now pulling tassel after tassel without a second glance. “I guess it just comes with experience.”

On The Force, most detasselers will earn more than $2,000 over the three-week season.

Even though the season is short, the crew has grown close.

“When you’re in the field with people, you just talk about everything,” said 16-year-old Sarah Koehler of Lincoln. “Anything and everything.”

The team has developed its own traditions. Every day on the way home, they listen to the song “Sneaky Snake,” a children’s song about a root-beer-swilling snake.

On occasion, their work earns them a treat from their supervisors — a stop at McDonald’s for ice cream or a cookout at the field, courtesy of Buell or their team supervisor.

The days can be long, but the season is over before they know it.

“It goes really fast,” Koehler said. “You basically sleep, eat and detassel during the detasseling season.”

They might look more Eddie Bauer than Brooks Brothers, but they’re taking care of business using the Camp Cedars’ free wireless Internet connection.

There was a time when a week at summer camp meant staying off the map and unplugged. But in a world of cell phones, smart phones and Internet access anywhere, it’s getting harder to get away, even at Boy Scout camp.

And leaders say that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Camp Cedars installed wireless Internet access three years ago as a way for parents to fulfill professional obligations while with their sons at camp. Camp Eagle, a nearby camp for younger Cub Scouts, also offers Internet access.

The Mid-America Council of the Boy Scouts of America, which runs the camps and three others, decided last week to expand the service to the Little Sioux Scout Ranch in Little Sioux, Iowa.

Scoutmaster Ray Netherton, who leads Troop 141 of Ida Grove, Iowa, typed on his laptop at Camp Cedars while Scouts attended merit badge classes.

He said the Internet access can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, he can’t use time at camp to truly get away from the daily grind for a week.

“There is some peace in not having to respond to things,” he said.

On the other hand, he can save himself two days of catching up on e-mail and project updates when he gets back to work. Netherton, a manufacturing engineering manager at the Gomaco Corp. construction firm, said he receives about 60 e-mails every day.

“The work doesn’t pile up as much as it would have otherwise,” he said.

When food service manager Sandra Roth — known at camp as “Mom” — started working there in 1990, there was only one phone line, and she had to go to the camp administration office to order supplies. Sometimes, if the line was tied up, she would go home to make the calls.

Today she has her own phone line, and she does some of her business online.

“It simplifies a few things,” she said. “Communication is key to a lot of things, and the faster and the easier you can communicate, the better.”

The camp asks troop leaders to tell Scouts not to bring electronics, although Williamson said about a third carry cell phones.

For staff who live at the camp for six weeks, it’s easier to keep in touch with friends and family. David Sweeney, the director of shooting sports, lives in Spring Hill, Fla., and has worked at Camp Cedars for four summers. His son, a first lieutenant in the Army, is stationed in Iraq, and the two talk frequently via instant messages.

“Times have changed radically from when I was a Boy Scout, and I say for the better,” he said.

Netherton said his company would probably give him time off for summer camp even if he couldn’t stay in touch.

For others, going off the grid for a week isn’t an option, said Camp Director Don Williamson. Providing wireless Internet allows them to go to camp and still check in with work.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity for them to come out here and be with their boys and still be in contact,” Williamson said. “In this age of Internet, it’s critical for them to be able to keep in touch.”