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

Oh yeah, in 2023 when I was dating this fine young woman during my Asian Fever period, she was working in the Fintech space on a startup which had a lot of investor interest and right before a sale, the purchaser started asking about AI integration and how that was going to work with this product, to the surprise of the company developing the product - I’m only mentioning it because, yes, once again, Like Forest Gump, I was at or near the epicenter of every tech milestone since 1998 and literally, unlike Forest Gump, purposely or by accident participated financially in none of them.  And even by some grace of god that I actually did read the tea leaves, the chances that I would put $1000 in and let it ride for 20 years and now have it be worth $10,000,000 like you see in all the ‘what if, FOMA’ scenarios, is again, literally zero.

Buttttt, I did see and pounce on the Upstate Opportunity.  Actually, that’s too modest.  I saw and then created the Upstate Opportunity.  Literally created a market for new homes out of thin air, and then nurtured and nursed that idea for decades, with a day to day effort that couldn’t be exaggerated if you tried. It’s still true today - the day to day effort of leading from the front, problem-solving, shirking no duty - remains.  It’s why our profit margins allow me to pay pensions, retirements, holidays, some healthcare, and vacations.  It’s why several of my employees and past employees have a million dollars in 401ks.  While I milk the company to my own benefit as is my right and earned honor, the amount that gets shared is real, earned, and can’t be diminished.  It’s mostly unheard of for a mid-sized construction company to generate enough profits and be administratively adept to fund and manage these programs.

And it returns me something that is second-nature to me, but would be a temptation for others, and that is the trust and other people’s money that flows through my hands weekly - bank debt, employee tax withholdings, retirement and pension payments, client deposits, construction payments.  It’s how people get in big trouble - hit some rough waters, borrow from Peter to pay Paul, divert this, commingle that, defer those.   And you never get straight, and you have to keep doing it, and eventually you reach the end of the shenanigans - that’s why bankruptcies can seem so sudden - because there are so many ways to string out the decline - credit cards, not paying bills, diverting funds - so many ways until they are all used up, and bam, ‘overnight’ collapse that was years in the making.

I took some big swings last fall, buying 7 or 8 pieces of land that we are building on and selling now.  We sold the Dymond Barn, that was huge.  We put Wynkoop Ranch into contract, that was huge.  And now, wait for it, our Modern Masterpiece in Fremont NY the very week we finished it, is going into contract in an all-cash close in 30 days deal  That solidly turns the financial corner for the big swings of last fall.  25 years and I still got it!

What’s true about the McColly Ranch, is the team I have in place allowed me more creative flexibility than I’ve had in a long time, and I took that freedom and flexed what has always made the difference in Catskill Farms - I have a good eye, rumored so good I must be gay.  But unfortunately for all those fair-haired boys with lusty thoughts, I’m just a unicorn - Straight guy with a sharp eye.  Used to actually really burn my sister up, who considered herself the artist of the family, that she’s stuck in an operations role and I’m out here designing shit every day.

Who said life was fair?

Me and the Bride on date night Sunday, with Opera in the Park in Milford PA.

Moving the opera piano around post-event.

And my Son Lucas Petersheim, after two long years as a QB understudy for his HS football program, is primed and prepped and ready to go as the starter, with a game under his belt last weekend that proved he deserved the role, and that his patience and hard-work and commitment to the dream paid off. No one really knew how he was going to perform, and he played with confidence and skill. Toughness, like taking a good hit is like a boxer getting his lip bloodied - it focuses and engages you, takes you into the game. It's a running program, but he was 7-9 passes, for 100 yards, and two TD's. Many if not all of the throws were with defenders in his face and on the move. Good job Son. Happy for you. Correction, make that 3 TD's.

Friday Night Lights.

I’ve been asked a lot over the last 2 years if the Trump tariffs have impacted us or our projects and I think with confidence that I’m sure it’s caused some inflation here and there embedded invisibly of some of the product or services we buy, but it was hard to see.  But generally I was surprised by the non-impact.

