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

The Ranch - seriously, it's a Ranch house - sitting on 5 acres, looking into Pennsylvania, 960 sq ft, 2 bedrooms, bath, big walk-out basement. I remember the conversation well - "Hey, it's a real estate depression - let's really stack the odds against us, really test our metal, go build a god-damned Ranch house (sorry for the emphatic cursing)." Well, she's done. She's amazing. And she's going to passed on to the new homeowner next week.

New driveways, new lawn, new house, new everything - How many families buying in the Catskills can say they bought a 'house that works'. It doesn't need anything - it's finished. And my builder paid for the whole thing until it was finished.

Just for clarification - the yellow tape does not demarcate a crime scene, but rather an alert to 'STAY OFF THE GRASS OR ELSE!!'

Great Picture of the interior - with the Ranch siding brought inside to define the hallway, 3 synchronized galvanized lights hanging from the stained beam, a cool radiator, a chalkboard door, and the open kitchen.

Fireplace, living room and entry to deck all in one shot.

Sitting here in my office in Eldred on a quiet Saturday morning with not much going on to distract me from some quiet reflection of what has been, what is, and what will be.

Courtney and Bronson are now in the house - not literally - what I mean is they have committed to a customized Cottage 18 on the new land I just purchased. The Adam's family (I couldn't resist) is coming up tomorrow to check us out.

and Norah and Jeffrey are nearly in contract on Cottage 21 - we just have to wait until they get back from the Cannes Film Festival to sign the papers. Well, excuse me.

Someone called me 'irrational' the other day - I was, like, 'duh, I build spec houses in the middle of nowhere during a depression, -of course I'm irrational and unbalanced."

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Momma Goose and Family out for a stroll on Mother's Day.

These chicks were just born a few days ago...

OK, some people called us crazy when we started spreading the word that we were going to start 3 new spec homes back in November in the middle of the greatest recession since the 1930's. Who, actually, do we think we are?

But, not to point out the obvious, we are 1 week away from closing on Johnny and Tina's Red Cottage in the Woods, 10 days from Erin's Ranch on top of the Hill, and Norah and Jeffrey are moving towards contract signatures on Cottage 21.

So, to summarize - Catskill Farms has, thus far, done what very few companies in the world have done - which is, in short, sell homes and turn a profit in this severe economic contraction. Don't ask me why this is happening, but it is, and we are quite pleased, quite pleased indeed, Sam I Am.

Here's a beauty - Cottage 18 - all 960 sq ft of it. The trees are just budding and there is always a week or two that the foilage is a lightening florescent green before it matures into the deeper forest green.

And Arts and Crafty Cottage 21 with big stone pillars, tapered porch posts, exposed rafter tails, and thick spindles.

Pretty neat shot below with the wide spindles, handhewn beams, radiator and barn lamp. No wonder we're getting to be famous with taste like dat. I mean seriously, that's more character in one little corner than most homes have combined throughout their overdone 4000 sq ft.

And then the Ranch, the lovely Ranch. With the big views into Pennsylvania. This house was a totally new experiment and I think we did just fine.

So, pretty windy today, Sunday, Mother's Day. Spring is here and we are ready to get down and boogie, - if you know what I mean.

One issue that I always have, and usually is shared by our homeowners is finding small reliable companies that can help us turn a finished house into a home. Be it drapes and windows treatments, furniture, antiques, decorating or landscaping, finding the right vendor up here in vender-less land is always a challenge. That's why I was really quite excited when Mauricio who purchased Cottage 5 from me, who was the partner of Benoist who I built a house for, has made the life decision to move up here mostly and try his skilled and tasteful hands at a boutique landscaping business. For all you homeowners who have been scheming for years how to reduce that $22,000 landscape design estimate, Mauricio is offering a service I think will come in quite handy for many homeowners and their respective families. Here he is in front of his 750 sq ft cottage in Eldred.

Now, a quick look at the pics above and the one below reveals a bit of his genius - without expensive big machines, without over designing or over-thinking, he does a little of this and a little of that and before you know it, your house has as much personality on the outside as our designs do on the inside. What is hard to convey to the big macho landscapers and their F-350s is the sense of delicacy, nativeness and simplicity that Mauricio seems to instinctually understand, just as we do with the initial placement and design of the homes.

Like a true naturalist, he disappears into the woods behind your home and finds some stones, some limbs, a small tree or bush, digs it up with his shovel, transports it in his wagon or wheel-barrow, and designs just enough personality to put the house back in final tune with it's surroundings.

I think why I think this is pretty exciting is the fact that finding a talented hand for that final 1% of a houses exterior has always been difficult on a modest budget - sure, spend $15k and lots of companies will give you the time of day (although not always quality product), but set your budget at $2k, $5k or $8k, and it's definitely more challenging to come up with something unique and customized.

Not great pics yet because everything is just starting to green, but you can get the idea.

This is one of my favorites - taking leftover construction 'pier molds', and seeing their intrinsic artistic qualities - in this case, turning some plastic concrete forms into planters. That's when I saw the genius - like our homes, whimisical, well-designed, improvised and organic.

And the inside...

So, contact Mauricio Santelice at mauriciosantelice@gmail.com if you got an outdoor landscaping project. As far as I have seen thus far, no project is too large for this John Henry, upholding the Ayn Rand man-over-machine ideals.

NY Post coming around today to report on our progress- so if you see some cameras, Smile.

www.thecatskillfarms.com

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So I was farting around trying to figure out how to revert back to my previous blog design where the old posts were categorized in a nice format that seemed to work - I had eliminated some 'labels' and 'archives' a couple of the weeks ago in an attempt to clean up the look of the blog - and then I couldn't figure out how to revert back - and I tried on several occasions without success, - frustrating since I know it's just a click of a button somewhere.

In my experimentation to try and return to my old layout, I inadvertently changed the entire look of the blog, and then couldn't get it to go back, and then in some 'self-reverse psychology' where I trick myself that the new design is actually a welcome change, thus snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, I completely reinvented the look of the blog - for better or for worse.

Someone called me up yesterday and asked why the mini-cottage I bought the other day is cheaper than the new ones I am building - the reason is that older homes, regardless of the charm, quaintness and cuteness, are worth much less than newer homes (at least newer homes that have style). Take the cottage I was posting about yesterday exactly as it is - and then take a new cottage from Catskill Farms - and examine their respective worth and value.

The old cottage has small windows, smaller piece of land, needs to be painted on the inside, has a septic of unknown age, well of unknown depths, lower ceilings, and a host of issues that don't detract from it's perfectness - it's just a different kind of perfect, and it has to be fairly represented in the price. And, then Catskill Farms is a pretty motivated seller at all times, I know that this little old-fashioned cottage with small little bedrooms, small windows, a ceiling that is a few inches lower than 8', all combine to reduce its value - don't get me wrong, at $179k this house is 'best in class', but it in no way compares to our new cottages in terms of layout, functionality, warranty and general 'thought-outness'.

What's amazing though about this little sucker is say you put down 20%, and say you get a mortgage at around 5% - that means your monthly mortgage payment is less than $700 a month. That's pretty amazingly affordable, by any measure, in my opinion.

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