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

Our ability to produce and deliver homes is frankly unparalleled in the region.  The combination of office, project management, cash flow, skilled labor, thoughtful subcontractors, lending relationships, and municipal relationships create a delivery schedule that is averaging more than 1 a month for years.

We have some competition out there, but if you add it all together - all the various companies doing new work (half of them just copying our work and confusing the marketplace with similar marketing, language, etc...) - they aren't putting out half the homes we do in a given year.  And not 'a given year', but year after year, and now we are starting to talk about decade after decade.

Now, this isn't to brag, though I'm not against bragging if you got the goods.  It's just an achievement that 1, I'm extremely proud of, and 2, was not easy.  There is nothing harder than putting together a team in the Catskills, where every level of labor supply is shallow - be project management, book-keeper, lead carpenter or clean up guy.  And revert to the last blog post about the efforts I've made to retain help once I find it, with perks and benefits typically not offered in our industry and area.

I was listening to a podcast yesterday - I'm on a run of 'enthusiasm renewal' -reading lots of biographies on people (mostly businesspeople), pod casts on management and entrepreneurism - and the one guy was saying about employee retainage - 'people don't leave companies, they leave leaders'.  I agree with that.  The better I get at my job of communicating and setting out an organized vision that is adapted to the strengths of my employees, the longer they stick around.

So we delivery another finished home, on budget, ahead of schedule, and now another young family - I think a doctor, wife and 2 kids this time - are experiencing the joys of upstate, with its wide open spaces, makers, and things to do.

Ranch 30 - in the flesh.  Ulster County NY Real Estate at its finest.

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Sold a house today, the last of 4 in a small 4 lot Stone Ridge - Kingston area project.  I picked up the land not so long ago.  The project had some complexities, some risk but we pulled it off.  I think a total of $2.3m of real estate total sold.  Out of nothing came something.  I'm not sure, but I think 3 of the 4 started out as a spec homes, ie, without a prearranged buyer.  Thanks Jeff Bank, though at this point I'm using a lot of my own equity.

Catskill Farms offers both a 401k matching plan and a yearly profit share plan, two benefits mostly unheard of in our industry in our area, and actually, in most business in our area.  We started ours 5 years ago on the advice of our accountant at the time and now I think we have $700k of investment and gains in our company-managed plan.  We match 100% of employees contributions up to 3% of their salary, and 50% from 3-5% of their salary.  Yearly profit shares average around $3k.  Add in holidays, bonuses, vacations, workers comp, etc... and you need to be a healthy well-run company indeed in order to implement and continue to fund these benefits.  And is there anything worse than taking back what you once offered?

These programs have enabled us to retain employees, without a doubt, and retaining employees helps you grow, or at least maintain or improve efficiency, which should offset some or all of the costs of the program.   While hard to quantify and calculate, I would agree that 1, these programs have enabled our employees to sustain and improve their family's stability, and 2, thus in turn have helped us keep these employees.  Just had a meeting the other day with a lead crew member, and his package topped out at $113,000, and included base pay, overtime, nearly 3 weeks vacation, 24/7 use of a truck I purchased for him, 401k matches, profit share, health care share.  It's a real job.  The non-salary benefits cost Catskill Farms $120k in 2019.

Another neat thing about the program is the benefit to the small business owner. My maximums are higher, my profit share is bigger.  It's a super intelligent gov't run program that works, and I think it works well because it is based on 'work'.  It's not a handout, a disability, a welfare, it's not a VA loan with high costs - all programs with good intentions that muddle through the fraud and grey areas with unclear tally of good vs harm.  The 401k program, and the related Safe Harbor program for small businesses, that are really well-designed and work just as they were intended, motivating people to save for retirement by appealing to the self-interest of a business-owner, and using the tax code for the benefit of working people.

Down in Miami Beach again.  They are getting ready for the Super Bowl.

And since this is a business blog and not a 'eat my shorts I'm in South Beach' blog, a token house picture of a fantastic home in Narrowsburg that is making good progress seems in order.

I bought 4 building lots at the end of an abandoned cul de sac a little over a year ago, and now here we are, just about finished building it out, and successfully selling all 4.  Finally, after years of effort, I've been able to stack the team with enough all stars to run two independent crews, one in Sullivan County and one in Ulster.  This has enabled each team to stay focused on the project at hand and not bounce around from job to job, emergency to emergency.  This has allowed for better quality control, and less stress, as the jobs are manned each day, and there is a sense of ownership on each specific job by a crew leader, and the responsibility therein.

Of all the things I've achieved over the years, the team I've assembled at this moment in time is top notch.  It's always been good, but this one really rocks in ways that were missing before, be it accounting, book-keeping, or site management.

This rejiggered organization of labor allowed us to power through 2 homes in Olivebridge and now 4 homes in Stone Ridge.  Stone Ridge isn't the easiest place to build, with a stringent building department and a part-time inspector, a mix that can create a slow administrative process.  But we figured out their sweet spot and made it happen, developing and building out $2.5m of new construction, all sold or under contract.

The stories of each home owner, and how they found us, and what they considered before us is telling and individual but contain many common threads and strains.

Barn 33's owner went through more trials than most.  They shopped and bid on a farmhouse on Dawson Lane in early 2018, then they went the whole way to a last and best bid process on the FourSquare in Olivebridge.  After not getting that house, we found them a new piece of land, and built them exactly what they wanted, in record time.  Now they own it, and are spending weekends there.

More picture can be found on our website at CatskillFarms.com - Barn 33.

From Maureen Hoch, Editor, HBR.org  |  January 3, 2020  In my last email to you, I asked for input on what’s on your mind, workwise, as we begin 2020. Flexibility was a big theme in the responses I received. First, you want to know how to plan your career beyond retirement. It sounds like many of you want to keep working, just not in a full-time, all-consuming kind of job. I also heard about wanting advice on managing younger workers who prefer a portfolio of part-time roles over a traditional, full-time job. An interesting twist on the same topic! We will be thinking about more ways to cover this challenge from both angles. As we kick off the new year, I also find myself wrestling with two competing impulses. Like many of you, I’m thinking about how I want to grow and change. To start, I want to deepen my skills this year around motivating my employees and giving them the kind of purpose that makes coming to work about more than just the next rung on the ladder. I’m also thinking about how we spot new ideas and grow. That can take so many different shapes, depending on whether you’re anentrepreneur, or whether you’re figuring out how your company competes in our age of artificial intelligence, or whether you simply have to demonstrate your own strategic-thinking skills. I’m also trying to be conscious that we’re not simply practicing “innovation theater,” which won’t move the needle. But as I’m setting these goals, I also find myself feeling skeptical about the pressure we feel to rededicate and reinvent ourselves each January when it comes to our careers. After all, too much passion about work can also lead to burnout. So let’s resolve to keep learning and growing, but remind ourselves that not everything has to be about rigorous self-improvement. Sometimes we just need a dose of self-awareness, a willingness to express gratitude to others, and moment to pause and remember what we already do well. Thanks for reading and Happy New Year,
Maureen