Thankgiving, 2020

 

No matter how many times you say it, to yourself or outloud, 2020 has been a crazy year.   Thanksgiving was spent on Zoom, with my 76 year old mother on the 3rd week after testing positive for covid.  She's fine, thank god.  But a week later, pre-symptomatic, she would have infected the whole family who was set to arrive for Thanksgiving Dinner -'whole' family much reduced since a bunch of us weren't coming due to virus best practices.

I do a family Shutterfly calendar each year and typically because of the sports and the get-togethers and the travel and the fun times, there are far too many pics for the allotted 12 months of picture slots.  Not this year - if there is one true measure of what a 'stay at home' year looks like, it's the lack of pictures I've taken.  How many pics can you take of your son gaming, or your dog looking cute lying on her back with her legs pointing skyward?

We remain busy, which sheds off some survivor's guilt, because me and my team are prospering.  But that type of over-self analysis is boring and as indulgent as feeling guilty in the first place since my company being busy has such an intense and wide-ranging economic impact on a huge number of families, that to assume the guilt as singularly, is silly and self-absorbed.  Catskill Farms dumps $1.5m a month into someone's pocketbooks and wallets, and that impact creates ripples and waves of ancillary impacts in community spending, retirements, consumption, but most of all - it creates economically stable families who can engage in predictable planning near-term and long-term  - benefiting communities - be it social, economic, health or spiritual. $1.5m a month rivals most SuCo town's annual budgets.

I'm without a doubt a free-market believer - not in the pure Ayn Rand where all gov't is bad, but I do believe without hesitation that I make good decisions more than bad, that I can navigate the micro-market I work in better than anyone for the benefit of more, that I reinvest my profits back into the community and people I work with, and that a lot of gov't rules that create the box from within I work are good.

I believe in gov't assisted healthcare - mostly because I see how destabilizing lack of healthcare is for families.  We just had a guy with a serious member of his family ill, and he was able to take off with pay for 3 months (and his wife under a separate program) to care for this family member, rather than having to make a choice of bankruptcy or caring for the family member.  That was a big deal, that none of us had ever even considered before when complaining about NY taxes, or Obamacare.  This was life saving for 7 people.

The idea that small business people reject any form of higher taxes when in the public good, especially when you can see the diret impact on persons you work with, underestimates the caring many employers have for their employees, and the intelligence and realism good managers use when deciding what is good and bad for them ('them' always defined as the whole corporate family, not the owner individually.

Near the year end, when tax planning is crystalized before Dec 31, charitable giving becomes front of mind.  And sometimes I look at my percentage of income given, and it seems paltry, but then I step back and have to acknowledge I give everyday, every week, to my employees, my vendors, my extended family - just giving everyone off Thursday and Friday costs $7000 not including the opportunity costs of not getting anything done, the illness in a team member's family was truly expensive indirectly - healthcare, 401k, time off, bonuses - all definitely not 'charity', but definitely an allocation of profits to others other than oneself.

So on this Thanksgiving, we feel blessed - as individuals, as an owner of a company, as a family - for the bounty of harvest and health we have here in 2020, even if we have to measure it a bit irregularly.

Bird Feeder Update, and Hot Real Estate market

Like a good Agatha Christie mystery (anyone ever see 1944 academy award nominee Gaslight, Angela Landsbury's first role at 19?) or a Sherlock Holmes yarn, the bird feeder drama took a turn towards clarification.  It was a bear.  How do I know?  First, I was confused at how the bird feeder didn't shatter as it hit the concrete porch - by the laws of physics, and it's construction makeup, it certainly should have.  2nd, there wasn't a seed from the spill anywhere to be found on the ground, and while certainly I could imagine Mr Squirrel and his friends and assorted birds making quick work of the spill, not quicker than I would have noticed the increase in activity since all I really do these days is sit in my man chair reading and watching the bird feeders.

So, 3 evening past, I was sitting here in my well-worn chair, reading, when from the corner of my eye some new shape enters peripherally.  It's funny how the brain works - it works backwards from what is most probable, most familiar, rules them out by process of elimination and continues paging through other scenarios.  So, in this millisecond, I went from bird, child, gardener, neighbor to looking over, 7' away through glass, to see a momma bear with one little cub the size of a soccer ball.  Literally the cub most have been on his first life excursion. Momma is reared up, paws to the bird feeder.  Fumbling for my phone, yelling for lucas, the bear senses danger and meanders off.