Not any longer as madman Trump throws a fit and slaps a 50% tariff on many Canadian imports, one being sporting goods, a category which my modular pool seems to fit into.  So they have my $81,000, and now are trying to figure out who and when is going to pay $40,000 more just to sell or buy the same product.   While I’m unsympathetic to the idea that I should pay those tariffs for my seller, I’m empathetic that it is an existential problem for this modular container pool company, Mod Pools.  The problem is the 4 or 5 people who work there including the Owner Levi are so damn annoying that I was dying to buy this last pool and never have to deal with them and their shitty company again - but alas, not the case.  I’m stuck in tariff limbo with them, like a poorly paired college dorm room-mate -except there is $80k on the line, which is a lot of money even if you do the after tax rationality of $50k.  My guess is this can’t last, this latest round of tariffs - it’s like mutually assured destruction.

‍

Trump’s losing streak must really be getting him to be lashing out like this, hurting non-constituents as well as the MAGA crowd.  At least when he messed around with the SALT taxes on high tax blue states, it was a somewhat targeted political attack - this is more spray and pray.  Not sure what the end game is but to have Canada capitulate.  I can’t even follow the story except Trump didn’t get what he wanted so he melted down.  Same as in Iran, but there we just go ahead and kill a few more thousand people with some bombs. The impact of this round of tariffs will actually produce some pain and impact - can't see many positives of it no matter what angle I'm looking from.

Great way to expend our power and reputation - no one can afford gas, health care, child care, education or the cost of living everyday, but let’s bomb people and start trade wars.

This new Modern Masterpiece has me returning to my roots as an experimenter and designer. Should be listed next week.

‍

Big news - perhaps our last house up in that project straddling North Branch and Fremont in Northern Sullivan County. This is a pretty special place in the world -remote, rural, big skies, big views. But not so remote, just 15 minutes from Callicoon and 30 from Livingston Manor and Narrowsburg. I bought - gulp - 300 acres up there, right at the beginning of Covid, along with my gigantic gamble of 16 lots in Saugerties about the same time, and I think I had another 4 or 5 lots in between in like Kerhonkson, etc... That type of acquisition, entirely with debt, in a world-wide pandemic whose ramifications and consequences were yet to be understood in anyway - I mean, come on, seriously? That's risk tolerance. It's not like Soros betting it all against the British Pound, or Hitler going all in with an attack eastward into the vastness of Russia, or Michael Burry against the real estate market in 2007 - but for my size, cash flow, and sailing into the unknown full of sea monsters and flats earths, the gamble was shockingly bold. And it paid off. I was in the right place, positioned well, with 20 years of accumulated experience, and an opportunity came my way and I pounced, and as importantly, executed. By solving every problem that arose each day. Never slacking. Never shirking. Never procrastinating. Just taking care of business.

It's actually hard to remember how simple tasks became hard tasks - supply disruptions to the point where common lumber became uncommonly hard to get, if not outright unavailable. Price swings that pushed plywood from $20 a sheet to $100, and you use hundreds of sheets in a job. Closed building departments, changing regulatory environment, moving target for sales prices, people getting sick. Pretty crazy stuff.

So this house on 20 acres has pretty much everything and is well-suited and sited to take advantage of the plot of land and the views. It's one of our favorite large Ranches, sold with an assist from Erik Freeland of Country House Realty. Selling for a tidy profit but less than it was worth. But freeing up the cash and moving on is a regret I'm used to living with. It's impossible to calculate, really no way to do it, how much money I've left on the table over the years. But there is a way to measure it - and only one way, and it's a bit indirect - Success. Catskill Farms has it. The micro is unimportant when the macro is undeniable. The micro certainly makes up the macro, but the micro is mostly lost and forgotten while the Macro lives on.

Lives on in my bank account, and in the bank accounts of a huge number of employees, subcontractors, employees of subcontractors, vendors, banks, towns supported by our taxes we generated. Lives on with the homes dotting the landscape of the Hudson Valley, timeless homes, good looking homes, eye catching homes, modest homes, well-tended to homes, valuable homes. Lives on on the profits of our clients bank when they sell, which is actually just so huge it's hard to believe. The impact this hard-working, bill paying, eye-on-the-ball company has made and continues to make is huge.

I guess I'm focused and bit more aware of it lately because I've been out and about lately. Been to party or two, attended Jeff Bank Customer appreciation night at the Forestburgh Playhouse and a bunch of other events I don't usually attend, but have been because, wait for it, I'm engaged and now have a partner in crime to make grand entrances with. The point is when I attend these events, usually filled with business owners, realtors, bankers, community members of some substance, the reaction is always the same - respect and deference for my contributions over the last 25 years. It's just when you are in an industry with tight margins and lots of day to day problems, the macro results and impacts need to be consciously snake charming that beast from the basket, cause otherwise all you know is the danger of the rattle. No matter how you shake it, no matter the angle you view it from, what I've done locally and regionally, for longer, than anyone else around, is of great and enviable import and consequence.

