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

From the moment I started learning about the PPP program, it was clear to anyone with real ear-to-the-ground positioning, this program was going to be a shit show.  The lack of complexity, speed, universal coverage were all elements that were going to make the program unstable.  Lending is a disciplined art, and this was like free-love mud-based body art.  Like I said a few weeks ago, small community banks succeeded in getting this money on the street quickly, and from the start I was concerned about a president who spent his life screwing banks now responsible for the health of small banks.

First, by design, the loans were available to any business that could attest to harm.  Very few businesses have not been harmed - it didn't say harmed 'a lot', or 'seriously harmed' or 'reporting less profit', or qualifying it in anyway.  The application was straight-forward.

2nd, it was clear that businesses of any size that were eligible AND had active banking relationships were going to get this money first.  I deal with my bankers everyday.  I knew who to call.  Also, I had great records and book-keeping, once again attesting to the fact that good books is the fundamental foundation of any business for a myriad of reasons.

3rd, the parameters of the loan - spend it in 8 weeks and spend 75% on payroll - makes sense in theory but not in reality.  Why would a restaurant keep employees when they are not allowed to be open?  The money is better used paying the bills due, so when the time comes to reopen, credit is good, and payables are manageable.  A horse stable with 20 horses will have more expense in horse feed and rent than payroll.  And why 8 weeks?  What happens then?  Artificially keeping employees to get a loan to pay for them?  Not the most sensical approach to self-preservation.  Many businesses will benefit, but as many will just be kicking the can down the road.

4th, the rules are changing, daily, with some weird 'self-policing' of who is and isn't supposed to get this money.

5th, the community banks who made these loans for very little money, did it because that's what they do - help communities - worked 24/7 to get money out the door, are now being told maybe they are responsible for auditing loans, for knowing 'who should have gotten money', and that even they may be responsible for bad loans, now that is absolutely crazy.  Any one who touches or impacts the health of community banks - who already are calculating their exposure in their small business loan portfolio - is creating a disaster of absolute epic proportions, since it's these banks that keep America running and make most of the very small loans that small businesses need - loans that are made based on character as much as credit history.  I know - I'm that story to a T.

How can't you be excited when you find your 20 year old copy of Paris Hilton's sex tape (CD actually).  Perversely, I'm listening to Taylor Swift's Reputation - it's not bad. I like her.

And one of the very first, if not the very first subdivisions I did - in Callicoon NY, up on Bayer Road.  I bought 30 acres of big view land from George B, who was an old timer who owned a dilapidated home.  He was a horse trainer at the Monticello race track - old school layered on old school.  When we were renovating the old house that came with the 30 acres, I found his smut stash - literally 60 magazines - Playboy, Oui, Pin-up and a bunch of other classics.  He was a real smut connoisseur.   The comical part of it, in the middle of the the 2 foot stack was a Playgirl - just testing it out I guess.  Good for him.  Eric G, I know you are blushing.

Anyways, my point is, besides my savings bonds and my Paris Hilton tape and few other bits of nostalgia, I came across this.   And you know what, the articles in Playboy are awesome.

I've been inspired by this pandemic.  I don't mean in a happy way, I just mean it's got my thinking juices flowing, and that gets my writing juices going, because at the root of it all, I'm a writer locked in a builder's body!  

That's not really true.  I like building - it's super challenging.  I think my energies are flowing because this pandemic is the real thing, and I think I have a good business mind and it is sparking a constant idea generation of what comes next, what come now, what comes longer term - I like the added risk element.  I'll tell you the least interesting time to be in business - boom times, when even the dumb prosper.  Give me some challenges to navigate.  I'm being facetious of course, but there is a grain of truth to it.

Let Construction Ignite the Rebound - lohud.com

What's Next for the Catskills : Boom or Bust- River Reporter

I can't decide how to feel about the future.  I'm getting such mixed signals.  We are busy as hell and people are calling and writing all day long.  And the stock market is stupid - I sold everything I had left today, after liquidating quite a bit at the beginning of the year, and then switching the remaining portfolio weight to a more conservative mix.  Now I'm out, except for my 529.  There just is zero reasons this market isn't going down.

