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

For condos/townhouses, sales dropped 59.3% to 1,875 in South Florida. Throughout the state, sales of condos/townhouses declined 50.3%.  I sold a neat bay front unit in February, for less than I wanted but for a lot more than I could now.  For all the good real estate stories I had, this was not one of them.  The Worst board of directors - really put the 'da' in Florida.  And all the construction down there trying to stave off the sunny day flooding was worrisome.

For leisure, I just finished listening to "Churchill: Walking with Destiny" which the WJS says ""Unarguably the best single-volume biography of Churchill . . . A brilliant feat of storytelling, monumental in scope, yet put together with tenderness for a man who had always believed that he would be Britain's savior."   I drive a lot, and like long tombs, and this one was 50 hours plus.   The thing about Churchill is that he failed as much, as he succeeded - just so happened that he succeeded at something monumental.  The book argues his success was impossible with the trial and errors of his failures.

Happy 4th by the way.

I'm reading a 1400 page book by Norman Mailer about the mid-50's CIA call Harlot's Ghost.  I like it, but it's a long book, maybe the longest I've tackled.  Sometimes as I make my way through it I wonder about the opportunity cost of this book, and what else I'm not reading, but I typically finish every book I start just out of habit and discipline.

I'm also meandering my way through a drawing course on the Great Courses site.  It's going slow, but it's good.  I've always wanted to sketch well, and I think I have it in me, but as of right now, not putting in the time to make a real difference.  Other than reading, which I do voraciously from all formats - computers, newspapers, books magazines.   Whenever I think I'm smarter than half the people I run into, I always reflect if it's just the fact that I read more, a lot more, and hence thus have a lot of other people's intelligence to pull from.

And I'm watching a Great Courses lecture on the Great Plague of the 1400's where half the people in Europe died.  They say that came from China too!!  Fucking Trump.  I always like to go back and read similar experiences in history when we hit a bump, be it a plague, a recession, a boom, or a bad president.  Few things don't have historical parallels.

Trump's such a non-reader that when he defended the 'builders of our country' during his speech in South Dakota, defending them against the current BLM movements, he probably didn't even realize that that is the exact point of the awakening - that the people who actually did some of the building, or actually most of the building - were never recognized, compensated, allowed to decide for themselves whether they wanted to build anything, etc...

If it wasn't such bad humor, I would call this breakfast I had at the Otesaga in Cooperstown last week "White Privilege', and in normal times you could get away with it, since joking about difficult moments in cultural history used to help solve the problem, define it, and bring some sort of insight into the issue, but that's dangerous right now.  I think I can and will do it, since at the sparsely populated hotel there was an indian family, a black family, me and my bearded friend John and this really loud guy who was talking about the nudist retreat he and his wife just returned from.  It's my blog, and if I want to write about stream of consciousness thoughts, then I will.

I made Lucas ride around with me for a few days last week and he was introduced to the wide variety of tasks that make up my day.  We also opened up his first bank account at Jeff Bank, my bank for the last 20 years.  He dumped $1300 bucks he had accumulated - $650 from chores, and the other $500+ from savings bonds from the 1980's I had forgotten I had.  The Savings Bonds were interesting because they cost $125 and 30 years later they were worth $550.  The beauty of compound interest, even at 1.5%.  George Kinne, the president of the bank stopped by to welcome the new client, as did Bryan Flynn from the commercial lending department.

That's me on the right.  No hair cut for months, too much drinking showing in the obvious spots, though some is that is because I found I love French Vanilla coffee creamer.

Issac and Nancy at a farmhouse I renovated in 2004 and was all packed ready to move in with my wife until Nancy came by and made a full price offer, much to the chagrin of her husband.  They are both retired now, and act like it, not wearing shoes, and in no hurry to go anywhere.

I hired the star running back and star qb from DVHS to give 4 weeks of private training from last years championship eagles team.  Should be fun.

Whenever lucas has friends over I always make them do a cross fit like workout.  Lucas does it most days.  Rowing, jump rope, burpees, and some weight work.  Some of these kids haven't seen a shirt in weeks.  We are laying pretty low this weekend, and I'm very impressed with NY's ability to crush the curve.  Cuomo followed the science, and I'm not a big fan, but he nailed it.

And a big bear visited the other morning.  Literally just him and me, 3' apart, separated by a think sheet of glass.  A big bear.

Not sure if I posted this story about the PPP program from the River, a local source of great micro journalism.
https://therivernewsroom.com/ppp-lifesaver-with-a-lot-of-headaches/

And the WSJ inclusion -
https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/the-housing-market-around-new-york-city-is-booming-140181

I could go on and on about the real estate market, but it is so busy with buyers that hardly any hyperbole could be considered exaggerated.

Upstate has lots of different meanings, as does 'the catskills'.  There is a geographical boundary, at least for the Catskills, and then there is the 'state of mind' boundary.  For instance, a lot of what what we call the Catskills isn't really in 'the catskills', defined by the State charter/designation.   Counties such as Sullivan and Dutchess lay outside the Catskills and even towns like Stone Ridge, Kerhonkson etc... are not in the Catskills proper, but certainly in the Catskills for both descriptive ease and marketing ease.

