New House, Finito.

Today is Decision Tuesday, in our Instagram account, where you can vote for selection choices going into our homes.  Go on over and be heard.

In Kerhonkson, a new home was built, on 3+ acres.  2400 sq ft, 3 beds, and 3 baths.

 250+ completed homes and counting.

Upstate Thoughts

Upstate has lots of different meanings, as does 'the catskills'.  There is a geographical boundary, at least for the Catskills, and then there is the 'state of mind' boundary.  For instance, a lot of what what we call the Catskills isn't really in 'the catskills', defined by the State charter/designation.   Counties such as Sullivan and Dutchess lay outside the Catskills and even towns like Stone Ridge, Kerhonkson etc... are not in the Catskills proper, but certainly in the Catskills for both descriptive ease and marketing ease.

Same goes for Upstate.  Upstate literally runs from the Catskills to Buffalo, in concentric rings of furtherness.  I just took a 3 day journey into the middle of the State over the last few days that brought this salient fact home to roost.  Hamilton NY - home of Colgate Uk, Vernon NY - home to Turning Stone Golf resort, and now today we are in Cooperstown - home to more than one would think, including baseball hall of fame, Leatherstocking Golf Course, James Fennimore Cooper and one of the prettiest downtown villages I've seen in a while.

One thing for sure, NY is vast, and it is beautiful, with pockets of wealth and poverty seemingly mixed in at random.

The impacts of the Virus are pronounced, as I can see with mine own eyes, and for a small business guy like myself, alarming.  In this Central NY phase 3 reopening area, the extent the hotels and restaurants are obeying and enforcing the rules is impressive.  6' separation, masks for sure, seating arranged by the book, cooperation from guests and staff.  You can see why NY has succeeded for now in flattening the curve and eliminating the spread.

With the virus shutting down a lot of sports, we've been doing a lot of road biking this season, which is a lot of fun.  But unless you are retired or something, you can't do both road biking and golf, since they take up a chunk of time each.  So golf got shelved, and to 'get it out of our system', we hit 3 upstate courses in 3 days, riding in the '72 Malibu.

Leatherstocking, Cooperstown

Colgate U Course.

The Ostesaga Inn, in Cooperstown.

Turning Stone Indian Reservation golf course.

You can also see the distress of small towns and their associated main street businesses; you can see the big resorts, empty, with 5 staff laid off for every one still working.  Empty main streets, empty restaurants, empty parking lots, empty golf courses, empty hotels.  And these are the areas considered a success.

Translates into lack of jobs, lack of sales tax revenue, lack of real estate swaps, lack of enthusiasm, and lack of cash flow from anything from non-profits to small biz to gigantic resorts.  I frankly don't know how this ends, because I am up close and personal with dozens of small businesses everyday, and while they were not impacted, it's a clear window into the short runway to disaster that many of them would face in the face of such a slow down and shut down.  They aren't packing oodles of rainy day funds.  They don't have a 'what if we have to close in the busiest months of the year' plan.  They don't have a 'how to make money with our tables half full'.

So, best case, that vast federal aid helped to keep them afloat.  But then you have the idea of 'zombie' companies, typically applied to larger companies kept afloat with large government bond buying, and low interest rates, can also apply to much smaller companies, where new debt is high, sales are lower, and the businesses aren't reinvesting, growing, hiring - they are just there, zombie-like, wandering aimlessly through the fog of the final economic consequences of the virus, until they fade away, debt-laden and ruined.  The question then, is this the opening for the creative destruction that makes our way of life tick - in with new out with the old - or this something different.  Either way, it doesn't seem quick, and it doesn't seem like it will help with the wealth and opportunity gap of this country.

That being said, Catskill Farms is once again positioned well, so I have a bit of survivor's guilt, but not too much.  Only thing I hate, is there is so much demand in the marketplace that sales come a little too easy and so my competition will grow, and take our overflow.  I like it best when it's harder and I can watch others in my industry get it all wrong.  That may be a character flaw, but one of the few I'm not trying to improve on.

Press, press and more press

Lots of people writing about the Catskills and urban flight and a hundred sub-topics, and we have a lot to say about such things, since we are up close and personal to the story, and its impacts.