‍

Yes, getting hitched. You heard it here first. 15 years of raising a kid and staying focused on my business, pivoting to a more fully rounded life.

Not to be vain at a moment like this, but I think this athletic shirt wrongly accentuates my gut. Must be the angle, or the lighting.

Land I didn’t buy.  Clients I didn’t work with. Deals I didn’t make.  Miami condos I sold instead of kept.  Partnerships I didn’t enter into. Employees I didn’t hire.  Trends I didn’t chase.  Women I didn’t date.  Principles you didn’t fight for.  A business you didn’t start.  There is no tangible way to measure the benefit of things you didn’t do and chase, but they are as much a part of any successful business or life journey as the celebrated ones that define a career.   The silent and quiet navigation away from something - and many times it’s not clear if the decision is right or wrong, and many times it never becomes clear if you dodged a bullet or missed an opportunity.  The only thing you can know for sure is that you are not diluting any of your time on it, and hence something else is benefitting by the focus bandwidth available.

House for sale shortly, in Fremont NY.

I've been in the right place at the right time.  Late 90’s, early 2000s.  There is no excuse. Sitting in the exact chair you would hope to. What am I speaking of you ask, and that would be the beginning of the rise of the opportunity to invest in emerging internet companies and technologies at their very beginning.   Amazon, Facebook, PayPal, Google, etc…. I was sitting in a chair is a quasi-tech company, with the technology speak and action all around me and the best I could do was invest in Global Crossing, with my measly $5000 - the fastest growing broadband-laying company, on the cover of lots of magazines that quickly went broke from over-expansion.  I was in my early 30’s, in the mix of the whole scene, yet didn’t have one insight into how ride the emerging tech pony. And to be honest, I was surrounded by Wharton grads, business school grads, tech people, and neither did they.  They understood how to position to look techie and perhaps become a buyout target, but the water-cooler talk about investing in Amazon or the like didn’t exist even though we spent hours in bars shooting the shit.  No brainers only exist in the rear view mirror - nothing is clear at the time, the fog of emerging tech, the free-market chaos and inefficiency of any tech winners and losers- be it tulips, railroads, TV’s, radio, real estate. For the billionaires and millionaires who did ride the tech train, you got to give them credit.  There were thousands if not millions of people who were witnessing the same revolution. I couldn't have been closer.

House for sale shortly, in Barryville NY.

I also remember sitting in Starbucks in New Paltz circle 2015 just minding my own business reading the business pages of some newspaper like I like to do and some college kid grabs my attention and starts repeating a mantra to me - ‘buy bitcoin, buy it, buy it, it’s going to explode’ - like a religious revivalist along the Erie Canal in 1850. And he’s right - it did explode, and if I bought $1000 of it, I’d be sitting on millions.

But here’s the issue with that one - there is ZERO chance I would not have lost or misplaced my password or blockchain or whatever they call it - literally zero, so I’d be like that guy who was spending tens of thousands of dollars digging through a public dump looking for the hard-drive or a disc with his bitcoin passwords on it, until the county shut him down.  That scenario would be harder to live with than never buying in the first place.  But again - right place, right time, wrong mindset.

House under contract, that will sell as soon as the buyer's attorney gets back from a European Vacation.

But to be honest, the odds of me buying Amazon or similar in 1999, then holding onto it for 28 years through ups and downs of the market, through ups and downs of the my financial life, is close to zero.  You hear tales of buy and hold stories if you bought Coca-cola in 1930 and just held onto if 100 years you’d worth $100,000,000.  Yea, good luck, through depressions, world wars, Cold Wars, recessions, etc….   Who would have held onto their tech stocks during the plummet of 2000, and if they did, whose to say they hung on to the right ones?

The financial life is full of backward looking, FOMA regret.  I think it’s just the nature of it.  Doesn’t make it true or an accurate emotion - but accurate emotions aren’t the same as having that emotion.  I study and second guess my stock portfolio daily, and barely give my large real estate portfolio a 2nd glance.  Money is about behavior and discipline and self-awareness - the math behind money is not the primary driver of wealth building - it’s staying out of your own way.