The whole thing just feels like a little bit of denial, that the hope for a quick rebound is clouding decisions and people who haven't been harmed too much are searching for the buy in price and those who have been harmed/closed are banking on a quick rebound.  From a stock market perspective, all you got to do is study the market twists and turns of 1929 to understand how weird and deceptive it can be.  Up 1000%, drops 50%, up in the perfect dead cat bounce deception luring people back in, then a drop of 85% and 2 decades to return to breakeven.

I guess for me the risk is to be fooled by all the interest currently to ramp up production.  I'm just not sure how deep this goes, and how badly the banks get hit.

It's always fascinating, this lane of ours we operate in.  It's so narrow, but we mine it, harvest it, tend it, and it always produces our 8-16 homes a year from our resilient NYC buyers.  And in times like this, why not go with the guy whose been doing it for 20 years?  Why would you get involved with a company on their 3rd home, betting they won't be there when you need them in 2 years?  Tougher the times, the better we look.

Gotta get going - the oven timer is going off, and that means my 3 beers in the freezer are ready to come out.  But who am I kidding, I'm going to have a rye.

The real question is - how many people are, right now, cooling it with a drink, in a home from Catskill Farms, feeling safe and cozy?

Our simple homes put to classical music.  They are turning out great.

Videos -

Eldred is no metropolis, and Wurtsboro isn't either.  But Wurtsboro is so much more centrally located for the radius of our work, and as a bonus is 30 minutes closer to Amanda, our Queen of design and administration and coordination.

Wurtsboro and the Rt 209 corridor is cool for a history buff like me because it runs parallel to the old D&H Canal system that moved product from Honesdale PA to Kingston NY and off to the Hudson River.  An insane man over nature, commerce at all costs effort of the 1820-1850's.  And by the time it was built and served a few years, it was outdated and being phased out by the train, a much quicker mode.  

I've kept a box - one I'm always concerned about where it is and what is in it - that I find on occasion as I clean out a closet and/or move.  I've lived a zig zaggy life so it's interesting to see what I have kept over the years.  It's not much, when you come down to it, but it's a good snapshot.

First, I have these US Bonds from the 80's and 90's that I'm most impressed I still have considering it's just a little envelope.   Mostly from my Mom, but one from my baseball coach back in 1982 when I played on an awesome little league baseball team.  I guess the idea is you buy them for half the face value, hold them for 30 years, and get face value plus.  Serious dough.  I'm going to give them to Lucas for his savings and chores account.

Take the time to turn your head for this one.  A note from a neighbor of property I owned in Lancaster PA.   He's complaining about the loud sex of my tenants.  Funny he didn't identify himself since it was clear who it was.  I think there was a followup letter to0.

Not great pictures, but a snap shot of the new digs.  There's 4 of us in the office and the dog.  The move went pretty well - big items on Monday, comps and printers tuesday, phones on Wednesday.

A shocking thing was discovered as we transferred our computers.  Through some oversight on the tech company's part, we hadn't been backing up our info since 2018, and when they went to transfer the data of the hard-drive, it failed.  The tech spent the night trying to remove the data, a lot of data, our entire business on one little hard-drive, that wasn't backed up and was now failing; I spent the night worried.

But they got it working and transferred.  I think what shook me up the most was the idea that this tech company failed to do it's most basic job - protect our data - while otherwise doing a great job keeping us up and running on a daily basis.  Because they did such a great job, we never would have considered they were failing to back up our data.

The Monday morning quarterbacking is easy, and how to prevent it from ever happening again is easy to engineer - but the idea that a trusted vendor couldn't be trusted to do their fundamental job without our oversight reminded me how there is only one person who really cares about thinking all these risks thru, and that is me, the Owner.  How many people have been put out of business or set back many years by a careless or dishonest vendor, employee or resource?

I do a walk with my dog most nights and recently I've been meeting up with a neighbor - A Father at the local Episcopal Church - and he noted losing your life's work like that is very much how someone feels after a fire.  I think that was a good analogy.