Labor Day 2020

 Labor Day, 2020.

It's a cool morning, you could feel the drop of temperature a few weeks ago.  Still hot during the days, with bright sunny days, but the mornings and evenings reflect the temperate nature of our climate and the wild 35 degress to 80 degree swings a fall day can bring in the Catskills.

The thing about problem-solving is the process you use to solve said problems.  Business is, fundamentally, problem-solving (maybe life too, but that's someone else's purview of expertise).  And as I have been writing repeatedly, Catskill Farms has been beset with problems.  Many of these problems are the result of being busy and building a bunch of homes, and while not readily predictable, you know they are coming in one fashion or another.  You might not know when, or what, but you know on any given day, they are a comin'.  With these problems, we have a solid set of professional relationships - banking, insurance, surveying, engineering, trade, supply chain, etc..., we can leverage and deploy quickly in order to remedy and solve.

The other set of problems, the black swan problems, pose more of a hurdle, burden, and risk.   Typically new and unseen before, typically serious, typically disruptive.  Could be key-man/woman employee related, could be pandemic supply chain, regulatory, could be inflation, technology, illness, accident, etc...  Could even be your website of 20 years that has been a friend and partner was deleted by the morons over at Applied Innovations.

As the leader of the Catskill Farms, with my hands and brains and backbone still fully employed on a daily basis driving this machine forward, I've been confronted with both. Interestingly, many of the former used to be unexpected and grouped with the latter, but once you confront and solve a few times, they become annoying, distracting, and sometimes expensive, but still not a complete surprise.  The black swan events, the new problem (which can be bigger in scale as we grow bigger) poses unique challenges because it's new, there is no roadmap for solving, and typically in a small company there isn't bandwidth just laying around waiting to be deployed to solve a new problem, especially a big one.

Now that I'm on the backside of solving literally a half dozen of 'exact same time' big problems that need to be solved now even though you are busier than ever, I remember how I do so, over the years, developed a process, many times subconscious, of working my way through big problems.

1, you have to believe you have the talent to solve them.  2, you have to give yourself the time to digest and acknowledge the true impact of the issue, 3, you have to accurately measure the damage, delay of the issue even if solved quickly, 4, you have to prioritize accurately, 5, you have to communicate to those impacted if required, 6, you have to solve.

It's like an onion inside of an onion inside of an onion.  The collection of issues/problems is one onion, that you have to peel away layer by layer to analyze each respective problem individually.  Then each problem is its own onion which needs to be peeled away and solved, with characteristics and problems unique and individual.  And with each small success with confronting a layer, the confidence and momentum builds that the individual issue can be solved, and leads to the confidence and momentum that the collection of issues can solved.

It's take time, which has to be found, since it's not typically laying around unused.  It takes energy, which is tough since a lot of us are running at full capacity (especially during the pandemic), it takes creativity, which is difficult to summon out of thin air unexpectedly, and it takes risk-tolerance, since the outcome of many proposed solutions are not immediately clear if correct.

Basically, when shit hits the fan, are your instincts and prior lessons learned on point or not?  It's the difference between success and failure, delay and progress, redemptive chaos or ship-sinking rocky shore.

Personally, we've used the peripheral chaos that engulfed us over the last 6 weeks to reinvent several aspects of the business, and most rewardingly, found a few employees who either stepped up and flexed skills we did not know they had, or inserted into our company new persons, contractors, etc... who have turned out to be good folks to know.

All the while not missing a step of home production, and future home planning. 

Pop Up AirBnB Portfolio for Sale

Is there a better place to park your money than the Catskills, at the moment?  Here's a chance to get in the game, with all the tax benefits of real estate.

In Callicoon NY, and in Saugerties, NY, we have two projects that might be of interest in someone looking to put together a quick upstate rental/airbnb play/portfolio. 

In Callicoon NY, (about 12 miles to Livingston Manor and Narrowsburg( we have 3 homes going up, will be finished by end of July.  The homes are all under 1000 sq ft, on 4+ acres, have great views and fun vib.  2 bedrooms, lots of deck and big fields abound.








And then in Saugerties NY, in Ulster County, we have these two side by side homes on 1 acres each.

