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

I love the effort of modular makers and designers have embarked on to make everyone feel stupid who doesn't buy their load of baloney about the brave new world of housing. This Month's cover "Smarter. Cheaper. Faster" -implying that their side business of making factory built homes and selling them doesn't somehow affect their ability to be unbaised. And last year Builder Magazine thought a modular was the wave of the future, although someone forgot to tell the consumer. The thing about modular prefab ready made kit homes is that the people behind these grand schemes to condescendingly force the modular into the main stream are missing the boat. HOMEBUYERS AREN'T STUPID. You can't say it's cheaper when it's not. You can't say it's faster when it's not. You can't say it's Smarter, when it's not. People talk, and I know better than anyone that a pre fab home can't be built any quicker than a stick-built home unless you conveniently neglect about half the tradesmen involved in the process. You can fool some of the people some of the time, etc... Look, pre fab is cool. I've looked into on several occasions. Pre Fab is compelling. Pre Fab is new. So I got nothing against it- I'm not some old stick-in-the-mud - I just think the Dwells, Versaci the architect and New World Homes have to come up with a better hook than faster, cheaper and smarter. It's not any of those things and modular will never win market share because some marketing machine says it makes you smarter. That's so 2007.

Well, presently I'm reviewing my Standard Talent Agreement sent over by the Scripps Network. Seems they like my perspective, wittiness, good looks and general outlook on things (or they couldn't find anyone else to do the job), so I'm creating a half dozen or so homemade videos for the project as it progresses. Think Anthony Bourdain or Bear Grylls, without the cool name. Honestly, I didn't even know what a vlog or a flip camera was until a few weeks ago, but now I'm not only blogging, I'm vlogging. And since the DIY blog cabin website gets like 300,000 hits a week, that's some serious exposure. Definitely am going to need to keep my neck hair trimmed and shave a little more often. Check out the first Blog Cabin 2010 Vlog here.

Lucas Meets Pink Pelicans in Florida

I've been accused on many occasions of having a great marketing mind, and I guess in a way it's true. James and I have a lot of fun coming up with cool angles to demonstrate our creative and construction talents.

Here are some ads that are running for 12 weeks in NY Magazine, and some feedback from people who have discovered us.

"I've been following your homes by internet but by the time I receive an email, most are under contract . Is there a way to avoid this?

Thank you"

"..love your work--been stalking your blog + site for a while now! "

"Saw NY magazine ad.

Spent 3 hours on website and sent link to 100 friends.

Was just about to leave NY, but may have to reconsider."

"these houses are just beautiful! my husband and I would love to have a mini cottage in the catskills."

"Hello! We love your homes and are wondering when you might have some for sale...."

and my personal favorite, from a friend of mine.-

Charles,

You are a genius, my friend.

Love,

Bill/e

And the link to the progress at Blog Cabin -

9000 visitors to the website last month - 36,000 page views. Not too shabby for a little business in the middle of NOWHERE.

