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

This picture above was supposed to go at the end of the blog post, but then I accidently deleted it and then when I re-imported it the blog is refusing to let me cut and paste it so now the whole blog post has to change right at the minute of publication but I'm just going to go with it. The picture above is our secret to our success - that intangible, inarticulable shadow of soul. Gloriousness.

I had this really great clever title for this blog post, and then I forgot what it was. So I will stick with the old and trusted "Another Sold so Suck It Great Recession (to borrow liberally from Kathy Griffith.)

That's not an ardvark in the front yard, that's Jake my dog on Norm's freshly planted grass. He throws hay on top of it to keep the seed from blowing away and to keep it fertilized and warm.

This little house with a big personality reminds of say Sammy Davis Jr or Frank Sinatra or even Prince for that matter. Good things come in small packages (that's what she said, not). Daniel was just about ready to lay down his life's savings on some run down little cottage when he came across our homes and decided, you know, that a home's character is not just it's faults and inconveniences, like the old house crowd loves to crow about. The character of a home comes from its essence, its soul, - and that has nothing to do with age. It has to do with taste, and talent.

All 780 +/- sq ft of this micro-cottage is pimped out pretty good, with a white washed plank ceiling, salvaged barn siding with peeling paint framing the entrance, spiral staircase, and light to natural floor stain and some muted paints give this cottage an airy expansive feel.

Raise your hand if this kitchen is bigger and better than the one in your apartment.

Fireplace, bookshelves, radiator and whole house audio. Can you say swankee? How about too-cool-for-school? No, how about 'get down on it, if you really want it, get down on it, etc", then?

Daniel took this cottage in a fresh direction, and I say it everyday. The creativity of our clients, and the ability/privilege to collaborate and work with such creative people everyday is definitely one of our secrets of success. We are constantly exposed to new ideas, and new directions.

Living room, dining room off to the right, stairs to the basement, and front and back decks.

Brought to you by WAL (wide angle lens, duh, and it's the last time I'm going to take the time explain it the abbreviation).

Shazam.

Plenty of room to do your thing, and if I'm not mistaken that looks like a frickin speaker in the ceiling! This guy has a speaker in his bathroom with a separate volume control! Now that's livin. Dan wrote us an email with some punch list things outlined and he remarked that he just bought a Craftsman I80 Stud Finder, and I told him he had just wasted his money cause all he had to do was look in the mirror for free to find the nearest stud.

Cool bedroom overlooking a pretty great piece of land. This house and the barn house next door both benefit from great pieces of land and the homes really placed about perfectly.

This staircase (below) reminds me of a lap dance in Vegas at the International Builders Show in 2009.

And the big full basement with on-demand hot water heater, propaned-fired furnace and the well water tank.

And here's the porch at Farm 12, a house not built in the factory, not developed by a team of high paid marketers, not designed in a board room, and definitely not set in unchangeable stone once it leaves the factory.

NY Times 4th article about New World Homes, a company that has a decent idea but has only sold a couple homes after what I would guess is adding up to a couple of million dollars of branding and 3 yrs of effort and visibility in what seems like every single print magazine on the newsstands ever-

What I respect most about this effort of the Times to further clobber their readers over their heads with an idea that just can't get going was the fact that at least this time they just went ahead and posted the phone number and website address - finally admitting that for some reason they are fully and unabashedly participating in a marketing campaign. At least the covers are off the fat hairy guy. And you got to hand it to New World Homes - they hired the NY Times to help launch a business (sadly though, the public has the last say on whether it's viable or not, not the brain trust from Brown U.).

In the end, it's not the name of the house, not the branding of the house, not the marketing of the house - in this marketplace there is only type of house that is selling, - and honestly, it's not even a house, - rather, it's a Home, and it will sell if it inspires. Nothing more, nothing less.

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I'm not braggin', but thanks Kat and Greg, for signing up for Ranch III, so hot off the presses you can't even touch it.

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It's an Early Sunday Morning, and it was real windy again yesterday. Actually, yesterday was a pretty funky day of weather, period. It rained most of the night (entailing me driving to the office say around 2am to close a window that I had forgotten to in a room where we are currently finishing the floors), cleared up by morning, by 8am it was rainy furiously, then cleared up beautifully, then got windy, then got rainy, then cleared up, - well, you get the picture. It's Mother's Day, so Lisa has taken Lucas on the road to see his grandparents and great grandparents, spread out from Lancaster Pa to Richmond VA to Virginia Beach. Lucas loves the open road and when he starts to get inexplicably anxious, we know he needs to feel the cool breeze of the open road of a big road trip. Funny story about about ole Lucas - so, you know, he's pretty smart for his age and he goes around talking a little bit saying daddy, saying tiger (our cat), Tanta, (our Neighbor), even words like xelophone (which is obviously so far away from the correct spelling that even spell check can't help me), New york times, supercadifragiloaphor.... - you get the picture, -he says a lot of words, but he refuses, absolutely refuses to say mommy. And he knows what he is doing - if you say, 'Lucas, say mommy' - he laughs real loud and says 'Daddy' - it's pretty frickin funny and it's been going on for months. I mean, he's been saying daddy for at least 2 months. My theory is that he is just saving it, saving it like an ace up his sleeve, like his one 'get out of jail free' card, so when he really screws up - likes breaks something of mommy's real dear to her, or hurts another kid by hitting them on the head with something hard, or really screws up one of the levers in the car when he sits there and plays car, or pulls the new flat screen down on his head - that he is going to pull out his one 'save card' and give a scared little adorable 'Mommy' - and all will alright just that one time. Pretty genius (obviously inheriting these duel traits from his dad - strategic thinking and hints of genius).