The benefits of both these projects is the cluster nature of them.   Because they are on the same street, both the projects are easy to manage, maintain, and oversee.  Lots of efficiencies there.

I didn't start out thinking about the potential for this pop up airbnb, but now, as a real estate guy, it seems to make perfect sense for someone looking for a new gig in the Catskills.  From a tax vantage, the ability to 'expense your life' and get the depreciation is why people love real estate.

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.

Olivebridge NY - New Home for Sale Information, $495,000

Interestingly, for all the things this blog is and has been, it's never really been used as a looking-forward tool for what we are building, where we are building, and when it will be available.

But with inquiries coming in fast and furious and everyone wanting to talk on the phone for some reason, I'm trying to figure out how to best inform this hungry buyer segment with what we have in the works.

THIS IS A SIMILAR HOME PREVIOUSLY BUILT.



WHAT - 1550 SQ FT 3 BEDROOM, 1.5 BATH ON 4 ACRES.  600 sq ft of decks and covered porches.

WHERE - OLIVEBRIDGE, NY ON THE CORNER OF RT 3 AND HANNA LANE

WHEN - FOUNDATION IS IN.  FRAME ROOF AND WINDOWS IN BY END OF JUNE.  OCTOBER FINISH.

HOW IT WORKS - SIGN UP NOW, AND WORK WITH US ON THE INTERIOR SELECTIONS SUCH AS PAINT, FLOOR STAINS, KITCHEN, COUNTERTOPS, TILE LIGHTING, PLUMBING AND A HOST OF OTHER FUN SELECTIONS TO PERSONALIZE THE HOME.

FLOORPLAN
https://www.catskillfarmsfarmhouseseries.com/option-c-floorplans#shed (THEN SCROLL DOWN TO FARM 32)

PRICE - $495K.

DESCRIPTION -
Excellent spot in Olivebridge, in the shadow of Ashokan High Point, just 5 miles from the Ashokan Reservior and the endless hiking, biking of the Catskills.  This floor plan allows for 3 bedrooms and a lot of living space on the first floor.  Full walk-out basement could add another 600 sq ft in the future.  A covered front porch and a screened back porch expands the house.  Land is private and gently sloping.

This back profile will not be exactly the same but you get the idea.





The interior is 1500 sq ft +, has 1.5 baths, a wood burning fireplace and open floor plan with a separate but equal glass encased dining room.  Light enters easily to every nook of the home, on the first floor and second.  Wide plank floors, fun hand rail systems, classic tile, functional kitchens all combine to illustrate why Catskill Farms has been the go-to design build for the last 2 decades.



It's a good looking home for sure, but it also is highly functioning - with whole house airconditioning, spray foam insulation that allows you to heat your home with a candle and cool it with an ice cube, on demand hot water heaters which produce hot water only when you ask for it and a whole house bumper to bumper warranty.

Appraises without an issue, and fully financeable.

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.

Woodstock/Saugerties Area Real Estate (Ulster County, NY)

1700 square foot, 3 bedroom, 2 bath Barn House on 5+ acres outside of Saugerties and Woodstock, NY.

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). 

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 Ulster County Real Estate. Catskill 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 Builder has dreamed up and built since 2001.

Catskills realtors love 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. When people from the city think of upstate homes, many of them think real estate near Woodstock. With one of the most famous town brands around, searching for homes for sale in Woodstock NY is a perfectly logical place to start a Catskills real estate search. While many families find homes in Woodstock have a lot to offer, they soon find the Catskills are much bigger and much more diverse than that culturally important locale. Wasting weekends looking at uninspiring Catskills architecture can leave a buyer looking for the nearest bridge to jump from. Catskill Farms checks all the Catskill real estate boxes.

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. 

Saugerties and Woodstock

This Cottage 28 redux is going up and going up and going up. It's on 4 acres, 7 miles from Saugerties, 7 miles Woodstock, on a real nice piece of land. it's for sale. 2 bedrooms, 1300 sq ft, 1.5 baths, full walkout basement - you know, the works. - $375k.



And Farm 17 is 'in the ground' now too. This was pre-purchased by a couple with a neat story - to neat to detail at this moment.


Real nice homes in a real nice area. Will be interesting to see how this all plays out.