Catskill Farms was recently features in the Almanac Weekly's article,
Rustic Without the Rust, by Lynn Woods:
Rustic Without the Rust
Charles Petersheim didn’t know a soul in the Catskills when he left
New York City post-9/11 and purchased an abandoned shack in Sullivan
County. Petersheim, who had done construction and real estate in the
City, found work upstate renovating old farmhouses for weekenders – and
quickly made an important discovery: The first-time second-homebuyers
who were his customers found the process unbelievably stressful. The
charming rustic cottage on three or four acres that is every
Manhattanite’s or Brooklynite’s country dream sometimes turned out to be
a money pit with all kinds of disappointments and problems.
Petersheim saw an opportunity. In 2002 he launched Catskill Farms,
which offers the ideal alternative: building new homes modeled after the
old farmhouse. Using salvaged wood as accents and planks for the
floors, refurbishing old radiators for the cozy steam-heat systems and
siding his abodes in pine or cedar, with metal roofs and fireplaces as
options, he realized that he could build farmhouses with all the charm
of an original but none of the hassle.
All his homes are energy-efficient, with spray-foam insulation and
on-demand hot-water heaters. Plus, the customer can weigh in on the
design, such as the height of the ceilings, size and placement of the
windows and location on the property, avoiding a common pitfall of old
homes, which is they are too close to the road. “We’ve been able to
capture the romantic essence of an older home, which is a very
subliminal thing,” Petersheim said. “Our homes have a heart.”
As you may guessed from that remark, Petersheim is also a marketing whiz. His company’s website, www.thecatskillfarms.com,
powerfully evokes the Catskills’ down-home appeal, from the personal
testimonials to the vintage graphics to the country-music classics that
play as you flip through the virtual brochure. The company has been
featured on DIY’s Blog Cabin, and three of its homes will be featured on
the February 14 episode of HGTV’s Selling New York program at 6:30 p.m.
While the 1,600-square-foot “farmhouse” and 1,300-square-foot
“cottage” are his most popular models, he also constructs mid-century
ranch-style “moderns” and “micro cottages and shacks”: 700-square-foot
cottages that start at $185,000. Customers can pick features from
different models and combine them and choose where to put the driveway,
said Petersheim. So far, Catskill Farms, which employs 15, has built
more than 100 houses, with sales of $36 million. Nearly half of them
were small farmhouses priced just under $350,000: the “sweet spot” for
most customers, Petersheim said.
Most of his houses were built in Sullivan County, where land was
cheaper and more available. It has been Petersheim’s dream to build
houses in Ulster County, and last summer that dream became a reality. In
2012, he sold 18 homes, nine of which were in Ulster, and plans to
expand into Columbia County next. The farther east he moves, the more
expensive the houses: Petersheim said that his farmhouses sell for 12
percent more in Ulster than in Sullivan County and start around
$395,000.
Petersheim said that the strength of Catskill Farms’ product is borne
out by the fact that he has not only survived during the Great
Recession, but prospered. Partly it’s because of his business savvy. For
example, the company is vertically integrated, meaning that it offers
everything from soup to nuts (realtor sales to the final paint job). And
to save on the cost of spray foam, which he said is priced artificially
high due to a monopoly, he started his own company, Ecotech Spray Foam,
in 2009.
Based in Barryville, Petersheim said that working in Sullivan County
has been challenging. “My day-to-day existence was one of loneliness and
having no industry peers in what I was doing. I spent a lot of time in an area
with scarce resources and a shallow pool of labor, and it was a real
struggle to grow.” Hence, expanding into Ulster is a kind of arrival.
On the other hand, he said that his company serves as a gateway to
the Catskills for many urbanites, regardless of the county, with an
average of 12,000 hits to his website a month. “So many people fall in
love with the area,” he said. “We would like to leverage real estate and
construction skills and resell other homes. I’m positive we have many
more challenges in front of us, but I’m excited there will be less of a
headwind and more tailwind.”
No comments:
Post a Comment