Got a Drone
Some of the best shots of real estate is from the air, so the the new drone has been a fun addition to my marketing bag of tricks. Pretty simple to operate, with lots of safety features if you don't get the cheapest one, like collision avoidance, a 'home' button that brings it back home when you push the limits, range et... too far, and a bunch of other stuff. Should also help get better perspective on land and such as I'm buying it.
Bought it right in time for the peak foilage season up here the Catskills. The thing about the 'peak', is you get several false peaks, thinking it can't get better than this, but it does, and then there is that one day, or collection of days, where it really is the peak, and then it quickly fades into the avalanche of falling leaves, and then bare trees before you know it.
My first trial run, besides at my house in Milford PA, was up at our project in Kerhonkson NY we just built out. It was 4 homes, sold quick, and the families are loving them now that the world has changed.
Here's a pic of the famous hotel in Milford named the Fauchere.
This is a shot of a farmhouse, looking east towards the Gunks and New Paltz.
A Ranch.
Shot of a barn going up in Cochecton, NY.
The Delaware River.
Another Ranch in Kerhonkson.
And my All-Star Team of cross-disciplinarians. When you stay as busy as we stay, it's a constant crush of real responsibility across everyone's desktop.
All the problems of yesterday are receding, 4 months into solving them. I can tell by my need to write about them, a process I have always found to help me untangle the issue, and identify ways forward. Now I'm left to solve the 100 regular problems that arise each day. The bottom-line solution is always the same - dig in, sacrifice everything else, work hard and harder, and solve one layer of the issue at the same - the ol' 'a journey starts with a single step'. The sacrifice is always real - in this case, waking before 4am, not coaching, keeping my son out of travel leagues, having little energy left over for life other than work. Each morning I wake now, I slowly can see the extreme nature of the last 4 months, with business doubling, and black swan issues diving from the sky out of nowhere.
Of course, there is another way to - make excuses, fall behind, disappoint vendors/bankers/clients alike, sidetrack your business and lose the momentum which is extremely hard to recapture. We have been on a forward momentum train for 20 years - some times slower than others, but always moving forward. It's way too dangerous for survival to be sitting in one place.
Employee Retainage at Catskill Farms
As most small employers can attest, recruiting and keeping employees is at the heart of any level of success. We see it among our own team, and we see it among all the teams that support us. Those who find a way to maintain and retain employees are those companies that grow with us, instead of us outgrowing them.
This little mini-barn just got over 500 reactions on Instagram, which was nearly a record. I don't think this was the exact photo - the other one had fog - but for some reason really captured the attention of some of our 6200 followers.
At Catskill Farms, back in 2012, I undertook several initiatives to try and retain employees, and for the most part they've worked well, in whole or part. It's funny how a small self-made business person like myself would be caricatured to be against government programs of any sort - an Ann Rand "I can do it myself' mantra - but I actually have seen the benefit of some of these programs, both State and Federal.
One of the most recent was a testament to the safety net NY State offers with its layers of taxes on everything we do. An employee had a serious and disruptive illness in the family and both his wife and he were able to use the Family Leave Act to take 8+ weeks off at a large percentage of their salary being paid. A real life saver.
While healthcare remains a real mess, I was all for Obamacare though I, as a small business person, was supposed to be the main opposition to the cost and administrative burden, but having lived without healthcare for years, and seeing what a lack of it does to the safety and security of individual families, to me it was a no-brainer, even if it meant more hassle for me.
And 3rd, the 401k Safe Harbor plan for small employers, where we can offer a company match retirement plan has been a huge boon to those who have taken advantage of it (and most everyone does). I think we as a company have stuffed away over $750,000 in direct contributions from our employees, and the associated match from me. In an industry where benefits are few and far between, this type of retirement plan is unheard of, and several of my long term employees are approaching 6 figure accounts.
Vacation, holidays, sick leave, raises, retirement, etc... all work together to create an environment where my valued employees think twice before jumping ship and chasing a few extra short term dollars per hour.
New Homes for Sale In Saugerties
This weekend we are opening the gates again to new clients, which we stopped doing for a while just to ensure an orderly onboarding of a pretty heavy queue of new clients in late spring and early summer. One of the advantages of being in business a while, is you can accurately gauge your capacity, and not wear rose-colored glasses in what you can realistically produce. In fact, with the subcontractor and product supply chain stretched thin, you can expect to produce less, or at least have more trouble and hurdles producing the same, and real trouble producing more.
I remember when I started in businesses in 2002, it was just beginning to be the boom times that ultimately lead to the housing crash of 2007/08. It was tough to assemble a team because everyone was busy, so you had to use the C team (if you are lucky) (and deal with all those scheduling and quality issues inherent in C team product) and pay A team prices. It's frankly easier to start a business in a recession where employment isn't full and vendors have capacity and interest in new clients.
Kacy, my right arm marketing machine, developed a marketing brochure for my weekend land and house pairings/showings. Turned out good.
Our new website has been passing all of our content uploading tests with flying colors, and proved adaptable to most every request and tweak we come up with, so that's a real victory.
https://www.thecatskillfarms.com/for-sale
Amazing moon this morning at 6am. It was one of those mornings that had a bit of everything - crispness in the air, leaves beginning to turn, sun only faintly stirring, and a gigantic big full moon straight-ahead -
The Wealth We Create
I'm astounded at the wealth Catskill Farms generates, near and far. Real estate commissions on our resales, return on investment for our clients, wages to our employees, traffic for our local businesses in a 90 minute radius, tax for schools and towns, interest to banks, premiums to insurance companies, $1m a month to assorted businesses. This might not be a big deal in the scheme of things, but in our little pond, it's more than a ripple of impact.
It's even more pronounced now, in this pandemic era, with more liquidity and sales in the marketplace. Money being made all over the place from our homes, our resales, our marketing. It's eye-popping actually, even for someone like myself who was aware of the fact beforehand.
What causes me to comment is the relisting of one of my homes that I sold for under $460k now being priced at $850k. Sure, there is a pool, some stonework, etc... It's a nice abode for sure, but it's shocking to me on how slim our margins are/were - it's a tough marketplace and navigated it carefully, but now for it's easy for a broad range of real estate related businesses, and frankly, it's a little disorienting.
But not hard to understand for anyone with a basic understanding of economics - stick 500,000+ new people in a marketplace that only had 100 good homes to begin with, and really the real question is, where will prices plateau, since the imbalance is so extreme, and the buyers so motivated.