And an article in our local rag -

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Whoa, Momma. That was a busy week. Tactically, strategically, forward-looking business busy. It's a real blessing (I like to use words like 'blessing' whenever possible because it seems soft and cuddly, and being both a student and appreciator of the blessed English language, I like to use words that accurately reflect me as a human being) - so like I was saying, it's a real blessing having this vibrant little home design company in these dark days of the Great Recession. I would love to see a statistic of all those persons absolutely untouched by this recession. I think the numbers would surprise a lot of people. That's one thing among many that I have appreciated about my country living sojourn - we aren't bombarded by headlines - print, broadcast, etc... - so we are able to have some independent thoughts upmuddled by the oozing of mass media harassment. It's so amazing how in front of the curve Catskill Farms was, and remains. I mean, I don't even say that to annoy all the people who routinely stick pins in my likeness - We really are so far out there in terms of understanding the psychology of the marketplace, not just locally but regionally and even nationally. Sure, I know all the TV fame is now going to my head - but really, seriously, we've been ahead of the curve for years, without even really trying to do anything other than stay in business and stay out of debtors' prison. My good friend David keeps a great blog and is a big stats and numbers guy as well as big real estate gossiper. He actually holds a very interesting position in the local real estate community, a buyer's broker in a sea of sharky and not-so-sharky realtors. He talks to a ton of people, gets facts-on-the-ground info and news from a wide variety of sources and is pretty good at distilling all the info into trending analysis. Anyway, he tells a story that I used to call him up just peppering him with questions. Who's buying what, what prices are strong, what price point is the biggest mismatch between inventory and demand? He had distilled the raw data into great info, there for the asking, and I had to thirst for just in time, ACCURATE market data. I didn't try and make a market - the market was already there, albeit undiscovered and unpursued. Just the opposite of say a project like Bethel Farms, where the entire business model pivoted around trying to sell people land for 3x or 4x what it has ever sold for through clever marketing. Well, you learn the hard way that consumers are smart. And creating a new marketplace is about the hardest thing to do as a business. Well, enough about me... My good friend David just reported that there were 16 sales in Sullivan County in February, and of those, 4 of them were over $250,000. Now, he doesn't include our sales in his numbers since we sell our homes direct to the customer, and he only reports sales through the MLS, meaning realtor-driven. Not to digress, but this small detail is pretty important since by cutting out the middleman, we reduce our costs, which means we can reduce the sales prices of our homes, much to the chagrin of our imitators. To continue, so we sold 3 homes in February, so there were 19 sales in February, and 4 over $250,000 - so with our 3 there were 7 homes over $250,000 - 3 divided by 7 = 41%. Catskill Farms currently controls 41% of the entire region's home sales above $250k in February. Now that's pretty amazing. Wow, but like I said, enough about me. It's Muddy. Big Time. You-come-home-muddy-no-matter-how-many-precautions-you-take muddy. What-do-you-do-with-the-dog muddy. Stay off-the-shoulder-of-the-road muddy. 3' -of -snow-, rain, -and -frost -coming -out -of -the -ground muddy. It's Friday evening. I'm sitting in a small office in our 120 yr old farmhouse. Comfortable with its old desk, white radiator, lots of not-quite-art paintings, pottery, candle sticks and a pair of heavy iron black and white pig bookends. A blinking modem, a Canon Printer and a bunch of unarranged books. Builder Magazine just annouced their New American Home last week. One year it was a green home, the next year it was a modulat - all these over the top media darling ideas of where housing is going next. This year, a simple gabled quintessential American home. Modest, good-looking and deliberately sturdy. A tribute and salute to tradition, attractive function over perfect form. Or even better, a product that the market has actually indicated it wants. It reminded me of our homes. And trends we noticed 3 years ago. Well-designed, modestly-priced homes on a couple of acres. Well, enough about our cool homes and ability to see the future. James, the resident real life 'Office' character and I were talking the other day about this email I got about a guy who wanted what we build, but did not have a ton of dough. Now, we've heard this before - when everyone was building and selling andbig home priced at $400k+, we counter-intiutively started building small homes at $325k. When that market seemed like it might tighten up, we figured out a way to sell our homes at $250k, and then $200k. Now, however, we want to try and figure out how to do it at $135k. The Shack Chic Series, with individual homes named The Survival Shack, and the Love Shack, and The Retro Shack, and the Dog Shack, and the Getaway Shack. Down and dirty cool little shelters. 400 sq ft, little wood stove, septic, well, driveway and land. Insulation, wall board and planking. Cool homes stripped down, -plywood floors - a cabinet or two. Since land costs $45k, well and septics $12k, drivways and utilities $8k, foundation and excavation $14k - then you got to build the house. The best part about being in this position in business is we can experiment, see if it would work, see if there would be a buyer, see if we can make some dinero. Big windy storms over the weekend knocked out cable, dsl and phones lines. Pretty spooky.