Selling Homes in the Catskills - Olivebridge and Saugerties
We have just sold a bunch of houses and bunch more to go. They got clustered some how, which makes a tough process even tougher. Lot's of people involved in the end who really weren't present much during the process - bank inspections, home inspections, homeowner inspections, building department review, certificate of occupancy requests. Lots of requests to lots of different people with interdependent and sequential deliverables. No bank underwriting finalization without CO, no CO with board of health, no homeowner or home inspections with everything being complete. And of course everyone's pushing to get it closed.
We are pretty good at it, and we tend to be able to foresee the problems before they arrive, being a been there done that type of process. Basically, you can't assume anything will go off as it should, without the help, assistance or guidance from the team at Catskill Farms. It ain't easy, but it needs to be done.
The 3 Olivebridge houses are a result of a piece of land I bought, already subdivided, and subsequently built 3 homes there. Pretty good project that went well. Buyers ended up with a lot equity when we were done, since prices just keep climbing for these homes of ours, basically the most sought after homes in the Catskills. We bought the land last spring, as rumors of a vaccine and return to the office were circulating, so it was a gamble, not knowing if life was going to return to normal in terms of 5 days at the office. We now know that may never happen, and that is a good piece of knowledge to have, since hybrid work is a boon for Catskill Farms and the hardworking people of the Catskill.s
Momma's Day
It’s hard eating out right now. Few restaurants are executing well, at least in all categories. From my recent experience, some get the food out on time but the servers aren’t adequate in numbers or adequately trained, others have sufficient servers but the kitchen is understaff leading to long wait times, some fail in all categories and some have just closed the doors because they are tired of not being able to deliver a consistent sustainable service.
I know for me, I’ve been to a few restaurants where waiting for the food takes an hour or more - not the whole process of sitting, ordering etc… I mean just waiting for the food after the order is in, half the time with empty glasses. We all have compassion for the industry, but at the same time, you are out to enjoy yourself and an unnecessarily Long experience with iffy service along the way isn’t the pinnacle of enjoyment.
Just last week in Milford PA, I literally went to two restaurants, one after the other, and didn’t get a dinner in 90 minutes each. It’s hard to say I didn’t do my part with patience.
Then yesterday in Scranton at a delicious dinner at the Sambuca Grill, the service started out strong, then just disappeared, walked right by - and that’s just a training issue, a middle management issue, but to feel the breeze of your server go by 30 times in a small restaurant and that person failing to stop from bread to dinner completion, that’s an issue.
I’m not complaining, ok, yes, I’m complaining. Because I think the pandemic tolerance is wearing thin for the service industry, and even if it is unfair and not avoidable, it’s still a decision to eat out, and for me, I’m going to start patronizing restaurants I hear first hand have adequate staff that is trained to a minimum degree.
It’s an easy trap to fall into, as a business person who has made it through the pandemic and has a ‘to each according to his talents’ disposition, but I look around to a wide range of vendors and peers and colleagues who are running businesses and they have found a way. But then at the same time, I am very picky who I work with, and maybe that due diligence eye will need to be applied to where I eat as well until this all gets sorted out.
Maybe the stock market correction will drive some people back to work.
Safari and House Selling
Safari is the Swahili word for Journey, and that’s where Lucas and I are heading in late June, soon after the school year lets out. Over there in Eastern Africa, in Kenya and Tanzania, where Karen Blixen set up shop in 1913 and ultimately wrote the book Out of Africa about her 17 years there.
Vaccines are important when traveling to countries as these, and yesterday Lucas and I traveled earlier morning to a place that specializes in such medicine, on East 55th Street, NYC. We were given shots for typhoid, yellow fever, hep A and B and given an interesting tutorial on each. No vaccines exist for Dengue, Chikungunya.
We were told not to drink the water, not to eat raw foods, not to use the ice and a bunch of other things, most of which I knew but needed a refresher. I traveled to India for 3-4 months when I was 23 and I can mostly guarantee I took few precautions, with few problems, but that’s the advantage of youth and naïveté.
Now I travel with guides and medicine and well planned routes to some degree. Not overplanned, but planned out, leaving enough room for improvisation but having a structure embedded in the trip.
We sold a house on Friday of last week. It was a big one, exceeding 4000 sq ft, on 6 acres, with a mountain view. We did that contract last summer at some point, and then felt the true brunt of the broad basket of inflation across the entire spectrum of materials, and even some labor. After surviving 12 months of covid related surprises, I thought we were in the clear. We weren’t and built the 3 houses in Olivebridge into the teeth of unpleasant pricing surprises across the board. We paid a lot for the land, and we got caught up in the inflation rip tide than pulled our dreamed of profits out to sea. Luckily, we had priced these homes at what the market could bear, and although our profits were less than hoped or projected, there was still room for a little get jiggy with it dance.
