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

USA Today picked up a story from Builder Magazine, so here you go.Catskill Farms kickin' it, big time, recession-free style.

Cottage 33, a presold 960 sq ft mini-cottage. We have started 3 new homes in the last 8 days. Hey, why not, it's just the biggest gosh darn economic depression most of us have ever seen. I'm convinced that I need to start a support group for small business owners. Maybe I'm genetically pre-inclined to wear a skirt in such matters, but I swear the constant challenges thrown our way are difficult to manage. Whether it be our design team, our development team, our construction team or our organic spray foam team, it's like a day in day out battle against forward-like progress. Worse, I have found, is to surround yourself with competent, or worse yet, uber-competent people, since then the forward progress becomes accelerated, and the decisions and signatures and directional maneuvers become a daily cascade and bombardment of progress opportunities. When lacking staff, or retaining incompetence, forward making progress is limited by their talents, but all of a sudden putting some real good fits into the right places and the business can zoom ahead, and plans that were on the chalkboard all of a sudden become doable and actionable, and then all of a sudden the rubber hits the pavements and you are wondering whether all the daydreaming is actually a good real life opportunity but it's too late because the deposit check is sent and cashed, the application completed, the contest entered - and then truly in a surprising moment, you wonder if incompetence didn't keep you from moving too quickly in tempting but dubious directions, keeping danger at bay through lack of time and inertia. Then down the road is our next 723 sq ft micro cottage. We aimed for a 400 sq ft shack but it ran up against the local zoning floor of 720 sq ft, so instead of 'fighting the man' (most who probably live in 500 sq ft trailers), I just stayed above the minimum. One thing I've learned to accept is to avoid locked and closed doors - find one that's open - there's plenty of them - don't try to pick a lock. Move to the open door. I guess that' the same as saying 'pick your battles carefully.'

And here's an unsold beauty - Cottage 29, just finishing up. It's sweeeeeeeeeet.

Henning and Edwin, two great guys and carpenters, taking a quick lunch before returning to the final details of a perfect sweet cute cuddly little cottage.

And our top-notch cleaning crew. This is a pretty good example of our efforts - we clean our homes not once, not twice, but three times before we hand the home off to the clients. The first clean is just before we start the final push, just to get everything to the next level, the next clean is right before the painter is coming in for his next to last touch-up phase so he doesn't have to deal with dust and stuff, and the final clean happens the day of closing. if nothing else demonstrates our goal of excellence, this does.

Barn III will be closing next Friday - Certificate of Occupancy in hand and the bank said Clear to Close.

Great house - wide open living spaces, lots of elbow room. We started this house back in July or so and Nikki and Gary (Nikki put the kybaush on any new surprise blog pictures) signed up soon after. They are on the way up this morning to do a final walk-thru, and then high-tail it back to the city for Gary's 40th. And next week this time this baby will be all theirs.

Someone ought to tell our buyers that THERE IS A MAJOR RECESSION HAPPENING, FOLKS. If I sell one more house this year, or get one more pre-construction deal signed, seriously I 'm just going to go in for a check up cause obviously I'm living in one of those non-real imaginary environments you learn about in freshman philosophy, or worse, maybe it's like "A Beautiful Mind' and I actually haven't sold a bunch of homes this year, doubled staff, and introduced a bunch of folks to the country way of doin' it - it's all in my head.

That would actually be a bit of a downer since who's going then, pray tell, is going to pay for the trout for our pond, Lucas' pre-school at the Homestead, or Lisa's whole food fetish?

Mid-Century Ranch III is pretty cool. It really came together for us and the new homeowners, Kat and Greg (I can't write "Kat" without thinking how cool that name is compared to "Chuck" - some people have all the luck). Greg is a partner in a commercial space design firm so has a good idea about what he was hoping to achieve with house, and I hope he's as happy as I am with it, since I think it rocks, big time.

I remember during the dark days of November 2008, when the world was ending and panic was in the air, and Catskill Farms decided to start 3 new spec homes, - and one of them was going to be this Retro Mid Century Ranch idea, which was pretty out there. A niche within a niche. And then young Erin pops up one day from NYC, has never house shopped before, the house is barely begun with like no windows and lots of framing members confusing the layout - so she calls a few days later and says 'she's in'. And history was made - Ranch I was history.

That in no way, however, makes up for what my diet has consisted of since Lisa and Lucas are out of town. Tonight I really hit a low point when I bought frozen pizza from Pecks, the local grocery monopoly. In terms of what Lisa serves this family in terms of nutrition, buying frozen pizza is at the other end of the spectrum - only one step away from the Hungry Man frozen meatloaf and mash potatoes frozen dinner I nearly walked out of the store with.

