Oregon Business Magazine is the premier magazine for business and community leaders across the state of Oregon.

Each month, the magazine provides a mix of insightful, in-depth coverage of statewide business trends, issues and challenges, as well as practical advice to business leaders. Oregon Business is  a must-read for everyone who's invested in the health and well being of business and the state.

THE PARTY'S OVER
The housing downturn hits Oregon’s financial, construction and real estate industries. Jobs fall, defaults rise and everyone worries over how deep it will go.
By Ben Jacklet

By the time Scott Gephart moved from California to Oregon, he had become an expert in profiting from declining real estate markets. He founded Chaparral Realty Group in Medford last August, and within six months he had built his business from three to 12 employees and leased a new 2,600-square-foot office.

“I think we’re the only growing company in our market,” says Gephart. “Everyone else is either shrinking or going out of business.”

The key to Chaparral’s growth has been the short sale, a complex deal in which a home is sold for less than is owed on its mortgages and lenders agree to accept a loss rather than repossess the property. Gephart’s expertise has served him well in Medford, where median home sales prices have dipped 13% over the past year. In one recent deal, Gephart sold a client’s home for $260,000 even though the property carried $330,000 in debt with three lenders. “With the market falling the way it is, short sales are where the action is,” says Gephart. ...

Read Oregon Business Magazine, May 2008 Online

TODAY'S OREGON STORIES

    *  Boeing, union talk; deadline presses
    *  Revised design of Steel Bridge MAX light-rail line helps save TriMet $1 million
    *  Oregon representatives meet for first-ever Rural Oregon Congress
    *  State film business tops $1.3 billion
    *  Kulongoski presses board to let Port of Coos Bay buy rail line

AROUND THE STATE

• Q&A with new state labor chief
  When Gov. Ted Kulongoski tapped Brad Avakian to be the state’s labor commissioner, the former Democratic senator and one-time civil rights lawyer says he had one thought.
• Startups: The beat goes on in Portland
• CH2M Hill wins $5.25 billion contract on Panama Canal

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