Speaking of Mom's Day, it's today. And I have a real special Mom, one of those that when recounted on some sappy tv show jerks everyone's tears. A sacrificial Mom, a hardworking Mom. I mean, thank god I don't have to sacrifice as much for my family as my parents had to for their's - I'd be totally put off and inconvenienced. But that's the American way, each generation tries to make the next more comfortable. For me, it worked out that way for sure. My mom made some serious moves on my behalf - like when she gave me her only car so I could take a writing internship in Pittsburgh for USAirways Pilot's newsletter - I think she ended up walking to work (5 miles) or taking a bus for a couple of months - can't remember exactly. Or co-signing on some real dodgy and risky loans when I was first getting started in real estate speculation. Her AAA credit rating definitely convinced some dubious lenders to extend some credit my way. Thanks Mom, - so here's the shout out - in lieu of the flowers I forgot to order and the card I forgot to send (that's actually Lisa's dept. and she is out of town). These pictures are of a farmhouse we are just finishing up and is the only house we have for sale. We purchased the 'shell' from a person who had drank away the financing and was unable to finish up the house. The previous owners/builders had done a great job in terms of house location/positioning and general construction quality, so I took it off his hands- nice guy that I am.

House location is everything. Every piece of land has a spot for a particular house and the key is to marry the two, and if you get it wrong, it's wrong - can't be changed. And if you nail, you enhance the personality of the house immeasurably. Serious stock market jitters, in case you didn't notice - it's hard to remember how frickin crazy it was just a year ago. Pandemonium, mass panic, the herd all going in the same direction (surprise, surprise). We sold (closed on) 5 houses in the worst panic since the great depression (doubled our sales in the worst real estate environment ever). Hey, but that modular thing the NY Times loves, now that's something to write home about. Not. Waste of good newspaper space if you ask me. The 'Next Big Thing' - someone should really tell the consumer. Oh, right, I guess that's what the Times is trying to do -" look stupid homebuyers, why aren't you doing what we say!! We are smarter than you, gosh darnnit!!" God I hate being on the same side as Limbaugh and Hannity and O'Rielly. Not a place I enjoy at all.

God the house really works with the blue skies. And the rocks are pretty amazing - the type of natural landscaping that makes even the most inexperienced landscaper/homeowner look genius-esque. No matter what you plant, it's golden. Big porch, and damn, big dog. Great lines.

Inside this 2000 sq ft home pretty much has it all, in terms of house needs. With the 1300 sq ft houses, while super cool, there's usually not enough elbow room for a separate TV room and fireplace area, no cordoned off dining room, mud room etc... At 2000 sq ft you start to get these things - Brick, stained accents, wide plank floors, hand-hewn beams. Big trims. Planks ceilings whitewashed, cool schoolhouse lighting.

Since it was just me and no homeowner, we had some fun and played around a bit. The powder room adjacent to the mudroom with the cool slopsink.

Floors still need that final coat and final clean needs to happen, but it's starting to take a nice shape.

The mudroom with the bucket light, the board and batton, the sliding barn door and the bluestone floor and the radiator to put your wet socks and shoes on to dry out.

Upstairs we had some fun as well with the beadboard and the picket-fence style spindles and handrail system. 5 panel stained interior doors with a crisp white handle.

It's got a pretty sweeeet master suite area (although I hate the phrase master suite, almost as bad as subdivision, bonus room, and center hall colonial). Wood walls, stained crown, duel action sink.

The MBR (real estate speak for master bath room) is pretty cool with the gas fireplace, galvanized light, and stained ceiling. Our painter is awesome.

Guestbath not too shabby either with the sink, cool vintage vanity, deep tub, and elongated throne.

This upstairs foyer space really works for me. We had to steal a little bit from the bedrooms in order to gain this space, but here it is - so very adaptable to wide range of uses - upstairs little computer station, reading nook (do people still read?), little couch, whatever, I love it. Much better than a tight tunnel with doors on either side.

I've been working non-stop since Lisa and Lucas hit the road - building 8 homes, closing on two (just closed on micro-cottage 3 on Friday, congrats Daniel), starting 5 more, got two closings dates for beginning of June (farm 12 and cottage 25), working with 6 separate TV production companies for the Blog Cabin 2o10 shindig we are participating in, and refurbishing our offices. It ain't easy being the Man, but someone has to do it (oh boy, I can hear the anonymous blogger emails now).

I bought the rusty school bus repair garage for the Eldred School District back in 2008 or so. It was an ugly 25 yr old rusty steel structure. Since then we have rehabbed and renovated section by section, this latest fix-up was a consequence of sometimes having 5 people and a dog and subcontractors, delivery men and a million other folks working in a 300 sq ft space, with computers, filing cabinets, dog beds, a cactus, blueprints, printers, copiers, etc... Above, the space with polished concrete and two refurbished spaces. it's kind of like a house inside a house. And then when I was inside Farm 12 reviewing some odds and ends, and tree fell on one of my trucks (it was very windy yesterday). Not cool at all.

And there goes Old Yellow - my very first truck I owned after relocating to Sullivan County. Now a few of you know the story, how I bought this yellow truck, the only 2 wheel-drive vehicle in this 4-wheel drive territory. Well, she did good - I beat it up good, ran it hard, and she kept on ticking (besides getting stuck on completely flat surfaces when they got a little slick). When you are just starting a business, the last thing you need are unreliable and costly vehicles, and old yellow did just fine (so did my '98 Rav, which gave us 150k miles before we sold it to Juan, who sold it to Job - it's still out on the road, looking good). A local mechanic took it away for me and gave me $250, cash. The end of an era for me. So long Ole Yeller - you done good.

And my new office, with a superb mid-century chair, and a shelf to display my old school type-writer collection that has been warehoused for years. I should be moved in by late next week.

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