So, I owe the Amish bird feeder maker an apology.  It wasn't his craftsmanship.  The bear literally reached up, delicately put two paws on the bird feeder, gave a quick tug, broke the rope, put it on the ground and ate away.

So there's that.

Funny how putting a kid in a classic car with an American flag makes us seem like anti-mask wearing, social distancing denying, open now nincompoops, but we aren't.  We just love our country and the freedoms, be is speech, opportunity, religion, etc... that is part of This American Life.

I remember after the white supremacists invaded Charlottesville VA a few years back and my friend Bryan commented that it was embarrassing to buy tiki torches for his yard at Home Depot since the racists down there were using them in their marches - really sad the flag has the same ability to divide now.

There's also a pandemic explosion of urban flight looking for upstate properties.  I'm not usually as wrong as I was on this one, but any theory I had about depressed demand because of deep cuts this virus is making into the heart of NYC will need to wait, since for now, demand is off the charts.

News article we were quoted in -
http://www.westmilfordmessenger.com/news/local-news/pandemic-driven-house-frenzy-hits-local-towns-AL1159772

I'm still not all that certain for what the future holds, since it seems like a lot of the pain is being artificially delayed with Fed action, with mortgage forbearance action (as opposed to default), with federal stimulus, rent holidays and increased unemployment compensation levels.  But for now, you have a level of activity in an already busy marketplace I've never seen before.  And there is not a whole to sell, so if you are a seller, or thinking about selling, now is definitely the time.

This resale of Farm 33 in Rhinebeck is going into contract for nearly $1m, the largest increase over sales price ever recorded for a Catskill Farms home.



Barn 7 in Barryville went into contract in one week with multiple backup offers.



And Farm 19 in Narrowsburg survived on the market for 5 days before 2 full price offers came through -




The new Catskill Farms Ranch 37 home in Kerhonkson just went into contract -



This Lazy Meadows sale happened on Friday -



And Catskill Farms put 3 homes into contract that aren't built yet.  I fended off another dozen clients with badly executed karate moves.

As someone who values competence, when I read things like the following it makes me sad and mad, not sure which emotion is more pronounced, since I confuse the two half the time, like any red-blooded emotionally challenged American male should -

"In the first six months of 1942, the [U.S.] government gave out more than $100 billion in military contracts, more than the entire gross national product of 1940. In the war years, American industry turned out 6,500 naval ves­sels; 296,400 airplanes; 86,330 tanks; 64,546 landing craft; 3.5 million jeeps, trucks, and personnel carriers; 53 million deadweight tons of cargo vessels; 12 million rifles, carbines, and machine guns; and 47 mil­lion tons of artillery shells, together with millions of tons of uniforms, boots, medical supplies, tents, and a thousand other items needed to fight a modern war.

"The Ford Motor Company alone produced more war matériel than the entire Italian economy. By 1944 its Willow Run plant was turning out B-24 bombers at the rate of one every sixty-three minutes. Henry J. Kaiser, who at first knew so little about ships that he referred to the front and the back instead of the bow and stern, brought the techniques of automobile mass production to shipbuilding. He reduced the time needed to build a liberty ship -- the standardized freighter of seventy-two hundred tons and thirty thousand parts -- from 244 days to 42. A total of 2,710 were produced during the war, each, in Roosevelt's words, 'a blow for the liberty of the free peoples of the world.'

And we can't even ramp up to produce virus tests in this day and age.

Moving, Paris Hilton, Old School Smut and the Voice of the Virus

How can't you be excited when you find your 20 year old copy of Paris Hilton's sex tape (CD actually).  Perversely, I'm listening to Taylor Swift's Reputation - it's not bad. I like her.

And one of the very first, if not the very first subdivisions I did - in Callicoon NY, up on Bayer Road.  I bought 30 acres of big view land from George B, who was an old timer who owned a dilapidated home.  He was a horse trainer at the Monticello race track - old school layered on old school.  When we were renovating the old house that came with the 30 acres, I found his smut stash - literally 60 magazines - Playboy, Oui, Pin-up and a bunch of other classics.  He was a real smut connoisseur.   The comical part of it, in the middle of the the 2 foot stack was a Playgirl - just testing it out I guess.  Good for him.  Eric G, I know you are blushing.

