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

The amount of baloney I save my clients from is pretty significant.  They really have no idea the brain damage I take on their behalf, protect them from phony contractors, misguided utility advice, long way around simple problems.  After I dropped Caroline Akt from my brokerage, I had to finish up like 8 of her deals, and I'm always amazed at how easy repping real estate is compared to what we do.  I mean, what we do is tough, and half the time clients are upset at a crooked outlet, and other times I broker a simple piece of real estate (as opposed to what we do at Catskill Farms, which is find land, buy it, develop it, design it, drill wells, clear land, pair it with an owner, get it financed, etc... - it's hard), and I'll go broker a simple piece of real estate and people think I'm a hero.  It's just two different universes, in terms of complexity and difficulty, and client expectations.

Here's what greeted me at my small project in Saugerties NY - now mind you, I did what no builder has ever done before, which was write a letter to all 30 homeowners along this street we are building warning them about construction traffic and to be a little more careful with my personal cell phone, and I also posted these signs to keep reminding my team to keep it slow.  So someone scratched in some alt words and now it reads 'Report Chuck, Crimes against Nature".

SERIOUSLY!  7am.  I'm still laughing at the absurdity of it, since whoever wrote clearly owns a home, has cleared trees, etc...  I mean, I've been slapped around enough over the last month, that this was a bit of levity.

And then this - I'm trying to hire a project super for some work in Sullivan County, so this guy responds and I decide to meet him at a project and I can't get a word in edgewise, then he starts talking covid and fake stats, etc... and I say what I think is pretty nicely, "I'm not really interested in talking about that'. and he starts going off about this and that and says "I knew when you wouldn't shake me hand..." storms out of the building, blares out my driveway with a bunch of 'fucks' and 'you' and horn honks, etc... and completes it with this text

"I will blast u in the internet  you asshole, like I already heard

Fuck u"

Like I said, I protect my clients from a lot of this insanity.  But it's what I navigate to get stuff done.  For nearly 20 years.

Here's a farmhouse in Narrowsburg - in contract.

Mini-barn in Narrowsburg, under contract.

Converted and retrofitted 1931 Community Hall in Phoenixville PA, into a single family residence.

Barn something or another in Saugerties NY, under contract.

Lot clearing in Saugerties.  Don't ask, Under Contract.

Ranch house in Saugerties, Under Contract.

Ranch in Kerhonkson.  Under Contract.

Lil' Farm in Olivebridge NY.  Contract, under.

Me modeling a rain jacket I borrowed from my electrician and failed to give back and now it was raining so I sent a pic to rub it in just for fun.  I love my Vineyard Vines shorts with a bulldog surfing.  I actually wear them too much.

Dredging a pond and prepping for a house build.  Under contract.

Ranch in Kerhonkson. Under contract.

Farmhouse in Saugerties.  Under contract.

Barn in Kerhonkson, Under Contract.

Actually, maybe the guy has a point.  I am a nature menace.   But really, aren't we all?

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I'm a thinker, I like to toss things around, look at it from several angles, learn, teach, etc...  I think the ability to put the shoe on the other foot accurately gives me a real advantage.  I don't always wear that shoe in order to empathize or accomodate.  Many times the ability allows me find common ground.  Many times the ability allows me to navigate the path I've set more effectively.  But truly, there are few situations anymore where I can't at least predict accurately one of the several paths the other person may take to my actions.

To do so takes several skills - 1, you really do have to self-acknowledge that not all your actions are beneficent and altruistic - some actions as a businessperson, perhaps most, are selfish.  You have to be selfish, for yourself, your clients, your employees, your vendors, etc...  2, you have to acknowledge that priorities among the players of any situation have competing interests, so the ability to navigate your own self-interest while toeing a line of ethical consistency, is important, at least to me.

Which, hilariously, brings us to Caroline Akt's confusion at my irritation at her actions.   She seems to be of the opposite ilk, having no ability to see her actions from my perspective.  For instance, let's look at her actions, over the last 12 months.

• Her goal is to be her own broker as soon as possible -

• Which means -

• She has to be an agent under a broker for an absolute minimum of 2 years.
• She has to achieve 4000 transaction points, defined by the State, of successfully completing xxx amount of transactions
• She has to take her broker's class
• She has to pass her broker's exam
• She needs her federal tax ID
• And she needs a building/space of some sort.

So, it's easy to see, from my perspective, how completing each of these tasks took an immense amount of work and concentration, and since we talked nearly every day, it also took a lot of deception, not to mention the all-consuming exercise and goals inherent therein.

I mean, basically, in order to stay with my agency, get her 4000 points, leverage my wide-ranging marketing programs to build her book of business, get her points, get her 2 years in, she was operating like a spy, where every action had an ulterior motive, not for a week, or month, but possibly for 2 years.  And I considered ourselves friends.

