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

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I just deleted 49,728 emails that were in my Outlook “Other” folder, which is an email folder where Outlook moves incoming email that is not ‘primary’ and also not ‘junk’.  It works pretty well, except with the volumes of emails we all get, “Other” is not a much better place to land than ‘junk’ if you are a ‘sender’, since who routinely gets to check that, when it’s hard enough staying up with your Primary.  So currently, I’m deleting the entire “Other” inbox that I suspect has a fair amount of interesting emails in it, just maybe not emails from individuals - mostly lists I’ve signed up for over the years such as Delancy Place, a daily email that provides a quick and interesting review of some book - I enjoy it, and the reviews are a place to learn about the book and general time and place it takes place (both the writing and the topic).

But, who needs Delancey Place to remind you of how slow my reading has become and how many books I’m not getting to?  I nearly always have a good book going but God if I read 4 pages at a seating that a lot.  That means each book takes forever to finish.  But, the consolation is that I’m reading, which is important and has always been important.  I probably digest as many written words as anyone I know, and definitely as many or more from the actual printed page be it a newspaper, magazine or book.

I’m reading Demon Copperhead right now, another book by Barbara Kingsolver.  I read The Poisonwood Bible last summer, and enjoyed it enough to move right into another by her - separated by a mostly failed attempt to get through 1000 page non-fiction account of the beginning of the oil industry - fascinating for sure, and to be more fair to myself, making it 300 pages before needing a break isn’t terrible in my book (forgive the pun).

I’m currently at the Biltmore, the 175,000 sq ft 245 room Vanderbilt mansion in Asheville North Carolina, where the temperate climate brought George Vanderbilt here in the 1870’s, where he then built this home that opened for Christmas in 1892.  Of all the things I’ve learned, the macro thought of how quickly these guys built their fortunes caught my attention. Oil, rail, steel, transportation - this went from zero to largest fortunes ever seen in less than 30 years.  George V was the grandson of the Commodore, aka Cornelius, the patriarch transportation mogul who rode the acceleration of travel speed and option into a conglomerate only rivaled by his fellow Robber Barrons, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Frick, and others. 

We did their Christmas Extravaganza package, and it’s funny, when you aim that high, you need to nail it, and I’ll give them a B, only because the level of service that type of package ambition implies is hard to pull off.  Just nice to see others falling short of their ultimate vision too.

Not sure if I wrote it before, but 2024 is shaping up to be along the lines of 2021 in terms of business and profits, and 2021 was a gigantic year by any measure, including the highly compensated NYC professional.  With 6 homes already in contract and being built and another 4 under construction with buyers yet to be identified.  We are by far the best at what we do.  Homes constructed, homes sold, homes resold, homes reserved, duration of the effort, - all adds up to an extended effort of perseverance, improvement and success.

My annual dinner party at my home in Milford was a big hit, 3rd year running.  Oversubscribed at 31 people, we learned that my home can accomodate that type of crowd, a fact I was unaware of before.

Back home on the 27th, heading out to work with the office colleagues, tying up loose ends and organizing for the new year.  It’s raining here today.  It has rained weekly for months.  Deluges, complicating my life as we move earth and machines.

Well, we are finishing up a project in Columbia County, a county we like working in and probably has a lot of opportunity for us, but, not an easy lift in terms of logistics.  Pretty far from the team.  That being said, I don’t think we’ve used that as an excuse once, in fact, probably the opposite where we flooded the zone more often than not, just in terms of allocating as many resources as possible in a consolidated fashion.  I camped out a few nights in my Van camper, and I know the electricians spent a few nights up there in a local campground.  Good team.  Proud to be associated with them.   

This home was fun - first, the clients were awesome.  Gold Star, Masterclass level.  2nd, they zeroed in on a cool design we hadn’t built in years, and had only built once.  So we were able to pull it out of the archives, dust if off, look at with eyes that have seen a lot since it was last built 10 years ago meaning lots of large and small improvements could be made and were made.  And then during and now at the end of the project, really were validated that this was the right design for the clients, and good design overal, and the changes we made to update it were spot on.

This is a growing trend for us, one I like.  People, in the later stages of life- retired but still spry (here’s looking at you Pat!), selling some suburban home they’ve lived in forever, and selecting us to build on of our designs for them.  It’s cool.  It’s validating.

Looks like we got another deal popping at Ashokan Acres - that will make 4.   Only 5 lots left till I’m out of lots in Ulster again, which will suck, since it’s a good market for us.  Buying 3 more lots in Narrowsburg.  Have created 6 more lots in North Branch.

I head into NYC this weekend with my son and two of this friends.   Lucas and I have been doing this since he was 2 months old.  I’m sure we missed a year or two, but not many for sure.  I have my annual dinner party at my home in Milford PA on Thursday, and then off the Biltmore in Asheville to spend with a secret admirer (I know, I know, that doesn’t really narrow it down there are so many).

For some reason, I haven’t had a drink since last April.  I didn’t really try to abstain, but here I am 8 months later and not a drop. I don’t know what miracle I was expecting, but it whatever it was, it didn’t happen.  I didn’t drop 10 lbs, I didn’t sleep a whole lot better, I guess I saved some money, and I’m sure there are mental health benefits, but nothing earth-shattering, write-home-about impacts.

I’m not a big fan of the stock market.  I have a decent amount in equities but the ups and downs of the market bother me more than it should, considering my exposure - or lack of- in terms of proportion of investable $$.  So, I’ve pulled back some to a conservative old man 60/40ish stock/bond split, so when there is a run like there has been recently, I get a relative ‘meh’ bump in portofolio value.  However, that’s ok, because I know my customers are probably invested more aggressively, and their improved sense of finances helps them pull the trigger on a home and a new home sale for me makes even good stock market returns looks silly and modest in relation.

