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

Note from Chuck - super interesting conversation I've been following, following a substack article by Mike Green which pokes holes into how the government defines poverty, and the perverse impacts on gov't subsidies as you climb the income ladder from $40k-$100k, leaving you marginally worse off as you pick yourself up by the bootstraps. Education, childcare and healthcare should not be the cross that all middle-incomers die on.

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Why the American Middle Class Feels Like It’s Disappearing

By Jeff D. Opdyke

Today, we’re going to play a game I’m calling “True or Stupid".

The rules are simple: I’m going to give you a dollar value, then the context, and you decide if it’s true or stupid. I’ll give you the answer: it’s “stupid”.

So, let’s play…

The number: $37,482.

The context: That’s the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), as determined by the US Census Bureau for 2023. It applies to a family of four, implying a poverty line of $3,124 per month.

Now do the math in the real world.

Rent for a family of four is commonly $1,750 at the low end and about $2,140 at the high end. Let’s use the low end.

Health insurance for a family of four averages $2,131, though you might find it “as low as” $1,500—with big deductibles and co-pays. We’ll use $1,500 and pretend this family never needs care.

Food for a family of four runs about $993 a month if you’re very thrifty, and up to $1,600 if you’re not. We’ll take the thrifty number.

Utilities, including a mobile phone plan, run $600 to $750 a month. Use $600.

So using the cheapest end of every estimate, you’re already at $4,843 a month for the four biggest necessities: shelter, healthcare, food, and utilities.

And we haven’t included a car payment or lease (most households have one), the cost of keeping an older car running, or gas to get to work and the grocery store. We haven’t included credit-card debt, which more than half of households carry. We haven’t included replacement clothing, school supplies, or childcare. And we haven’t included the “something unexpected,” because life always delivers that, too.

That’s why $37,482 is a stupid number.

Sure, someone can justify it with formulas and wizardry. But the practical poverty line for a family of four—based on what it takes to live a normal American life—looks a lot closer to $72,000 a year, or about $6,000 a month. Below that, surviving to the next payday becomes an emergency.

I came to this topic because of a recent Washington Post story about Michael Green, chief strategist and portfolio manager at Simplify Asset Management. He took issue with how the Census Bureau defines where poverty begins and ends.

Under the SPM framework, the government defines poverty as income at 83% or less of median household spending on food, clothing, shelter, utilities, telephone, and internet.

Again: stupid.

Where is healthcare? Childcare? Transportation? Debt service? What about taxes taken out of paychecks and paid on consumption? Those aren’t optional costs. They’re baseline costs of functioning in modern America. Leaving them out produces a poverty line that’s mathematically convenient and socially meaningless.

That’s the point Green was making when he argued the real poverty threshold for a family of four is closer to $140,000, give or take.

Yes, that sounds egregiously high. Lots of people disagree with him. I think the number is too large myself. But even if it’s too large, it’s too large in the right direction—because it at least attempts to include the real costs of daily life and highlights just how warped America’s cost-of-living crisis has become.

And if you’re thinking, “Okay—poverty, yada yada. Why does this matter?”

Because it points to a deeper rupture in the American economy, and it helps explain why politics feels like it has run off the rails.

A solid middle-class life was once treated like a birthright in America. Today, for much of the country, it’s barely a dream. Polls have been flashing the same message for years: large majorities say the American Dream—defined as a comfortable, stable middle-class life—is dead.

And what do people do when they feel like they have nothing left to lose? They rebel. They revolt. History is packed with examples.

We’re seeing echoes of that in modern elections and modern anger. In certain ways, Trump is a manifestation of a burn-it-all-down mentality. He’s also a symbol of a Gatsby-esque society where the wealthy and the ruling class extract ever more wealth from everyone else.

The long-term numbers support the direction of that story. In 1970, about 61% of Americans were in the middle class. Today it’s closer to 51%. In 1970, the middle class held about 62% of America’s wealth. Today it’s closer to 43%.

That’s a barbell economy: lots of wealth at one end, lots of strain at the other, and a thinning middle connecting the two. That kind of system doesn’t stay stable forever. Something always breaks.

Something will break this time, too.

The core point is bigger than any single “solution” people talk about: when the official poverty line says $37,482, it’s not just stupid. It’s a signal that too many people are falling behind with no realistic path to catch up.