You could see, however, how a contractor could get caught here with contracts that didn’t envision a price increase of this sort. While the times are profitable for us, I pity the fool who isn’t approaching this business environment with the same strategic planning tools as we do. It’s just really risky out there.
Site visit and home re-sales
I did something today I haven't done in years - I attended the end of job final walk-thru with the Amanda, my main designer and project manager who has been with me for quite awhile now, and the clients who are buying the home. I had/have no objection to attending, and there have literally been hundreds of opportunities (aka closings) over the last 7 years, but it's really Amanda's lane and who am I to butt in on her turf. Plus, I'm not in need of any more work, especially the hard work of the last walk-thru, where stress and managing expectations is common and necessary. I haven't physically attended a sales closing either in quite some time, long before the pandemic made that standard practice. It's all about time management and those two events in the process 1, take up a lot of time, and 2, aren't my strong suit.
It's hard to describe the hard work I do everyday to make the client experience as painfree as it is. And I know how painfree it is, because I talk to other people and their processes are far different than what we offer, where homeowners and build clients are subject and exposed to the full spectrum of trials and tribulations of building a home, be it permitting, lending, board of healths, utilities, and the hundred other tasks that take real skill and aren't that fun. I think the one flaw in our building process is we make it too easy - many people who build homes are just so darn thankful to be reaching something that could be considered a finish line that the idea of opening a can of worms about this issue or that issue that may prevent move in is just really off the table. Us, with only 2 or 3 site meetings and an effort that seems sometimes like we wave a magic wand and things happen, there is still plenty of energy left to get lost in the details and lose the big or even small picture.
Not sure If I'm making sense, but what has always been missing from our process is me - the owner, the guy who most every time has made the original sale through skillful process education and finding the thing that works for that client - that me, the guy who drops off the screen early on in the process as I hand the baton to Amanda and I work behind the scenes on the mechanical heavy lifts - that it's been clear to me for years that I should be at these end of process meet and greets, maybe not to spend the whole time there for the walk-thru, but for a thank you and a handshake. But even that is not easy - we are busy, and I'm pulled in lots of directions.
But, back to what I was saying, it's clear to me it's important to the brand and the business and the client frame of mind that I do so, so the idea that after 20 years (7 delegating this end of job thang) I was able to pop in and spend a few hours with the clients who trust us (me) to pull this off, that's important. It also feels good to me, since just dealing with the bullshit all the time, and not getting the chance to interact with people who are top of game, and very interesting, diverse, etc.. - that to me was always something I knew I shouldn't be skipping in terms of getting real gratification from what I do for a living.
And it's funny - not quite the right word- that I'm aware of this, have been aware of this, and now finally, in 2022, can and am making the effort to deepen these relationships with people and families who have chosen us, trusted us, to help them with this upstate aspiration. It's always been a critical detail, one I just couldn't get done. I'm having dinner with them, throwing small parties, reaching out.
That happens a lot in business - you know something needs be done, but there is just no way you can do it. Lack of money, lack of bandwidth, lack of labor and skilled resources. So it sits there, undone. No business doesn't have their list of things that just haven't been gotten to but everyone knows it should be gotten to. A website update, etc...
Our resales - what I used to consider real evidence of the quality of our homes, and the demand for them - are off the charts. The prices people are getting for our homes is insane. That's hyperbole since I think people who buy our homes are smart (and lucky) and 'insane' makes them sound ungrounded in data, and that is not the case - however, the prices are high, and the return on the investment for a lot of these people is pretty insane.
Here's one we finished in 2018 - on the market for a couple of days - MAYBE they paid $600k for it. Selling in the high $900's. In 2.5 years. Even for affluent people, this is a big cha ching, ROI. We've seen it dozens of times. Sort of makes me nervous I've left too much money on the table for some of my deals, but when I look at my profits and margins, I think I'm doing the right thing, watching the market, staying under it. I mean, we have nothing to sell, and go out of our way to make it hard to get in, contact with us. When I see people, investors, etc... calmly pricing new homes - or creating business plans around sales in the $1m-$1.5 mark, eh, to me, that's just a big risk, and if the market would turn, it wouldn't be pretty. But, you know, the Catskills could really be onto something this time. The hybrid work thing has fundamentally changed the Catskills, a very attractive place to live. People are clamoring for our homes, for sure.