Anyways, my point is, besides my savings bonds and my Paris Hilton tape and few other bits of nostalgia, I came across this.   And you know what, the articles in Playboy are awesome.

I've been inspired by this pandemic.  I don't mean in a happy way, I just mean it's got my thinking juices flowing, and that gets my writing juices going, because at the root of it all, I'm a writer locked in a builder's body!  

That's not really true.  I like building - it's super challenging.  I think my energies are flowing because this pandemic is the real thing, and I think I have a good business mind and it is sparking a constant idea generation of what comes next, what come now, what comes longer term - I like the added risk element.  I'll tell you the least interesting time to be in business - boom times, when even the dumb prosper.  Give me some challenges to navigate.  I'm being facetious of course, but there is a grain of truth to it.

Let Construction Ignite the Rebound - lohud.com

What's Next for the Catskills : Boom or Bust- River Reporter

I can't decide how to feel about the future.  I'm getting such mixed signals.  We are busy as hell and people are calling and writing all day long.  And the stock market is stupid - I sold everything I had left today, after liquidating quite a bit at the beginning of the year, and then switching the remaining portfolio weight to a more conservative mix.  Now I'm out, except for my 529.  There just is zero reasons this market isn't going down.

The whole thing just feels like a little bit of denial, that the hope for a quick rebound is clouding decisions and people who haven't been harmed too much are searching for the buy in price and those who have been harmed/closed are banking on a quick rebound.  From a stock market perspective, all you got to do is study the market twists and turns of 1929 to understand how weird and deceptive it can be.  Up 1000%, drops 50%, up in the perfect dead cat bounce deception luring people back in, then a drop of 85% and 2 decades to return to breakeven.

I guess for me the risk is to be fooled by all the interest currently to ramp up production.  I'm just not sure how deep this goes, and how badly the banks get hit.

It's always fascinating, this lane of ours we operate in.  It's so narrow, but we mine it, harvest it, tend it, and it always produces our 8-16 homes a year from our resilient NYC buyers.  And in times like this, why not go with the guy whose been doing it for 20 years?  Why would you get involved with a company on their 3rd home, betting they won't be there when you need them in 2 years?  Tougher the times, the better we look.

Gotta get going - the oven timer is going off, and that means my 3 beers in the freezer are ready to come out.  But who am I kidding, I'm going to have a rye.

The real question is - how many people are, right now, cooling it with a drink, in a home from Catskill Farms, feeling safe and cozy?

New videos of Catskill Farms

Our simple homes put to classical music.  They are turning out great.

Videos - 

Barn 19, SOLD (Barryville, NY w/ Water Access)

1,536 sq. ft., 2 bedroom with lofted ceilings. This Barn is located on a beautiful piece of Sullivan County real estate with water/lake access.

Our barns are hot and this snazzy number is no exception. Located in Barryville, NY with just a short walking distance to York Lake.  This 1,500 sq. ft. barn features 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms with lofted ceilings. Located on a nice piece of Sullivan County real estate with water access.

Sullivan County NY real estate offers wide open spaces, peacefulness and proximity to NYC you will not experience anywhere else. Prices and values can seem refreshingly attainable here. Weekend life in Sullivan County revolves around coffee on the front porch, small dinner parties, county fairs and one horse towns like Callicoon, Narrowsburg and Barryville.

The Homes of Catskill Farms are engineered to be as energy efficient as a home can be. Enhanced insulation paves the way for superior performance from our high efficiency furnaces and on-demand hot water heaters. Many of our homes now have heat pumps for their heating source, eliminating the need for gas or oil as a fuel source.

Click here to read more about Sullivan County Real Estate. Catskills Real Estate at its finest.

Catskill Farms designs, builds and sells homes and Real estate in Sullivan County, real estate in Ulster County and real estate in Dutchess County. The homes of Catskill Farms tend work, look great, are fully warrantied and have a sort of timeless design. Catskills real estate available for purchase has been undoubtedly improved by the 100 homes this premier Catskills Home Builder has dreamed up and built since 2001.

Catskills realtors love selling these homes of Catskill Farms homes for sale in the Catskills since their buyers tend to be inspired by them after the long slog at looking at homes that don’t meet the buyers’ criteria. Wasting weekends looking at uninspiring Catskills architecture can leave a buyer looking for the nearest bridge to jump from.