The Real Deal about current Urban Flight-

TV Interview with Hudson Valley Station about local real estate market -

National Mortgage News reprints an Op Ed about reopening construction I wrote
As well as a reprint of the Hudson Valleys Times Herald Record story about the local real estate market

Times Herald Record - Homes Sales Spike, etc...

Crains NY covered a story about summer rentals.

These are good stories trying to figure out the future looks like, by detailing today and guessing about tomorrow.

Ranch 44 - Just off the drawing board and For Sale

Another Day, Another Ranch hot off the presses, fresh off the drawing board, hot out of the oven.  It's the smaller of the two bigger ranches, what we have taken to calling our Mid-Sized ranches. 

Again in Kerhonkson.  Again off of Ridgeview Road.  Again off a private pretty road.  We present.....Ranch 44.

This 1900+/- home has pleased a lot of families.  2 bedrooms upstairs that share a big bath, and 1 bedroom on the ground floor that has a bath itself.



The kitchen is open and has a clear shot across the entire first floor living space, including the wood burning fireplace and out to the deck.  There are two living rooms - one on each floor.



Deck and screened porch add another 300 sq ft to the house during 3 seasons, and are fed right off the kitchen.

(pic from the deck side)


All in all, easy house for easy living. Accommodates guests as easily as solitary weekends with the family and dog.

This home is just getting started, is ready for full personalization, and should be delivered in early 2021.

New Barn House for Sale in Kerhonkson- Barn 37

In order to meet demand, we are working hard to get our existing contracted homes rolling and get a few more in the 'ground'.  This home is just getting started and will be ready later in the year.

To that point, let me introduce Barn 37, a thoroughly modern lofty structure with a ton of windows and light.  We built the first one these back in 2010 or so, with the help of a young designer woman who envisioned a barn that played off previous versions of homes we built, but with a new slant.  From there it evolved over the years to include a front mudroom popout, a screened porch, a neat first floor bedroom/bath suite.  It weighs in at just under 2000 sf, has 2.5 baths, and 3 bedrooms.  Also has, will have, a basement with light and glass that could be finished at any point.

A similar barn home just finished.

This home benefited from a mistake a few years ago, where the house framer got something so wrong in the layout that it helped us see new ways to lay the house out, leading to a 2nd bath on the 2nd floor that made all the difference in terms of ease of ultimate use.


Will be located on the last lot on a private road in Kerhonkson NY, a road with 3 other Catskill Farms' homes.


3 or 4 different takes on the main space.














Easy house to love and live in.  Priced at $580,000.

Milan NY Home for Sale - $650,000

This Ranch home in Milan is packing a big punch.  It's Milan, pronounced MYLYNN.  Now you know and can save some face.

We only build one or two over in Dutchess a year because it’s a little far for us, and it’s just harder to work over there with a pretty picky Board of Health, and very small building departments.  Sometimes I think both are by design to help in the effort of retarding growth.

But, whatevs, we got a good one going on 3.5+ acres.  It’s one of our famous Ranches – 2500 sq ft, lots of deck, shared living space and a really fun feel.  Can accommodate a big crowd as well as feel homey when it’s just the two of ya.  Here's a link to our site that details the floor plans

https://www.catskillfarmsranchseries.com/options/ranch-option-e

The specs are pretty fab - 3 beds, 3 baths, awesome media room space as well as plenty of room for an office, as well as plenty of room left over for storage in the basement.  Ton of decks, lots of windows, and good sized rooms.

Fireplace, check.  Energy efficient, double check.  Open floor plan, check.  Ton of fun accents and details, check.  House house warranty, check.  For Sale, check.

Price - $650,000

The below pic is a one we did with a screened porch, which was somewhat complicated but ended up being really nice.

This property is literally less than 5 minutes off the thruway, and is a gateway home to the towns of Rhinebeck, Red Hook, Hudson and even east to the Berkshires or Vermont.  It sits up, like a tree house, and has an active river access that can be seen and is open to use as well.

Couple of interior shots - 

Our Ranches have been fun, and a big hit since we brought out the first ones in 2008.  Little guys, cute as a button.  Since it was an experiment we kept it simple, but year by year the sizes increased as more people expressed interest, and the general market stabilized.

