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

Lucas Meets Pink Pelicans in Florida

I've been accused on many occasions of having a great marketing mind, and I guess in a way it's true. James and I have a lot of fun coming up with cool angles to demonstrate our creative and construction talents.

Here are some ads that are running for 12 weeks in NY Magazine, and some feedback from people who have discovered us.

"I've been following your homes by internet but by the time I receive an email, most are under contract . Is there a way to avoid this?

Thank you"

"..love your work--been stalking your blog + site for a while now! "

"Saw NY magazine ad.

Spent 3 hours on website and sent link to 100 friends.

Was just about to leave NY, but may have to reconsider."

"these houses are just beautiful! my husband and I would love to have a mini cottage in the catskills."

"Hello! We love your homes and are wondering when you might have some for sale...."

and my personal favorite, from a friend of mine.-

Charles,

You are a genius, my friend.

Love,

Bill/e

And the link to the progress at Blog Cabin -

9000 visitors to the website last month - 36,000 page views. Not too shabby for a little business in the middle of NOWHERE.

And an article in our local rag -

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Whoa, Momma. That was a busy week. Tactically, strategically, forward-looking business busy. It's a real blessing (I like to use words like 'blessing' whenever possible because it seems soft and cuddly, and being both a student and appreciator of the blessed English language, I like to use words that accurately reflect me as a human being) - so like I was saying, it's a real blessing having this vibrant little home design company in these dark days of the Great Recession. I would love to see a statistic of all those persons absolutely untouched by this recession. I think the numbers would surprise a lot of people. That's one thing among many that I have appreciated about my country living sojourn - we aren't bombarded by headlines - print, broadcast, etc... - so we are able to have some independent thoughts upmuddled by the oozing of mass media harassment. It's so amazing how in front of the curve Catskill Farms was, and remains. I mean, I don't even say that to annoy all the people who routinely stick pins in my likeness - We really are so far out there in terms of understanding the psychology of the marketplace, not just locally but regionally and even nationally. Sure, I know all the TV fame is now going to my head - but really, seriously, we've been ahead of the curve for years, without even really trying to do anything other than stay in business and stay out of debtors' prison. My good friend David keeps a great blog and is a big stats and numbers guy as well as big real estate gossiper. He actually holds a very interesting position in the local real estate community, a buyer's broker in a sea of sharky and not-so-sharky realtors. He talks to a ton of people, gets facts-on-the-ground info and news from a wide variety of sources and is pretty good at distilling all the info into trending analysis. Anyway, he tells a story that I used to call him up just peppering him with questions. Who's buying what, what prices are strong, what price point is the biggest mismatch between inventory and demand? He had distilled the raw data into great info, there for the asking, and I had to thirst for just in time, ACCURATE market data. I didn't try and make a market - the market was already there, albeit undiscovered and unpursued. Just the opposite of say a project like Bethel Farms, where the entire business model pivoted around trying to sell people land for 3x or 4x what it has ever sold for through clever marketing. Well, you learn the hard way that consumers are smart. And creating a new marketplace is about the hardest thing to do as a business. Well, enough about me... My good friend David just reported that there were 16 sales in Sullivan County in February, and of those, 4 of them were over $250,000. Now, he doesn't include our sales in his numbers since we sell our homes direct to the customer, and he only reports sales through the MLS, meaning realtor-driven. Not to digress, but this small detail is pretty important since by cutting out the middleman, we reduce our costs, which means we can reduce the sales prices of our homes, much to the chagrin of our imitators. To continue, so we sold 3 homes in February, so there were 19 sales in February, and 4 over $250,000 - so with our 3 there were 7 homes over $250,000 - 3 divided by 7 = 41%. Catskill Farms currently controls 41% of the entire region's home sales above $250k in February. Now that's pretty amazing. Wow, but like I said, enough about me. It's Muddy. Big Time. You-come-home-muddy-no-matter-how-many-precautions-you-take muddy. What-do-you-do-with-the-dog muddy. Stay off-the-shoulder-of-the-road muddy. 3' -of -snow-, rain, -and -frost -coming -out -of -the -ground muddy. It's Friday evening. I'm sitting in a small office in our 120 yr old farmhouse. Comfortable with its old desk, white radiator, lots of not-quite-art paintings, pottery, candle sticks and a pair of heavy iron black and white pig bookends. A blinking modem, a Canon Printer and a bunch of unarranged books. Builder Magazine just annouced their New American Home last week. One year it was a green home, the next year it was a modulat - all these over the top media darling ideas of where housing is going next. This year, a simple gabled quintessential American home. Modest, good-looking and deliberately sturdy. A tribute and salute to tradition, attractive function over perfect form. Or even better, a product that the market has actually indicated it wants. It reminded me of our homes. And trends we noticed 3 years ago. Well-designed, modestly-priced homes on a couple of acres. Well, enough about our cool homes and ability to see the future. James, the resident real life 'Office' character and I were talking the other day about this email I got about a guy who wanted what we build, but did not have a ton of dough. Now, we've heard this before - when everyone was building and selling andbig home priced at $400k+, we counter-intiutively started building small homes at $325k. When that market seemed like it might tighten up, we figured out a way to sell our homes at $250k, and then $200k. Now, however, we want to try and figure out how to do it at $135k. The Shack Chic Series, with individual homes named The Survival Shack, and the Love Shack, and The Retro Shack, and the Dog Shack, and the Getaway Shack. Down and dirty cool little shelters. 400 sq ft, little wood stove, septic, well, driveway and land. Insulation, wall board and planking. Cool homes stripped down, -plywood floors - a cabinet or two. Since land costs $45k, well and septics $12k, drivways and utilities $8k, foundation and excavation $14k - then you got to build the house. The best part about being in this position in business is we can experiment, see if it would work, see if there would be a buyer, see if we can make some dinero. Big windy storms over the weekend knocked out cable, dsl and phones lines. Pretty spooky.