But let's take it one step further.  Her proposal, with a straight face, was that she would represent both her new business clients, as well as mine, divining some new alchemist way of figuring out whose marketing brought which client in the door.  It was, at that point, a real eye-opener for me, that I took this person and turned her into a real estate starlet in 2 years.  She might have fucked me in the end, but that in no way diminishes the skill of taking her from point A to point B successfully, quickly.  My thought, under my daily guidance, is she is one of the best agents in SuCo.  I don't believe its as true when she is out there on her own, making judgment calls about clients, marketing, and deals.

I've done it a lot.  Here in Sullivan County.  Land of the uninspired labor force.  Scouted, hired, managed, grew, cultivated, harvested many seeds of talent into fully viable crops of production, helping to build my business, and helping them have a real life, with savings, and retirement, and vacation, and stability.  It's no small feat, and I fail at it more than I succeed, but when I win with a hire, it's worth 100 fails.

Now, lets be straight here, I'm no marshmallow - I get it, and wish anyone in business well, since it's not easy, but my point here, of this post, is to demonstrate a blind spot that threatens a lot of businesspeople's chances of success - this won't be the last time she has to see a situation from another's perspective to navigate a situation, and judging from this and many others in her past, it's a bridge too far.

Basically, my takeaway, and it's nothing new, is you have to be able to clearly see the other viewpoint, if for no other reason, so you can successfully navigate your course with the current, around it, over it, through it.  Misguided navigation is the real threat here, more so than the actual issue resolution.

When you get right down to it, Lazy Meadows Realty is not a great source of my yearly income.  It's like an annuity - pays regularly.  I'm always amazed at how hard it actually is to make real money as a real estate salesperson/broker.  And the business makes perfect sense for me because so many people come to Catskill Farms through its marketing that we can't service because it's not a great fit, so we flip them to an agency that can be more wide-ranging with its services instead of just turning them away.

But like all issues that come across my desk (or more accurately, slap me across my face in case I wasn't paying attention), it needs to be solved.  One way to solve it, since we are so busy, is to just let Lazy Meadows lay dormant until I have more bandwidth.  It is still a great tool for me to market my properties and allows me to participate in the MLS.  But no, that's not our plan.  I pivoted, in the midst of the chaos, and was lucky to lasso Sir Richard Dalton into the mix as our new agent du jour.  What's fun about that is Richard and his wife Angie were my very first new home clients back in 2003, a home they still own and now reside in full time I believe.  So I discard from my life an excavator's wife of unsound moral bearings and weird world views and replace it with a sophisticated relationship of 15 years.  That's progress, and what I meant by yesterday's post about finding a new lane in the fog of chaos.

As a small business person, my life has lacked clarity, certainty, for 20 years, so I'm comfortable with unsound ground and hopping across the rocks of a swiftly moving current.  I forget most times that most people are not at all comfortable with uncertainly many times less.  I think of all the insight I have into things, this fundamental daily existence variance, where I underestimate just how stable and clear and well-planned most people's lives are, is probably my biggest blind spot, since I've never had it, and now that I'm getting it, it almost feels like I'm cheating.

So '"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."  

(I dont know why when i post from web it acts all funny with highlighted text blocks, etc...)

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Would anyone argue if I said that we've taken the Chinese of 'wish for an interesting life' too far?   Seriously.  

A real life experience: My friend Leo in Nortbern California, married, 18 year old daughter.  

So his daughter is going to Bard, expensive, private.  She had to/is quarantining for 14 days in a crappy hotel.  Then released to campus, for who knows how long.  What is certain is if campus doesn't stay open, Bard won't be refunding much of that $70k.

Leo, lives in an area north of San Francisco.  Just evacuated with his wife.  In his VW 1984 Bus; he quotes, " I never expected to want the same thing - VW Bus - as much at 50 yrs old as 18 year old'.  From a huge fire appearing unexpectedly near Santa Rosa, which was the scene of a huge fire a few years ago.  So, he's on the road, in his VW bus, newly emptied nest, taking nomadic photos of the hazed-in sun from the smoke of the fires.  Beautiful, if it's only impact was for the eye, and not on tens of thousands of lives.

What was pretty...

Turned smoky and scary.  North of SF somewhere.

For me, and others I'm sure, this is the Year of the Black Swan, the phrase used to describe an unexpected event with society-wide impacts.  It's what happens when everything is going good, defenses are down, chickens being counted before and during hatching.