Looks like another deal or two in the works. That gives us a pretty significant queue of deals for next year.

I do a lot in a day.  Here’s some of it:

Sullivan County - 

• Backfilled a new foundation in Narrowsburg, a house that quickly went into contract.

• Laid out 3 new homes on 3 new pieces of land in Narrowsburg I am purchasing.  Marked driveways and house clearing locations, as well as dug deep pits for septic engineering.
• Checked up on 2 underground electric projects we have been waiting months for the poles to set.  Poles set last week, this week we dug, now we pester NYSEG utility until we get electric.
• Continued with the fireplace and siding work at the Wanger residence in Forestburgh, as well as the rough mechanical plumbing work.

Ulster

• ¾ done with a ¼ mile long underground electric trench in Olivebridge.  Every hurdle possible encountered - hard rock, lots of rain in an open trench.  3 days turned into 3 weeks.  Ugh.
• Installed a kitchen at Farm 74.  For Sale
• Finished the 2nd accessory building we are including in some of our homes.  A 150 sq ft structure with big doors, windows, insulation, electric and heat.
• Continued framing a house at Lot 7, Ashokan Acres.  Under contract.
• Siding, and rough electrical work at Lot 6, Ashokan Acres.  Under contract.

Columbia

• Finishing up the Kaufman residence in record time.  

Administrative - 

• 9 employees, payroll, bills, mail, ordering, designing, warrantying.
• Couple of sales calls
• Couple of calls with attorneys, surveyors, accountants and what have you.
• Managing a rental portfolio of 6 homes.

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It’s official - you can ween yourself off your cell phone.  Takes about 11 days of vacation and then it becomes less important and always at your fingertips. I’m surprised my phone isn’t calling the authorities due to the lack of screen time and some built in alert/concern setting. By the time I wrapped up the vaca, my screen time was done to about 1 1/2 hours - down from about 6 hours a day.

My brain is a funny thing.  It did stop working business 24/7 (or every waking hour) but then it just went ahead and started obsessing over something else that had been pushed off stage due to the workload.

But what is true is the new team I put together is fantastic.  I mean, like, Wow.  I always hate complimenting someone too much because so often - like 80% of the time - when it comes time to course-correct them, all of a sudden they are like ‘but you said this and that’ (positive) and I’m like ‘yeah, that was yesterday and it’s not like it’s some free pass for the rest of your career and like duh both things can be true!”.    It’s actually more true for the field guys than the office people.

But, no seriously, finally, I’ve built a real team, with a lot of overlap.  It’s a real accomplishment and might just sit here and blow my own horn and pat my own back and struck my own ego, and shout out a few ‘hails to the chief’ because frankly, wow, that was a journey. When I got back yesterday, office and projects were in such a state of proper oversight I was caught up before mid-afternoon.  That included some significant exercises that took real skill like prepping a house for sale, a couple of important punchlists, and a host of other projects. Plus, we had a ton going on across 15 projects and 4 counties, and frankly, it's all moving right along.

Problem is, it increased our annual overhead a lot - so I’ll need to be Chief Rainmaker (since I’m out west on Navajo land I’ll adopt native american title).  I’ll know in the next 6 months how much business was slipping thru my fingers like the desert sand over the last few years as I shift my focus from operations to sales, where I’ve always excelled since I know my product so well, and my product is engineered and reversed engineered to meet the marketplace, and its ever-shifting whims and desires (sounds like my girlfriend, if I had one).  It's actually a pretty vibrant marketplace for us right now.

This trip out west has checked the boxes- it was supposed to me and 2 long time friends from college but life got in their way so I went anyways.   It was a loosely planned and highly successful trip/journey.   Santa Fe, NM.  Monument Valley AZ.  Flagstaff, Sedona then Palm Springs.  Such much changing terrain, culture, wealth.   Me and my little Toyota Corolla, which zipped along at 85 mph+ on those western highways no problem. I tend to take a lot of 2 lane roads, but when I did hop on the highway wow you can cover some distance at 90mph.

I'm not sure where else in the world you can travel such 'short' distances and experience such a wide variety of terrain, weather and culture, but especially terrain and weather. Snow in Santa Fe, cactuses in Phoenix, 90 degrees in Palm Springs, and everything in between.

All the locations I enjoyed visiting, but Palm Springs was special indeed. As a snow-bird, vacation spot, I know the vibe since thats what I do, but Southern CA is a cool world onto itself. We were there during the week, just before the season really hit, and that seemed like a really sweet spot/time to be there.

You can definitely tell Lulu was spoiled while I was away cause I keep catching her on the furniture and when I left her on the bed (which isn't that common), she snuggled up high, instead of down on the foot end.

My shoulder is getting better. I'm 12 weeks into this journey - 3 months -and I'm still committed to twice a day PT and 'stretching'. I put stretching in quotes because when you stretch, you expect some 'pleasure' and positive feedback, and that just wasn't the case for week 1-10. Total pain and suffering like I've never experienced, and 1/4 by 1/4 progress over extended periods of time. Getting in a pool, and having some weight-less range of motion activity really seemed to help. I've been committed to this recovery, but I can see how a person less committed could really end up struggling to ever exit out the back side of this journey. It's a long process, it's a painful process, it's a fearful process since you aren't quite sure it will all be worth it and how successful recovery will be. But as the pain and discomfort subside, and mobility is back to 60% and trending positive, I look back on the last 12 weeks (the previous 8 from late August to Late October) and just say 'wow' - that was really something to go through all of that and not miss/lose a step - in fact, accomplished more in that stretch than most would believe possible.

But that's just my way. That's how you end up where I'm ending up, on top of the heap- work hard, work consistently, work persistently and never let a hurdle let you change your orientation for long.

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