The Jakester. The Jakeman. The Jakeappotamus. The Jakerama. The JakeMasterJam.

I'm building a very cool series of homes over on Tuthill Road, which is a Town maintained dirt road in the Town of Lumberland, the hamlet of Barryville, just a few miles from the Delaware River that runs from Canada to the Chesapeake. So there's a lot of action over there every morning and Jake and I like to go over, park the car and walk around checking shit out. It's a pretty good walk, since we are building 4 houses, and they are all on 4+ acres. So Jake runs that way, and this way, and up the hill, and down the hill, and sprints there and sprints here. Anyway, being a 8 month old puppy that exertion of energy serves him well all day, keeping him even tempered and mostly dozing off in various positions and surfaces in the office. It's a great thing that he doesn't run off and play hard to get when he's off the leash - since that enables me to let him run. A few fun things happening this morning in diverse directions. First, ole Hall from the reclaimed wood place down the road delivered our hand hewn fireplace mantle beams and mantle posts. Hand hewn means old, since hewn implies and is given away by the actual ax marks on the beam itself. It's true history incorporated, and a pretty cool accent. That's Mark and Henning getting ready to help unload, cut and install.

The Reclaimed Farmhouse which we are pimping out is currently on the market. I haven't showed it to many people, because until these homes reach a certain phase, the genius is a little hard to see to the layman or laywoman or laychild. But it's there, and it certainly becomes poignantly evident at some point, when the details, product choices, and construction techniques are visible. The duel brick chimney gives this house that Philadelphia federal-style look.

Richard the art gallery insurance expert's Barn house in the painting stage.

Steve the picture framer's house in the soy-based spray foam insulation phase.

John and Wendy's Shaker-style house in the trim phase. And also, while subtle, is a big deal. See the little stone path going to the house. If the excavator was a little less intelligent, a little less thoughtful, a little less committed to seeing the big picture, he would have neglected putting this path in as he put the driveway in - leaving us tramping through some serious and job-stopping mud.

We just got our latest credit card statement and it was illuminating to see our life's patterns through the lens of our credit card activity - in line item/black and white narrative. Target, Toys -r- us, various gas stations, Baby-r-Us, liqueur store, animal hospital, netflix, grocery store, repeat. The repeated liqueur store was a good one, I thought. Well, I'm flying solo for 10 days as Lisa is down in Florida again (must be nice), watching and taking car of my faltering 73 yr old Dad. I mean there's young 73 and old 73, and he falls squarely in the latter description. So Lisa, a caregiver by instinct, loves the bond Lucas and Dawdy, have had from early on. And now she's got her new flip cam to capture all the slow-moving glory of Lucas and Dawdy, - though Lucas ain't that slow anymore. Lucas is also fast friends with our neighbor Tanta, who is a young 73 - it's like a Harold and Maude relationship without the funeral fetishes and without the sex. Sure, I agree, that's inappropriate for sure.

Here we go - Blog Cabin on the DIY Network announces Catskill Farms as their builder for the 2010 Blog Cabin renovation- Hello waiting list (whoops, we got that already). Hello more demand than supply (whoops again, we got that already). Well, anyway, you get the point. Enjoy the Blog Cabin - I've been working with DIY for 6 months or so now, and nothing but nice competent people who know how to make it happen. Hey, wait a minute. That sounds like us too. And you know it takes two to tango. Also, we started a big ad run in New York Magazine - 12 weeks of cool Catskill Farms ads - check it out near the back of the mag just before the massage and body work ads.