We had the Virus, whose impact has been dramatic, across the board.  As a parent, seeing a kid lose 4 months of their youth - no school, no sports, a bit isolated - that's no fun even if money's not a problem.  Now sending them back into the abyss as school starts up next week, trying to decide if isolation and shitty academics is an equal trade with their health and safety.  I think I'd be less inclined to send them back if I didn't watch a little league league have a great summer of games.  Hundreds of kids at our little ball park, decided 2 months late to play the season, and played 3-4 nights a week for the last 6 weeks.  We didn't let Lucas play - he wanted to play lacrosse anyways - because back in late May things were still pretty hairy, but in retrospect, a lot of kids used that league as a real life saver for the summer - and zero persons got sick.  Zero.  So we worried that school would be the same way - we take the side of precaution, then it all turns out fine, and he misses something he wouldn't have.  

That said, we are preparing for a shutdown, and this year if it happens we will definitely be prepared, meaning mostly, gather some kids each day to study and learn together from the zoom classes, forced to get up, get dressed, add some structure, and lessen the isolation.  I guess this is what they are calling 'learning pods' except ours won't be high-end, just kids hangin' learning together, having lunch and recess, etc...  Still, no sports, no this, no that.  Gets old.

My primary lead man carpenter in Ulster County learned in Mid-July his 10 year old daughter has I guess what they are calling brain cancer, that has spread to the spine.  So she's been in the hospital since the moment they found it, and he's been off work without working 5 of the last 6 weeks.  That is an incredible disruption to our best laid plans - I don't mean 'delay disruption' to the clients who read this, I mean more like everyone's job is different now, as we rearrange the pieces on the chessboard.  More chance for error, more chance for expensive mis-fires, more chance for employees getting overworked.  This synchronized exactly with us signing up a dozen new clients and we were ready to blaze away.  We subcontract a lot of our work out, but it still hurts.  That's professionally.  Personally, every single member of our team has a heavier step because of it, as a friend and co-worker goes through I guess what could be safely called the worst thing a parent can go through.

On the Lazy Meadows Real Estate side of things, where I help my existing homeowners resell their homes when that day comes, and also help families who inquiry with Catskill Farms but don't quite fit with what we offer, my one and only agent Caroline Akt springs it on me that she has been planning for 6 months to launch her own shop.   She has her office set up, she has her broker's license, she has her fed/state tax ID.  Which is fine, but since I mentored her, trained her, introduced her to my 2 decades of top-tier relationships, taught her how to speak not as an excavator's wife but as a high-end salesperson, passed 100% of the leads that came through the door to her, one would've hoped for a more proper notice, since she knew as well as I did her actions would literally shut the door on Lazy Meadows' efforts until I could find an agent, which is like saying 'until I do the impossible'.  Disloyalty, dishonesty and treachery.  Now, don't get me wrong, I know this happens all the time, but since we are such a small shop, it's impact, and the awareness of the impact, is what stings, since that's just bad business.

It reminds me when Henning Nordanger of Hennings Local restaurant worked for me as a carpenter.  He was earning a good wage, but more than that he met Larry who worked for me, and Brian, who worked for me, and between the 3 of them they launched an idea to start a restaurant, used most of my employees at night to get it up and running and then, in order to launch, stole my primary lead carpenter to help open his business.

What gets me over and over in these situations is just the lack of proper procedure - why not say 'thank you, here's what we are doing, don't want to blindside you', instead, it's always just the opposite, where I'm viewed as so successful that to use me as a springboard, and take whatever is needed to get it done, is fair game.

2 problems with that - 1, I'm not THAT successful, and 2, if I am, the team I assembled has come through blood sweat and tears, so it's personal.   And 3rd, even though I said 2, it's just low class.  But what should expect when I live and work in the 2nd poorest county in NY State.  That means a lot of more than you might think when it comes to situations like this - though, that's not fair to all the local rednecks, since Henning is from Norway or something.  I guess it's just that people's dreams blind them to their own actions, and they mistakenly think taking the short-cut, or failing to pay your respects to your building blocks, is the best way forward.  Maybe, but maybe not.  I think the single most important attribute I have as a business person is the ability to read the room, not so I can take advantage of it, but so I can strike a balance in it.

Then of course, my website was deleted.  Gone, and I'm probably 50 hours into a new one.

Lumber prices are up nearly 75% since February. See here for an illustration that brings it home clear, so now I'm forced to have 15 conversations with homeowners about this pricing that I have no choice but to pass along, since there ain't no way I'm eating $150k of lumber increases while I'm building homes for people to feel safe in.  I'd rather go on vacation.

I'm doing a 3 lot subdivision in Phoenixville, PA, whose rental income should come in handy over the next 2 decades.  Great area.  This conversion from 1930's community hall to 4 bedroom single family residence turned out great.