If you study history, you understand that this is the point where revolutions begin–a revolt of the masses. And a New American Revolution is coming…

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I’m in Aspen. It was less than 2 weeks ago I was in St Petes.  A month before that Costa Rica, and a few weeks before that, Houston. Until I put it in writing, I forget I get around.  And when I think about it, it makes sense; I have a team that has a got handle on things, and I’m not getting longer.  In aging, while I may have 35 yrs left, the truth is you start to slow in the mid-60’s and by 70’s you may be active and healthy but you are definitely narrowing what you want and like to do. So, now is the time.

But 35 yrs looked at another way, from the power of compounding money you’ve saved, is a ton of time.  You read that Warren Buffet’s wealth grew from something impressive to something astonishing after he turned 65 - that’s not because his investment strategies got better - it’s because of the power of time and the math behind compounding, or what Buffett called the 8th Wonder of the World, is true and undeniable.  Whatever your growth rate, divide it into 72 and that’s your clock of doubling.  And anyone who’s ever fallen for that 3 card monte trick of taking a million dollars or 1 penny doubling for 30 days (example not meant to be accurate), understands what doubling means. 

It means $5m at 60, $10m at 70 (at a conservative 7% growth), $20m at 80, $40m at 90.

Or at 10%, $5m at 60, $10m at 67, $20m at 74, $40m at 81, $80m at 88, and $160m at 95.

Time, it turns out, matters more than size.  That’s why getting started early in investing is suggested when possible.  You put $30k away when you are under 30, and you can out earn someone who spends a lot more time putting more money away later for longer.

I’d like to know when Domino’s pizza got so expensive, and when they started charging for delivery.  A large pie, with tip, is pushing $30.  I haven’t ordered it for awhile but have twice in the last two months with the same shock.  And coffee - a cup of non-craft coffee used to be $1 like 3 years ago and now it’s $2.50.  Bagels with cream cheese $4. Fast food $12+ for a combo meal.  All these everyday items of convenience are actually expensive, insidious tax on everyday living. I’m sure it’s a lot more pervasive throughout the grocery store than my quick analysis.  

Trump putting institutional and private equity large-scale purchases of single family homes in his sites in a WSJ article. I’ve read differing accounts as to whether the impact is as impactful as the worrywarts claim and haven’t read the definitive analysis that proves one way or another that the large block purchases from these investors have caused inventory shortage and housing price inflation.  To me, it seems like tight inventory and higher prices exist even where private equity isn’t present like the NorthEast.  The other side of the argument revolves around the lack of homes being built over the last 15 years, due to onerous zoning and permitting.

I notice my best friend Lulu (my dog) is starting to get a little cranky in her old age - 13 yrs old- a little snippy with the kids, a little noise sensitive at construction sites.  I don’t know if I’m getting the same way but I have two pet peeves that are really getting under my skin - 1, there needs to be a public awareness campaign about using cell phone speakers, it’s becoming the norm that you just let your content roll out obnoxiously to the world (I know I’ve talked about this before) but I actually don’t think people know it’s rude - I think in some proportion of the situations, people just don’t realize you shouldn’t do it.  2nd, and this is fast becoming a real issue for me, is that people need to use their own restroom on a plane - economy has a restroom, biz/1st has a restroom - don’t come marching up front just cause it’s convenient.

I’m a pragmatic person so I wouldn’t be suggesting these campaigns without some reasonable belief that they are achievable. A little education, a little enforcement, a little public humiliation.

A great Willie Nelson article in the New Yorker recently.

It is sort of amazing with all the crazy weather, with all the hundreds of thousand of parts that go into each house, with all the room for human failings and shortcomings, how few and far between our warranty issues are- I mean, if we hear from a client once a month, that’s a lot.  It’s just a testament to a few things - 1, we are building good homes, with good materials. 2, our clients are reasonable, and 3, we take care of a lot of things early when people are just moving in so that keeps the issue from lingering or spreading.  But seriously, with all the winds and ice and rain and heat and dry -that’s a lot of stress on a home, and our homes stand up to it.   Looking at my profit and loss last year, we did $6m or so of homes, and the warranty costs to me for the year was $22,000 or so, and a lot of that was one big problem.  It’s a testament to why we’ve been around for 25 years, and why we sell a lot of homes, even if it feels messy up close and personal from the inside looking out.

I’m in Aspen, one of the many places that saw tremendous real estate appreciation over the last few years- same as Jersey Shore, LA, Telluride, Austin, Hamptons and a thousand other places.  I’m just not sure I understand where all the money came from- it sort of just came out of nowhere, printed, and now exists in the form of real estate appreciation.

