Catskills - Sullivan County - Ulster County Real Estate -- Catskill Farms Journal

Cottage 28 with the big sky. Framing lumber in the ready. Below, Cottage 24 with the final grading just complete and the hay mulching shading the grass that will be growing shortly. Green grass, sagey green house, and soon to be green trees.

Norm working hard getting the land regraded. Lots of times after winter there is lots of work to do on each piece of land and house that we sold over the winter, when the 'final grade' was impossible. Norm's one of the good guys - we have bad guys work for us as well - this guy Ken who did some siding jobs for us before getting kicked off the job has been calling the DIY network for some reason or another, using that same old 'public humiliation' ploy I've been subjected to many times over the years. So this guy Ken does a shitty job, his tyvek actually blows off the house, he sends me an outrageous bill which does not jive with the work he's done, and then when I don't pay, he spends his idle time (which is more or less all his time) calling up the network to tell his story. Sorry Ken - seen that movie many times before. Although, I guess a confrontation would be great television. I can't even count all the ways I've been threatened over the years -

Modern Ranch #2, sitting high on the hill, perched, cantilevered, balanced on the side of the hill.

And Cottage 20 - wide lens, little house, big sky.

Cottage 24 from down the hill.

And the driveway to our new house.

So, I'm watching American Idol and it's a terrible series of 'inspirational songs' being song slowly and badly. Thank god for the fast forward and dvr.

Wow, what a perfect spring for construction. Usually it's all muddy and messy and soggy and hard to navigate but not this year - this year is sunny and dry and slightly breezy and mid 50's. So dramatically different from last year where it started to rain in May and didn't stop all summer. It rained every day. It reminded me of 2003, when I was building my first home and it rained everyday, making every effort triply difficult. The thing about Catskill Farms and it's catskill real estate efforts is that we build quick - I mean real quick - no messin' around quick. 6 days a week, 10-12 hours a day, with an army of skilled talent. I purchased this piece of land in February, and we started construction - putting in the foundation - on April 5. Check out the progress below - Excavation and Foundation - Week of April 5th.

Week of April 12 - Foundation complete, foundation waterproofed, perimeter drain installed, and house backfilled.

Week of April 19 - the framing begins. Day 1

Day 2.

Day 3.

Day 4.

This house is being built on 'spec', meaning no buyer lined up at time of construction. The price is $335,000, and will be ready by August or so. And today Denzil and Carolyn come up to check it out for the 2nd time.

If you've been following this blog for the last two weeks (and not part of our paused social media brand extension effort that is stuck in programming nevernever land), then you have been able to see this house rise from the ground to this fine looking structure in about 3 weeks flat. Not bad for a bunch of country boys.

Stapling up the tyvek and laying out the electric. Our local lumber supplier is now stocking pink house wrap, so this house at least will be pink until we put up the siding. Not the exact thing I was hoping for, but I've learned to let it go.... be mellow, calm, understanding in the face of a pink home. And then I ran across this stripped and pickpocketed barn in one of my favorite valleys of Southern Sullivan County.

The wide angle really allows for some fun approaches -

And then, below, one of my favorite little farms sitting in the valley. I've always liked the way it sits there - all small and cool.

And some links to local news stories about our DIY Project - Builder Scores TV series.Ranch House Transformation.

John and Wendy and their 3 children are building a fun house with us - -a house that John brought to us, he brought just a couple of pictures and then we set out to do the dirty work - which is figuring how to adapt the grand 125 yr old with perfectly non-code shapes and layouts, and how to make that grand old dame work for us in the here and now.

At this point in our business development, we pretty much have it all down pat - we have the talent, we have the experience, we have the team, and we have the relationships to pretty much navigate all the winds that used to scare us to death. I mean, the little breezes used to knock us off balance and now a gale force wind couldn't immediately roll us. Not to say we are invincible - just pretty hardy with all the hardknock lessons we carry around with us.

You got to really feel for the freelancers at the NY Times these days. I mean, here we are, the little red engine of real estate, one of the only consistent dynamic upstate real estate stories in existence, and CJ and Penelope and a host of other pr flacks posing as writers just can't bring themselves to acknowledge that regardless of what their sources say, regardless if their favorite story idea turns out to be a decade long con, regardless if most of their upstate stories over the past 5 years are out of business or a flimsy echo of the NY Times trumpet story, that regardless of being left out of really every article of the past 5 years, Catskill Farms remains one of the neatest propositions in the region, if not the country. It really makes you feel for these writers, these would be king makers. Like I have said for years - our customers are so smart they can see through PR posing as news 12 miles away. Provide value and they will find you. Provide hype, and they will look, they will ask questions, but the commitment never materializes. I remember one article Penelope Greene wrote about New Old Houses, a few years back and 9 out of 10 facts were wrong - were hype, were unchallenged assertions made by the subject. Fact checks anyone. Anyway, good story about upstate today since any story about upstate helps us because it turns peoples' attention upstate - and since we have a decent web presence, - that means more people find us - and once they find us, regardless of the declarations of the king-makers at the NY Times, they get it. I love educated customers. They get our proposition immediately. They take our idea really seriously because, in the end, it's doable, it's attainable, and it's realistic. I remember when I used to care - back when we were really desperate and really pioneering and really out on a limb. Now, the press game is a goal - but one born out of ego and always having a desire to reach goals, not out of some need to sell homes (which we have been sold out of for years). Lisa and I and Lucas went into the city for 2 days and Lucas and I were tooling around yesterday while Lisa was having her hair done and I came across a store named Willoughbys, which specializes in camera parts, etc... Anyway, I finally invested in a wide angle lens, so hello panoramic room shots, hello small house big pictures, hello making our homes look even better. I always tell people when they call that we are the only real estate players whose homes look better in real life than they do on the internet (after a photo shop workover). Nobody believes me until they come up.

John was all about his porch, and the porch is a monster, with a rounded look on one side and a screened in porch on the other, rolling from one end of the house to the other.

It's a big porch project and we waited until the spring to build it so we would have good weather and we could really nail the details John and Wendy wanted. We were in the city for Wednesday Thursday and Friday and really hit some hot spots. Standard Hotel beer garten, Old Homestead Steak house, Henry Public in Brooklyn and stayed at the W in Time Square. All a little fast for us squares from the country but I'm hoping we didn't stand out too much. I hope all the readers who lived in the city got to steal away and enjoy some perfect spring weather over the past few days. Doesn't get any better. (This is a re-post, due to now-solved Facebook issues.)