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

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.)

(Please note this has been reposted due to a facebook feeding issue). Easter Weekend was exciting, culminating with a big Easter Egg Hunt in our front yard. Pedro, pictured above, proved most adept at egg hunting, racing ahead of the children to find all the no-brainer hiding spots. We had so many eggs over such a small hunt area it was like shooting fish in stocked pond (I think that's the right country cliche I was hunting for). Pedro and his partner David purchased Cottage 23 from us back in November on a property located on 8 acres just behind our house. He did write me the other week indicating that he is an accomplished Tenor, not Soprano, as I inaccurately wrote in a post long ago. We're looking forward to some serious music lessons for Lucas on their piano, since they are both musically inclined. That's Gavin, the founder and former publisher of Vice Magazine, in the background, looking pretty spiffy in his bowtie. And our Neighbor Theresa was providing security. Below the pre-party preparations, with lots of threats coming from Lisa about touching the chocolate covered strawberries. Sippy cups on the left, bloody mary glasses on the right.

As can be seen, no such early imbibing rules were placed on the bloody marys, which Chris and I dug into early. Chris and Alison were in for the weekend from Richmond, VA, where Chris runs a store Lisa used to work at (when she used to work - sorry lisa, couldn't stop my fingers from typing). Need Supply Co. That's our kitchen - pretty fun and well styled. A couple of times when I got way ahead of myself early in business and ended up way behind the eight ball, Lisa's decorating sense definitely helped us sell a house or two.

It was sunny - real sunny. Unseasonably sunny. Duncan and Lucas going for a ride in the red wagon my dad had made for Lucas' first birthday.

Is that Dexter Poindexter or Gavin M?

And Lucas at the Park in Glen Spey.

I'm really falling behind on the blogging this month of April but no worries, I'll catch up. We are busy building Cottage 25, Micro Cottage 3, Farmhouse 13, Barnhouse 2, Cottage 28, stuff at my office, as well as tidying up a few houses we sold over the winter, as well as buying 6 new pieces of land, as well as developing a half dozen new designs, as well as building out the DIY Blog Cabin ranch red0. Our team is good. And on the construction front, the construction management front, the design front and the development front - can't really be matched - all for the benefit of our customers and clients.