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.

Incident at the Bird feeder, and other Hudson Valley Happenings

There was an incident at the bird feeder.  The feeder, which fed an increasing array of birds of red, yellow, tufted and other, was found on the ground, seed spread wildly.  Was it a manufacturers defect - some Lancaster County Amish bird feeder maker who had a weak staple - or was it the squirrel, who day after day eyed it from an arts and crafts column edge, contemplating the length of the jump to the bird feeder?  did he finally make the leap, and was left hanging for his life by his claws on the feeder platform, little squirrel heart racing, his grip tiring, and falling, falling, falling - 5' down, a fall I'm sure he's done a hundred times.  If it was the squirrel, this successful brush with fate will certainly only embolden him, if he is anything like me.

The wreakage was breathtaking in its severity.  On closer examination, I was able to pop the sides back into position, reposition the hanging cord, and put it back into place.  I now watch warily for what may transpire.

I had a dilemma the other day, when toilet paper was still in short supply at the stores.  I had two rolls.  One a very nice triple ply, and another a coarse single ply of whose thin quality I hadn't encountered in a long while and really have no idea how it got into my home.  Anyways, it's allergy season and I go through a lot of tissue paper with nose blowing, so I had to choose which for the butt, and which for the nose.  I don't regret my choice - and it was similar to that of Sophie's - but after a few days of that cheap paper on my ass, I must have stopped by every grocery store, dollar general and grocery score before I found a new supply of the tri-ply.  The question that was logically posed to myself - late at night, when all is asleep and quiet and natural self-reflection creeps in- have I gotten that soft, or is that a fair thing to call a necessity?  When I evaluated my initial decision, i think it came down to which call of nature was going to be most frequent, thus most often quelled and assisted by paper tissue and by far that is the nose during allergy season.

It's busy in the Catskills.  It's funny how time is accelerated.  A week is an hour, a month is a day, in terms of new ways to live and rules around them.  The full brunt of the pandemic reaction is literally less than 7 weeks old and it's hard to imagine life prior.  That said, my initial relunctance to join the bandwagon of 'how robust the real estate market is going to be' has been wholly repudiated.   It's busy out there and our stuff is flying off the shelves.  Our resales across 3 counties, our homes started but not finished and people lining up for new homes.

So all looks really rosy and sure-fire for my company and the lane we occupy.  Which frankly, makes me really nervous, since there is no worst virus in economic life than the contagion of optimism.   I tiptoe forward, with my ear to the tracks, my wetted finger judging the wind, my tossed grass clippings hinting the way.  You may not need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, but you certainly need to think before you toss caution to the breeze in this environment.  It could be the classic trap, the trap that catches every real estate speculator at least once in their career.

A life in real estate is like riding a motorcycle.   There are two types of ridings.  Those that have wrecked, and those that will.   Same has been said about real estate speculators.   There are those who have gone belly up at least once, and there are those that will.

At age 50, this might be my last economic cycle, and the last thing I want to do is digging myself out for the next decade of some overconfident doubling down.

Now, mind you.  I'm definitely doubling down.  I always double down.  That's my nature.  I just won't be over-confident doing it, and I'll be keeping my eyes on the exit routes when possible.

Bidding War gone bad

Sold a house yesterday - Ranch 36

Great house.  Was a fully complete 'spec' home when sold, which is a rarity for us.  Typically homes get snatched up before, but I always have a love/hate relationship with homes without prearranged buyers - even after of 20 years of selling everything I touch, it still makes me nervous and dents my confidence to have one hanging around, plus the bank hates it, plus it ties up my credit lines.  On the other hand, it's so much easier on me and my staff to build a home without a buyer since it relieves us of the concerted coordination effort, which is fun, but has risk and takes a lot of time.  So we typically see our specs sell at a bit of a discount because of the lack of 'collaboration and personalization', but that discount is probably also reflected and evened out on the cost side, though hard to measure too directly.

Had the craziest situation last week and if I wouldn't be at this for a long time it might actually piss me off more than it did, though it did greatly raise my temperature for a few days.

We have this new home going up, the last one in our 4 lot project in Kerhonkson.

