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

Well, another year and another 15 houses or so. This was our second year for our famous party- and I kept saying the same dumb thing when people came in - "I got 4 words for you," I'd say, slurring a little more each hour - "Free food, free drinks". That's Deb from our amazing book-keeper with Wayne and George from Jeff Bank, who has been powering Catskill Farms with our financing since the very beginning in 2003. I didn't realize it, but this was our 10th year in business - true, the first year or two did not have a whole lot of excitement attached unless you count the thrill of sinking deeper into to debt, the excitement of unfunded ambitions and the sensation of sinking into a hole of no return. By 2003 we had started Farm #1, by June of 2004, we had finished it and sold it. Took a little while for sure to get that one off the balance sheet. Here's Melissa - co-proprietor of Baker's Tap Room II- in Yulan, NY. A little out of focus but you get the idea.

And the big hitters from Pro-Build, Jeff Bank and Ulster Savings Bank.

Shane, the other half of the proprietor team.

And my take-home stash - a fancy watch, antique typewriter, bunch of booze and a signed copy of Peter Peterson's memoir. Mr Peterson is the co-founder of the BlackStone Group and former Secretary of Commerce, and is the direct boss of my good friend Deb from Cottage 14 fame.

Well, the party was bigger than these pics show, but I Got a big problem, at least it seems big at the moment - and that is my blogger thing just alerted me that my blogging memory is all filled up - 4 years of thoughts and occasional strokes of genius - hitting a wall of memory restriction. Now I got another thing to figure out - but judging from our track record, should be able to hurdle it 'fore too long.

My entrance into the Ulster County real estate market has been a huge success to date. We are building Farm 17 (picture below) which is set to sell in a month, and we have just finished Cottage 37, which is set to sell the first week of January. One of my too-often-repeated is that I came to Woodstock and Saugerties, and sold $1,000,000 of real estate myself before I even knew where the grocery store was. Above is a picture of my new BFF. Her name is Joan and she owns Coldwell Banker Village Green Real Estate, which owns 30% market share in Ulster County. She started out, on her own, in the early 90's and has now built a real estate business with more than a 1/2 dozen offices in towns like New Paltz, Windam, Woodstock, Stone Ridge, etc... She has completely embraced us a business.

You got to remember the lack of support I've experienced in Sullivan County when I was just getting started to really understand how much I appreciate her efforts for us thus far. In Sullivan I was never offered open houses, no marketing money, no marketing strategies, no special treatment even as we exploded with creativity and sales. I not talking down about Sullivan - damn, I love this county, and love what it has provided me and what I have given back to her - but it was determined effort, a lonely effort. As an entrepreneur who specializes in making lemonade out of lemons, the lack of marketing strategy support forced us to become our own best salespeople, since I knew our homes were a viable product and idea in the marketplace. the lack of support forced Catskill Farms to become serious marketeers, and it turned out we had a real knack for it, and it wasn't too long after that our sales doubled, then tripled, then quadrupled, and maybe we pay one sales commission a year over here. We do our sales ourselves - Actually, we do everything ourselves - we buy land, we develop land, we design homes, we build homes and we sell homes.

But now that we hope to get started in Ulster County, while building the same amount of homes in Sullivan. And we've been welcomed in Ulster with open arms - which we should, cause christ, give me a break, we are a big deal and are totally capable of making people some serious dough. But the contrast, the tale of two counties from our vantage, could not be more different. Joan, the owner, who has 60+ agents, administrators, helpers and assistants, yet there she was, in the pouring down rain, putting up direction signs, carrying in bottles of wine, orchestrating a very well-attended open house - even more impressive considering the house is kind of 'out there' and the weather sucked - it poured all day long.

You got to understand - I've sold 100 homes in Sullivan, invested $32,000,000 in this community and not an open house or realtor sponsored event ever. Oh well, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and we are strong strong strong.

A catered event at our finished Cottage 37, so show the local real estate pros what we do, and how it feels up close and personal.

It wasn't long before the whole place was packed with women - that Joan likes to surround herself with accomplished women, for sure. Nary a man in sight. And everyone was so happy to see each other. It was kind of amazing and you could see why she is so successful - people enjoy working for her.

And another bad 'one-liner' I like to use is 'our homes are so finished at the end of the job that even the clocks on the appliances are set correctly!" Oh well, not everyone can be David Cross.

And then Farm 17, and my new Jeep Grand Cherokee ride (thanks to our 14 new 2011 clients for helping out with that).

Just got a great big super classy gift basket from Region General Store from Matthew and Sarah of Cottage 36.