The Delaware River, as seen from the bridge from Callicoon to PA.

So, to that point, with Space X at its lowest post-IPO price ever (now quickly rebounding), count me in.  Not about metrics, cash flow, quality or logic, etc…. It’s about learning from the past - I’m buying, I’m holding. Talk to me in 15 years.  All you can do with investing is look yourself in the mirror and say, what would I do differently next time?  Thing is, few people actually act on their pronouncement, and when the markets slide or gyrate they quickly lose track of their principles and sell, pivot and protect.

Me, in Sardinia, on my Enfield. The same group of guys are mostly now signed up for a trip through the Spanish Iberian Pennisula.

I did however pursue with great gusto a great idea of how to augment, add to and enhance an entire’s region’s architectural and building landscape, and single-mindedly executed a vision, day after day, decade after decade, no matter what business or life threw my way.  So, no, I wasn’t able to capitalize to being at the right place at the right time, in the right room, surrounded by the right people and ride the creation of tech to the financial heavens, but I did end up putting my distinctive stamp on most every little town, hill and valley in the one of the most beautiful areas of the world.  A concrete, tangible, good looking stamp.

I'm 3/4 through an aggressive land and house build investment cycle, with a house in Fremont NY finishing up in 2 weeks, and a house outside Barryville NY finished, now staged, and hitting the market in a week or so. We also just entered into Contract on a spec house in Kerhonkson, and one is in Saugerties is making good progress. I'm now expecting 2026 to be a pretty good year - which is pretty extraordinary since all sorts of possible head-winds are out there - from increasing inventory of homes for sale, to the crazy world, to interest rates, to competition, etc... I'm a master sailor in all types of seas it appears. I'm also surrounded in the field and in the office with the most talent I've ever assembled, talent that is complementary to my goals.

Like Oscar Schindler said his father told him, you need most in life a good lawyer, accountant and doctor. I have those, and on the medicine front I opted into a decade ago to a concierge retainer type relationship with a doctors group out of NYC - The Princeton Longevity Center offers 'executive style' health care, comprehensive head to toe, state of the art approach and facilities.

So I pay a few thousand dollars a year for 24/7 access to Dr Karlsberg, who is like a pretty high level NYC doctor, who literally and personally responds to any and all texts and emails and phone calls, with all the time in the world that I need.

To stay subscribed to that service, you have to opt in to their head to toe exam every two years which gives you the low down on everything from your heart and all other organs, to full body scans, cancer scans, plaque scans, hearing, seeing, EKG heart activity under exercise, a nutrionist.

This all takes place on the 71st floor of the Freedom Tower in downtown Manhattan. It's all day affair, with your private room, lunch, etc... Since it is NYC, there is always a bit of smoke and mirrors, paying for prestige element to it, but at the same time, the comprehensiveness and expertise of the staff is world class. And what is one of the primary secrets to longevity - preventivw care, and early detection. If shit doesn't sneak up on you, you stand a much better chance at surviving it.

Turns out, I test out like I'm a 38 year old. Heart function, weight, heart health, artery health, organ function, body mass/fat levels, muscle tone, flexiblity. That's good to hear that the results are matching the effort, since I think the last 3 years of my life - even though they have been a shit show of stress and problem-solving - have probably been the three healthiest years I've stitched together in decades, when measured by activity, nutrition, amount (or lack of) drugs and alcohol, and general intentionality to my health. Not perfect by any means, but a consistent good effort that has the doctors smiling. So to have this touchstone evaluation every two years is a motivator to stay on the right track.

In your 50's shit hits the fan. You are either taking care of yourself and beating back the hands of time to some degree, or you are quickly showing your age. Both approaches reveal themselves further in the early 60's. And to end this post with a complete surprise full circle - the benefits of good health aren't always tangible- you never know what sprain, tear, break, disease didn't happen because you paid attention and ate well, stretched and kept moving.

‍

I took my road bike along with me and after I checked into the Moxy on Ann Street, grabbed the bike lane along the west side highway and road it up to the GW bridge.

Got rained on on the way back, so I stopped in Harlem for some Indian food. My typical order - veggie samosa, butter chicken, regular naan, rice and riata. I also had a delicious sweet lassi.

Little did I know as I was capturing this fogged in NYC from the GWB it was moving my way.

It's been raining for a few days now in this whole region. For some reason, i don't seem to care.