Thing about it though, all these distractions in no way lessen the day to day obligation we have to our clients, past and present.  Obligations which are serious, large in volume and demanding of our full attention.  Nor does it relieve us of the obligations of running a business, managing cash flow, insurance, employees, taxes, mortgages, and the hundreds of daily tasks that result from living in the fast lane.

So what is one to do when you are supposed to a rock star, but your band is breaking up?  Like you've done since you strung the guitar for the first time - reinvent, reimagine, refocus and reenvision how you get here to there.  I've learned this many times, but no better time to improve your business than when it is going through unexpected trials - embrace the chaos, reorganize, and take chances you wouldn't have when everything is going smooth and you don't want to upset the apple cart.  Status quo is good, smooth sailing is good, until it isn't, and then you want a leader who has been tested at the helm so you can may be steer into the waves as opposed to trying to run from them, or duck and hide.

Consider, confront, solve, act. Too bad that doesn't work out to some sort of acronym that I could use going forward.

I'm a big news guy.  Less TV news than newspaper and digital, but since the Plague started, I've been ramping up on my news, and have settled into CNN, which evolved into a crush on New Day's host Alisyn Camerota.    Today was her first day back in the Studio since the pandemic started, and you could tell she was a little more made up and polished with the professionals on staff.

Then it turns out one of my client couples who we are building a home with, who I had the unenviable fun task of communicating the lumber inflation issue to, turns out the wife of the team is an executive producer there.  So, of course, I'm immediately thinking about angling for a meet and greet with Ms Camerota, but then, in a moment of rare insight, I know I'd flub it up, tongue-twisted, nothing to say, so I let the thought pass unspoken.  But who knows, maybe some day at the White House Correspondent Dinner I'll be sitting right there.    Then it turns out their neighbor who I am building a home for is an executive producer for 60 Minutes.My 11 year old 84 lb 5'3" son gets a real kick out of telling the story about how my one girlfriend after we parted moved to California, like somehow the events were related.  

So, as I was dreaming, I was also making my way through Norman Mailer's Harlot's Ghost, a 1300 page book about the 50's and 60's CIA scene at the beginning of the Castro area, Bay of Pigs, Marilyn Monroe death (who he might have been married to), JFK death.  A meandering, sort of pointless book that kept my attention throughout.  I'm not sure when I started, I'm sure I blogged about it prior, but now I'm finished.  I might move onto another of his, maybe the Executioner's Song, which I remember running as a mini-series in the mid-70's on one of the 3 networks.  The book was sort of so well crafted that it's meandering nature with non-finite alleyways almost makes me wonder if that was the point, that spy work is meandering, many times pointless, and hardly tangible.

On Friday I wrote a blog message about lumber inflation, which is real and scary.  Scary because it was scary in the way empty shelves at the grocery store was scary 3 months ago - it was as much and more scary because it indicated that the future is uncertain, and what is around the corner of disruption is unknown.  Confusing sentence but I'm keeping it.

It's scary for as much as what it may forecast than for the actual event.

So anytime my lumber guy calls me up, it's never for good news, because good news just goes to the rest of the team, usually in the way of deliveries, shipments, availability, etc...  He calls me up when there is an issue, and this issue turns out, he says, lumber is up 25% and still going, which I wrote about Friday, since it was such an unprecedented event and that's what this blog is for.

So, I dug into it Saturday morning while the kid was sleeping and found out that 25% is the minimum prices have risen, and 35%, 45% in some products like plywood were evident, and that's to me, one of their larger customers, god knows what the small fries are encountering.  So far, no disruption in the products that are needed, but plenty of scarcity on the fringes and margins of what is necessary and you have to wonder when the item you need won't be available, things you take for granted like a 2x10x14 flooring joist (yes, i know, all the ladies are crooning over my lumber talk).  The whole pandemic benefits from a steady hand at the helm for sure.

The new website is coming along nicely, but a ton of work, needing a time investment I don't have but have to invest.  Also developing a nice lawsuit against https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesscoburn Jess Coburn of Applied Innovations for his negligence.   It's funny how many companies/people have nice website, but not necessarily ones that live and breath the air of the company, and have sailed the business seas with me, the proprietor.  Not the best site, didn't work on great on mobile, was sort of backward in the backend (that's what she said), but it was a real live digital partner in my 2 decade journey.  It was recognizable and stable, 2 hard to find friends in the lively course of business building.  It's like this Jess Coburn tossed a digital match my way and watched my life's work burn.

I'm actually getting over it - I'm on like 'Depression' on the 7 stages of grief, which leaves me with just 'testing' and then the grand daddy 'acceptance'.  Which would be fine, but the 'no time, no capacity' thing makes it harder.

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