It's all coming together so nicely it almost brings tears to my eyes. I said almost.

I'm not the first one to point this out, nor is this the first time I've pointed it out - but to all the readers of this blog, be sure you use your buying power to shop local. It can't be overstated how each and every dollar spent locally not only helps the small businessperson, but the area as a whole. So, if you are gonna drop some coin, drop it up here. I'm sure they do mail order for those readers not nearby. Successful small business is an integral ingredient to vibrant small towns, and a great compliment to what Catskill Farms does. Here are my Favorites, but by no means exclusive- Region General Store, Barryville. River Gallery, Narrowsburg. Global Home, Jeffersonville. Also, the main streets in Narrowsburg and Jeffersonville and Callicoon are filled with little shops and stores to peruse and shop. Enjoy.

One of my favorite customers, who bought Cottage 6 way back in like 2008 is David Cross. I throw his name around when I'm showing prospective customers around more often than proper or seemly. Then I follow it up with 'what about Gavin McInnes? And Albert Hammond Jr?" I always get the appropriate and due respect following. Well, David strikes again I found out when I went to see the new Muppet Movie with Lucas over the weekend. David plays the wicked agent or something like that, and puts on a pretty good show. Thing is, back in 2008, when his East Village type fans were giving him a hard time for doing Chipmunks 1, he really threw us a bone by saying he needed the money for his 'catskill cabin'.

But you know, life really never lets up, and the next year there's the landscaping project (and Chipmunks 2), and the next year is the house in Costa Rica (Chipmunks 3), the next year was face lift and botox (Chipmunks 4), the next year was to hire a lawyer to fight about the profit and loss accounting from Chipmunks 1 and 2 (Chipmunks 5), and then the grand-daddy and probably the motivation for his participation in this sequel - besides the obvious geniousness of it - was his engagement to Amber (Chipmunks 6). Her rock is HUGE. Bigger than a chipmunk. I had a lot of appointments over the weekend. A lot of appointments. 4 on Saturday, and 2 on Sunday. And all real live buyers. We ended up selling Farm 18 and getting an offer on the Shack, which we are negotiating forthwith. I snapped some photos to show off our fans - Chad and Tiffany, potters, love the area, and love the Shack!

Doug and his wife, just married for 6 months, came up from the Queens and really liked Cottage 35. Doug works in theater tickets sales.

I doubled them up on the tour with Matt and his wife from North Carolina - they just got married as well 6 months ago. He's in finance, she's a kindergarten teacher.

And Jamie and Terry, tech whizzes from the west coast rolled up in their fancy ride (actually, everyone had fancy rides), and fell head over heels for Farm 18. Came and saw it again in the morning and the rest is real estate history. The deposit check is in the mail. Janice, turn the listing sign to 'under contract' please.

Farm 18 is a real beauty and is modeled after Farm 1, our very first 2003 creation. Tons of porch and a great floor plan - it's 400 ft smaller than the original, coming in at 1500 sq ft, 3 bedrooms and 2 baths.

And here's one of our outbuildings the New York Times made famous last week. For all you SEO gurus, I'm sure you will sinfully covet that hyperlink they provided directly to our website. Hello organic search engine results!!

Jamie and Kerry brought along their pretty cool English Spaniel who acted very put off she had to sit in the back of my new car (in the cargo area - it has carpet, even!), and specialized in the 'old sad eyes'.

Sunday was another big day, hangin' with Lucas, and having the Farm 18 deal meeting at 10, then a scheduled appointment at 11 with two 'wished to remain anonymous' folks - very a-list movie star of them. So we go traveling around, knocking on the doors of the homes we just completed, surprising the occupants for sure I'm certain. But what the hay, when they were buying we did the same to some other poor unsuspecting homeowners. The one house I don't do it to is Gavin's house (the founder of Vice), cause that guy is just too crazy and I have no idea what he will do or say, except that it will be wholly inappropriate and counter to the picture I'm trying to paint.

Joe and Katie at Farm 16 have some little girls that Lucas was impressing with his dinosaur knowledge and noises, so I just left him there and continued the tour down the street. I picked him up an hour later to a bunch of protest, etc...

All in all, a pretty fab weekend, and I hate the term 'fab'. 6 meetings, 2 offers, 1 accepted deal and I met, like always, a ton of great people. For 2012, we have two deals set to close in January, we have 2 other deals entering contract, we have a spec house cottage going up in Stone Ridge, starting tomorrow. Plus we got Barn 5 under way, and we have the Big Barn going as well. With any luck, we just might make it through another year.