It's been a bearded winter, not by design, just by negligence. My one eye and glasses seem to be permanently and independently crooked.

Damn, the new year is starting out with an unexpected BANG.  Not only did we book a fair amount of business in the last quarter of 2025 which we will start and finish in 2026, the last week of 2025 heading into 2026 also brought 2 or 3 new deals on homes we have under construction which will pre-emptively juice 2026. So with the deals booked, and now the new deals moving forward, 2 things are true - 1, the entire year of 2026 becomes viewable and plannable as each peg of certainty becomes fodder for strategic planning, and 2, we have the team in place to take care of business. I have yet to accidently write '2025'.

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Another thing that is true that all the hard work we did on the driveway, clearing and foundation end of things is not for naught, but is much diminished because the weather, the weather the weather.   Wowza.  Couple that with the holidays and December instead of gangbusters was more like a nothing-burger.  We still got a lot done, but it wasn’t new stuff, out of the ground stuff.  That presents challenges because everything gets crammed together.  The trick will be to use breaks in the weather to make the progress we can so we don’t get everything waiting till spring creating real bottlenecks.

One thing that is always true, if it’s bad and challenging for us, it’s bad and challenging for others, and since we are better than most, more vetted than most, it’s a competitive advantage.  Although tempering that competitive advantage is we typically have a lot more going on than most.

Our house on 30 acres in Kerhonkson is moving along very nicely, with the exterior tied up tight and the interiors cranking along.  This house should be ready for sale to coincide with the Catskill’s spring.  Will be interesting to see the price we settle on since it is one of a kind in terms of house size, location, land parcel size, views.  Really has everything.  I remember last year at this time I had two great houses for sale, and was nervous and sold them quickly for lower than I expected prices just because I incorrectly thought the market would slow.  I’m going to try and not do that this time around, and that’s the beauty of paragraph #1, when you start to get some certainty, then you don’t need to be in a rush to off load spec homes. I'm having a lot of fun designing the below -

Interior of a lake house we are building -

As you recall I bought a lot of land in the Fall of 2025 - 7 pieces if I remember correctly, which cost me $600k+ when they would have historically cost $350k.  So, the next turn of the speculative wheel has begun, and we should have the results by fall of 2026.

It’s amazing what you can do in this business when you have time and money and expertise and experience.

Some St Pete's building paints and murals.

Currently, it appears we are going to have 4 or 5 pay as you go clients with our ‘your land our homes’ model - meaning they leverage and tweak an original home we have and they own the underlying home, meaning all the improvements they own, and they pay us in a traditional fashion as we make progress.   This flip to this type of cash-flow friendly process doesn’t come with a lot of downsides for us.

What it also does is allow me to build out my spec homes (homes without pre-arranged buyers) with less stress, since we have a nice split of booked business and spec business.  So it looks like we might build 10 homes this year, which frankly is a lot.

I spent some time in St Petes over Christmas, actually flew down there the day of Christmas.  Lovely place and started to get the vibe down there, and I like it.  Nice weather, well, is just nice.  And perhaps because we just got smothered with an early and full month of mehhhh weather, it might have seemed even more relatively nice than typical. Pickleball, hiking, biking, swimming, working out.  It’s not a bad scene or the worst way to whittle away the day.

AI, ChatGPT - Wow, amazing stuff.

I'm a Court Appointed Special Advocate for kids caught up in family court and I've been watching over these three since we plucked them out of dire circumstances 3 years ago - they seem to be thriving.

But, unfortunately, what their new mom will find out is that no matter how challenging the young years are, the older years are a lot more complex. A lot more.

Washington Post writes about Happier Lives in Smaller Homes.

and

What Happened to the Starter Home.

If you are feeling blue about anything, it’s always good to compare it with someone else’s unmet expectations - and since anything me or my colleagues are moaning about are typically first-world problems, I’m not talking lack of heat in Ukraine, or food in Africa - I feel that’s an unfair and unhelpful metric to use to keep things in perspective.

Currently, I was looking to lift my spirits up by looking at someone else’s misfortune, I think first in mind would be looking towards those poor souls and families in the western USA skiing locales where there is currently NO SNOW.  Like literally NONE.  Some spots might have some, but it’s not a lot.  Aspen has like ¼ of their slopes open.  Many resorts have few to none open.  And these vacations start at $10k and go up from there.  Mostly non-refundable.  As a skier, who goes on family ski vacations, this is actually a pretty depressing big deal.  What, sit in your lodge all day instead of shredding the Rocky Mountain peaks.  Ugh, not cool. Though, now that I think of it, I'm actually one of those poor souls on January 12 when I'm heading out to take four days of ski lessons in Aspen - 3 weeks is a lot of time for some snow to fall.