It's a little smaller than Ranch 36 so sells for a little less, and has been a big hit for us in the Sullivan and Ulster county real estate landscape.  So we get an offer, and the offer comes in slow and low, both are uncommon for us.   Typically, most people like our prices, and act quickly, but in the end we worked it out, and signed an offer to purchase, with no money changing hands and contracts weren't out.   There was also a realtor involved, so I always calculate that in my final cost analysis, since $16k to sell a house is a big chunk, one of the biggest on our costing sheet.

I spend about $120k a year in various marketing media - print, google ppc, and other stuff - and we sell a lot of our stuff directly, which makes sense since we are paying for the exposure.

So, anyways we put this deal together, then this couple from the 516 area code (an area code I've been wary of for a decade plus since they aren't quite my client and prove it over and over) come out of nowhere and have to have it.  I explain I have an offer and if they are interested they must come on Saturday, make an offer on Sunday, and send a good faith deposit directly to me on Monday first thing.  My parameters were clear, and from my experience, I was setting the bar very high, thus showing respect for the first client while maximizing my profit and deal potential.  From my experience, the chances of someone coming up and doing what I demanded to 'get in the action' was extremely unlikely.  

Then, out of nowhere even more, on Friday or Saturday Dylan Taft from Taft Realty writes me an email in all caps 'VERY INTERESTED BUYER' which I hear all the time, including with a client he brought me a month earlier that disappeared as quick as they came onto the scene.  Since this whole deal with his client was even more unlikely than the 516 area code people, I laid out the same deal as above.  If they want it, full price, cash, with a deposit first thing to Catskill Farms monday.

So, as the weekend plays out, the 516 people make a full price offer and promise the deposit (worth $525k), Dylan Taft's client makes an offer, $530k (worth $513k) and I still have the original deal at $506k (worth $480k).

So Dylan Taft's client is dying for the house, but 1, they were 2nd in line, and 2, their offer was $17k less than what I was promised by 516 folks.  She raises her price to $545k, and Dylan lowers his commission to a rate based at $500k, which makes it just a little bit better than the 516 people but not enough for me to reconsider the promise I made to the 516 folks.  The original people i'm not feeling that bad for since they took forever to put in an offer and then they really lowballed me - eventually coming up to something just barely tolerable.

So, I accept the 516 offer, which the understanding - a very clear understanding - that on Monday morning $20k will be coming to be for good faith, 'won't flake' skin in the game.  as anyone who has every built for us - all 250 families - taking direct deposits is common for us.  Don't trust us to care for your money? Don't build with us.

Multiple offers are always tricky, since you are bound to hurt some feelings.  I've done several, though, where the 2nd and 3rd bidders end up building with us for a different house.   The difference here though is that most of the other multiple bid situations I have been able to communicate directly with the buyers, meaning 'no misunderstands or misconstrued intentions'.

So, what happens?  The very small red flags of the 516 folks - I've been at this a long time so I hear things even when buyers don't know they are saying it - come home to roost and they write me an email or phone call or something saying they aren't comfortable with the deposit after talking to their attorney - these are grown people, not kids, and are now reneging on the most elemental part of any deal I was offering.

Thing was though, I had already told the original buyers it's off, and I told Dylan that it wasn't going to work out since his client was always in 2nd position and first position came through and met my deal demands.

So original buyers are pissed, and out since why would they want to do with a me after pulling a stunt like that, and Dylan's person is pissed because she really did everything I asked and it still didn't work out. though the only way she was ever going to get the house was if 516 people didn't work out, which I have no way of knowing if he communicated that or not.

So the dominoes start to fall - 516 people refuse to put down the deposit until contract, and why would I want to spend the next 2 months collaborating with people who can't keep their word on the very first deal detail we put together, out of principal if not actual concern.  The original people are out 1, because i realize the house is worth more than $485k net to me, and 2, because they don't like how it played out, and 3, Taft's person is out because i guess she felt entitled to the house, and possibly was never told she was in 2nd position and would never make it to first unless 516 people didn't pan out.  

So, 2 great offers, and 1 ok one, gone.  In the blink of an eye.