Same goes for Upstate.  Upstate literally runs from the Catskills to Buffalo, in concentric rings of furtherness.  I just took a 3 day journey into the middle of the State over the last few days that brought this salient fact home to roost.  Hamilton NY - home of Colgate Uk, Vernon NY - home to Turning Stone Golf resort, and now today we are in Cooperstown - home to more than one would think, including baseball hall of fame, Leatherstocking Golf Course, James Fennimore Cooper and one of the prettiest downtown villages I've seen in a while.

One thing for sure, NY is vast, and it is beautiful, with pockets of wealth and poverty seemingly mixed in at random.

The impacts of the Virus are pronounced, as I can see with mine own eyes, and for a small business guy like myself, alarming.  In this Central NY phase 3 reopening area, the extent the hotels and restaurants are obeying and enforcing the rules is impressive.  6' separation, masks for sure, seating arranged by the book, cooperation from guests and staff.  You can see why NY has succeeded for now in flattening the curve and eliminating the spread.

With the virus shutting down a lot of sports, we've been doing a lot of road biking this season, which is a lot of fun.  But unless you are retired or something, you can't do both road biking and golf, since they take up a chunk of time each.  So golf got shelved, and to 'get it out of our system', we hit 3 upstate courses in 3 days, riding in the '72 Malibu.

Leatherstocking, Cooperstown

Colgate U Course.

The Ostesaga Inn, in Cooperstown.

Turning Stone Indian Reservation golf course.

You can also see the distress of small towns and their associated main street businesses; you can see the big resorts, empty, with 5 staff laid off for every one still working.  Empty main streets, empty restaurants, empty parking lots, empty golf courses, empty hotels.  And these are the areas considered a success.

Translates into lack of jobs, lack of sales tax revenue, lack of real estate swaps, lack of enthusiasm, and lack of cash flow from anything from non-profits to small biz to gigantic resorts.  I frankly don't know how this ends, because I am up close and personal with dozens of small businesses everyday, and while they were not impacted, it's a clear window into the short runway to disaster that many of them would face in the face of such a slow down and shut down.  They aren't packing oodles of rainy day funds.  They don't have a 'what if we have to close in the busiest months of the year' plan.  They don't have a 'how to make money with our tables half full'.

So, best case, that vast federal aid helped to keep them afloat.  But then you have the idea of 'zombie' companies, typically applied to larger companies kept afloat with large government bond buying, and low interest rates, can also apply to much smaller companies, where new debt is high, sales are lower, and the businesses aren't reinvesting, growing, hiring - they are just there, zombie-like, wandering aimlessly through the fog of the final economic consequences of the virus, until they fade away, debt-laden and ruined.  The question then, is this the opening for the creative destruction that makes our way of life tick - in with new out with the old - or this something different.  Either way, it doesn't seem quick, and it doesn't seem like it will help with the wealth and opportunity gap of this country.

That being said, Catskill Farms is once again positioned well, so I have a bit of survivor's guilt, but not too much.  Only thing I hate, is there is so much demand in the marketplace that sales come a little too easy and so my competition will grow, and take our overflow.  I like it best when it's harder and I can watch others in my industry get it all wrong.  That may be a character flaw, but one of the few I'm not trying to improve on.

The red velvet rope has been strung in front of shingle, and we've come to the tough decision to turn off the 'welcome aboard' sign.  We've been busy before, and we are good at it - in fact there is a good argument that we - like a fast car or a racing horse - operate better fully employed and engaged and firing on all cylinders, you got to know when to say when, for the benefit of those you are building with now, and those homes you have finished that you owe service to.  It's the benefit and advantage of being an established, mature and experienced company - you know what you are capable of, and there is no shame in stretching that, but not to the breaking point.

A letter that went out last week to people contacting us via our inquiry form -

Is there a better place to park your money than the Catskills, at the moment?  Here's a chance to get in the game, with all the tax benefits of real estate.

In Callicoon NY, and in Saugerties, NY, we have two projects that might be of interest in someone looking to put together a quick upstate rental/airbnb play/portfolio.

In Callicoon NY, (about 12 miles to Livingston Manor and Narrowsburg( we have 3 homes going up, will be finished by end of July.  The homes are all under 1000 sq ft, on 4+ acres, have great views and fun vib.  2 bedrooms, lots of deck and big fields abound.


And then in Saugerties NY, in Ulster County, we have these two side by side homes on 1 acres each.

The benefits of both these projects is the cluster nature of them.   Because they are on the same street, both the projects are easy to manage, maintain, and oversee.  Lots of efficiencies there.

I didn't start out thinking about the potential for this pop up airbnb, but now, as a real estate guy, it seems to make perfect sense for someone looking for a new gig in the Catskills.  From a tax vantage, the ability to 'expense your life' and get the depreciation is why people love real estate.