Our homes are pretty unique and that's really a testament to the wide diversity of clients that we attract. And we strive pretty hard to keep it real - it's pretty difficult to do, to keep these homes unique after 70 of them - it's a fine line, because we aren't introducing new materials - we keep strumming those 3 chords, using our arsenal of tricks-up-our-sleeves, experimenting with products we know, and products that we know won't bust the budget of our value oriented homes. Like the photo above - not a typical home for us, but the harder you look, the more is familiar, from the sliding barn doors, to the simple trims and mouldings, to the mixing of stains and paints.

The stained concrete was a trick we mastered at my offices and now are comfortable exporting it to our homes. We definitely try new things on our own stuff first when we can..

This ranch sits on 5+ acres, on the same ridge as Cottage 20, Cottage 24, Ranch II and Cottage 28. Soon Cottage 31 is commencing and we own one more lot up there as well. So, we have really colonized that 1 mile of dirt road 2 miles outside of Narrowsburg. And we have a diverse crowd up there as well - diverse people in there diverse homes - or "Unique Homes for Unique Homeowners" -

Radiant heat in the floor, spray foam insulation in the walls. This house will be incredibly comfortable.

The whole house is sort of sexy and when I walked into it, completely finished, sparkling and ready for sale - I definitely understood why we can move as much real estate as we do. No one provides as much style and service for the kind of money we are charging. And I swear we keep getting exponentially better.

I have watched at least a dozen episodes of TruTv's 'Rehab:Party at the Hard Rock Cafe' since Friday after work. I love it, and it's definitely probably not the type of show I would get to watch if the wifee and son were in Town. I mean, this is where we are different - she likes "Top Chef" and bunch of other food shows (and Project Runway, which she tries to tape and erase before she thinks I will notice that she is watching Project Runway, or America's Next Top Model). I like "World's Most Shocking" videos of police chases, car accidents and redneck convenience store robberies. Also, I'm a big fan of the those new military training shows about boot camp and the like, and I like 'Flipping Out' - the home show that Deborah my bookkeeper says reminds her a lot of me. Anyway, maybe next year I'll some Rehab parties here at my house by the pond - 'Rehab:67 Crawford Road' - and lots of hot babes in skimpy outfits playing badminton, doing jackknifes of the cliffs and dancing to a cool techno groove. I'll have $2000 minimums by the pond-side Cabanas, and big Crystal bottles of bubbly for the high rollers. So, I forgot how pathetic I am alone. There's animal guts on the front patio (that's where I am now) that one of the cat's drug home - and since it's 3 days old it kind of stinks and the flies are all around it. The kitchen is a wreck, I've eaten nothing but breaded chicken tenders for 3 days and inside of the house is starting to feel very 'lived in', if I can beg a clumsy euphemism. I always like to to take the dog Jake out for a big walk in the woods, without his leash, when I can, because the exertion of energy of his part mellows him for the whole day. So today I tried to double up on tasks and went on over to Tuthill Road to let Jake run, visit with some homeowners and grab some photos for the website and for the upcoming Sullivan County Showcase of Real Estate, which we use to monopolize, but then started getting shut out after we made too many enemies - oh, the good times, good times. So I start at the top, at Cottage 22, and say Hi to Courtney and Bronson and their bulldog Polly started mixing it up with Jake, and they just got this new floppy bulldog puppy which was cute even to me. It was a great sunny day of light and I took some great shots. Then off to Cottage 19, where Justen and Jason and company were out drinking coffee, cueing up the badminton and drinking some joe on the porch. Grabbed some great shots. Then over the Daniel's at Micro Cottage 3 where he was doing some sort of construction. Again, grabbed some shots and then off to Cottage 17 where Thom was planting and gardening. Across the street to Richard's of Baker's Tap Room fame, where the yellow stain of the Barn 2 was looking pretty sweet. So I walk the 3/8 of a mile back to my car, load up a tuckered out Jake and cruise back to the office. It was about then that I realized I had forgotten to put the memory card in the camera. Hey, I'm only building 7 homes, running 3 businesses, developing 4 pieces of land, designing 3 homes, showing prospective clients our homes, etc... I got plenty of time to do shit twice. Luckily there was some ying to this yang- we closed on a house 2 weeks ago, close on Ranch III this week, Barn III in two more weeks. We have also signed letters of commitment on 3 (that's right) on 3 new deals. Cottage 34, Cottage 31 and Cottage 33. One guy who wishes to be known as the 'international art dealer power couple who is going to bring punk rock back to the Catskills', actually wants to trade a Warhol for part of a house. Now, that's really pretty flattering. But like I've been saying for years- these homes are little pieces of art. Should be a busy winter. God, someone really has clean up those guts on the front porch. They really stink.