What makes me good at what I do is I am a huge self-examiner when things go wrong, especially if my 'behavior' or reaction caused it - so, that said, I have a ton of opportunity to self-examine since my actions and reactions have been a source of public and private debate for years.

So, I don't think I did much wrong except 2 things - 1, don't ever forget why history has taught me to be extremely wary of 516 buyers, 2, don't rush to communicate with other parties until the deal really is, 'in the bag'.  

The one fact that is true about the current marketplace is that it is very bi-polar.  People want to act quick, but they aren't quite sure, they want a house, but maybe they are actually still deciding while making offers.  So, the market has a completely different personality than it did before, and some of the assumptions that have always been true are less true right now about buyer behavior.

Admirably, as many long term readers of this blog can attest - I haven't called the 516 buyers out by name, even though they literally not only screwed up this deal for me and wasted a weekend of negotiations, they also screwed up the plans of the other people.  People have been named by this highly SEO accredited blog for a lot less.

But as a realtor friend said to me - "Shame on all them.  They should grow up- inventory is horrible, they don't have a house, and you still have something to sell in a crazy good market'.

Truer words have never been spoken.  Touché.

These folks, who did live up to their word, are buying and moving in next Friday.

postscript - not really serious about denigrating an entire area code - 516- but the dead ends and wasted time has been a truism over the last 2 decades.  

Ranch 28, Ulster County NY Real Estate

A new Ranch, hot of the presses sold last week, as did a resale of a Ranch we built on a nice piece of real estate in Saugerties.  It was interesting to see a 6 year old Ranch 14 (as seen here and here)sell for $643k and our new one sell for $575k.  Means we are still offering so much value, and leaving a lot on the table for our clients.  I guess that's why there is only 1 Catskill Farms, and our competition remains unnoticed and unseen, except for house here and there.

Ranch 28 below - 

A classic form that has been well-received over the years.

Interiors of the main living space and the mountain views from the master bedroom.  Some of the best real estate in the Catskills.

We make good use of our ground floor space in these ranches.  Terrific, well-lit spaces with a ton of form and function.

More pics of the new home can be found at Ranch 28 on our Catskill Farms website, which features 20 years of our Catskills homes.

Summer time is here, with summer activities in the Catskills.  Little league, dog walks, hikes, and all sorts of related fun.

 Son Lucas.

Catskill Farms Chief, Chuck

And Dog, Lulu.

Other Catskill Farms digital assets can be found at - 

https://www.instagram.com/catskillfarms/

For our Zany videos at  - https://vimeo.com/catskillfarms

And of course our Website,  www.thecatskillfarms.com 

Lofty Barn In Saugerties, NY

Three bedrooms and two baths on 3+ acres. Stone wall and lots of exquisite property compliment both house and land. Real estate in Saugerties doesn't get any better.

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.

The small towns of Ulster County offer beauty, amenities and charm in abundance.  They offer film festivals and live music. The hamlets and towns that anchor the surrounding land we curate and select for our homes make Ulster County real estate some of the best around for fun, food and festivities (or, if you are like us, backyard siestas and hammocks rank right up there). 

Click here to read more about Ulster County Real Estate. 

Catskill Farms is a home builder specializing in new constructions (occasionally some renovations) across the Catskill’s and Hudson Valley’s Sullivan County, Dutchess County, and Ulster County. Our clean architecture and thoughtful design make our modern farm homes, mid-century ranches, charming barn homes and cozy cottage series the dream of any country lifestyle enthusiast. Our homes are typically around 2 hours from NYC, making it perfect for those inspired in the escape Brooklyn movement. We’ve seen our new homes bring about overall design inspiration to the areas we build in (in locations such as Livingston Manor, Narrowsburg, Woodstock, Kerhonkson, Saugerties, Rhinebeck and Red Hook) with country-living being the new direction of choice. Catskill Farms has truly broadened and advanced the real estate opportunities north of NYC. We’ve combined modern design and technologies with natural textures, big country porches and all things classic country home for a timeless construction art-piece. Not only are our homes to lust after when finished, but our building process itself is so easy and stress-free. Contact us with your needs and wishes and work with us to make it all happen.  

Click here to visit our website.