Our December has been an eye-opening, 2x4 to the head experience.  As I’ve said, a perfect August - early December, and then WHAM, snow storm, single digit weather, more snow, rain storm, single digit weather, more snow, cold…  That’s a lot for one month.  We have a lot planned for this winter, but if things don’t change I’m scaling back my ambitions a bit.  It’s hard on our office staff to continue to pivot every 24 hours, it’s really hard on the guys out there working, and the individual job sites each have their own challenges and since they aren’t right next door in fact spread out over a two hour radius hard to actually know what’s going on with them until someone calls to complain about something, like being stuck or some other emergency.

It also slows our production down, which makes it harder to plan how to keep everyone busy.

Well, enough about our current woes.

Through my annual Christmas party rager and it had a lot of similarities with previous ones including a lack of good photos.  Once the party starts, I always forget to get pictures so I have some but nothing that comes close to capturing the essence of the event, which was warm, delicious, fun, crowded, intimate and most importantly, very well-executed.

The menus for non-restrictions, non-meat and then vegans. Not really fair to lump the non-meat eaters in with the lonely vegans.

Regular eaters.

Vegans.

Non-Meat

My abilities as a project manager are so off the charts it’s hard to quantify anymore.  I can more of less look at any situation and within a few seconds - like one of those cartoons or illustrations or movie special effects - where you can see the synapses connecting and firing - I have a plan which identifies current status, future goals, real and imagined obstacles, talent and resource landscape to get the job done.

A catered sit-down dinner party with hour+ cocktail hour for 30 is a real event.  It’s a lot different than a pot-luck serve yourself event -not better or worse, but just a lot different in terms of expectation.  Done well, like all well-done event management, it’s like a symphony of layered parts and efforts, building towards the finale.

We had farmers, actresses, writers, politicians, businesspeople, animal rescuers, teachers and others in attendance, all overlapping in some tangible small ways, but merged and meshed in much larger intangible ways, where conversations yielded many unexpected connections and shared experiences, places and efforts. 

As I’ve written about, we got a lot accomplished in the fall of 2025 in terms of putting together deals, locating and buying land, and getting foundations in across 3 counties.  But then wham, winter, so now we seek a new path forward that is much more complicated and cherry-picked than before.

It’s a complicated holiday season around my family unit, with the death of my friend and son’s alternate father figure looming large and absent in all plans and observances.  The broken traditions, the quiet of the Christmas morning, the reduction of gifts under the tree, the lack of a fire in the wood stove, which was John’s specialty.  I’m worried about my son as he quietly and not-so-quietly travels this personal journey of which there are no companions or persons to learn from.  It’s a solitary journey, with consequences that are far from predictable or eventually positive as you see in the movies or Hallmark shows.  It’s a life and game changer, and what emerges as a person is no foregone conclusion.

My son went out and found a tree for his Mom and their home this Christmas. I don't know how they got it through the door and set up.

I’m off to St Pete’s to the condo I bought in the fall of 2024.  The building is a lot whiter than I expected, and definitely older than I expected - almost a 55+ community without any written rules.  Maybe that’s St Pete’s in general, not sure. It’s sort of embarrassing to have accidentally bought into The Villages, that famous gigantic FL 55+ community - I’m joking, maybe, but so far, the priorities and dialogue is more like a Sunday morning of Karens than an international cadre of residents with kids and lives.  A bunch of retirees is a crowd with a lot of time on their hands.  I’m thinking even if it’s not for me - which is not a foregone conclusion - it should be a strong rental option with high rents and serious annual depreciation to help offset some income.

The economy is so weird.  I know the impacts of inflation are real, and the media tells us all the time about how people are living paycheck to paycheck, which I have no reason to doubt.  But everywhere I’m going things are jammed up - Newark Marriott, sold out.  Enterprise Car Rental St Petes, sold out, airplanes at capacity.  Can’t explain it one way or another but I’m running into a lot of anecdotal evidence that at least some segment of America is on the move in a big way.  

Merry Christmas to all.

We removed the longstanding bunk beds from my Son's room so now it's more grown up for him.

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