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

Well, I guess I’m not the only one pondering too much the Taylor Swift wedding, supposedly happening in NYC at MSG this weekend, coinciding with a big American yearly holiday and this year more so because it’s the 250 Anniversary of this American Experiment (which as far as history goes, is pretty short).

Alice Bolin of the NYTimes captures one angle of the wedding objection in her guest essay today, and she nails some good points, but covers others I think are overdone or over-urban, or perhaps over-liberal.  My primary objection, or concern, or cause for a raised eyebrow (as I wrote a few weeks ago) is her seeming need now to always be where it's at - if it’s a media all-consuming event, she will be there, like Forest Gump.  I noted it at the Knicks game.  I noted it at the music awards where Oliva Rodrigo was performing.  And now, competing with a nation’s semiquincentennial, sestercentennial, bisesquicentennial, or quarter-millennial (all different ways to say biannual according to Google’s AI) celebration, seems overly needy, like she has somehow confused herself with us. It’s weird, and I feel bad for her, this need to be there, like:

Carly Simon sings:

Well I hear you went up to Saratoga

And your horse naturally won

Then you flew your lear jet up to Nova Scotia

To see the total eclipse of the sun

Well you're where you should be all the time

You're so vain

You probably think this song is about you

You're so vain (so vain)

I bet you think this song is about you

Don't you don't you, don't you, don't you now

I’m not hating on Taylor Swift, I’m just observing a personality trait that seems to be growing - the spotlight stealer.  That’s never a good look for someone who has spent a lot of time in her own well-earned spotlight.  I don’t think it’s bad for country, I think it’s bad for her, personally, as a person, since regardless of wealth, or fame, in the end, the F Scott Fitzgerald quote about late nights - ““In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.”  Nothing protects us Homo Sapiens from this doubt and mind-meandering.  

That’s why the American mid-westerner is so celebrated - humble, comfortable in their own skin, god-fearing, with an understanding of their place in the world.  Swift’s mid-western charm, and the songs she wrote about them, is a long way off from getting competing with a nation’s birth.

We are busy. Really busy.  And I now know what that means for me, in this period of my always changing business-journey - I’m the guy at the right place at the right time at the right meeting hearing the good bad and the ugly and efficiently acting, reacting, or fixing.  It’s actually really good for the business - to have the most experienced person in the organization who happens to be one of the most experienced construction veterans in the region - being the first to know - it accelerates problem-solving by accelerating problem-identification.  And what’s the old saying - being aware of the problem is the first step to solving it.

But what it also means is I’m dealing with a lot of ‘bad news’ first hand, unfiltered, undelayed.  And I can be a bit of an emotional overreactor, especially with business problems, because like a zebra in the African savannah whose genetic code has taught it to be jumpy, alert and highly suspicious of every blowing blade of tall grass in case a lion lies in wait, I’ve been on a trigger’s edge of hyper-alert sensitivity for that problem that puts me out of business.  So I’ve trained myself out of necessity to be hyper-alert, and to take quick action to problems large and small, since you never know when small will become large.  It also puts me in the position to having to solve, or lead the solving, of the problem, which results in increased blood pressure BUT efficient and clear resolution paths.

And in economic terms, efficient and clear resolution paths result in efficient and clear profit maximization.    There is no money in dawdling over problems.  Identify, construct a plan, throw some money at it, fix correctly the first time, and move onto the next one.  I wouldn’t be solving all these problems without a great team behind me to delegate some pieces of the problem-solving puzzle to, that’s for sure.

It’s hard to know if it’s ‘harder’ now to get things done - it feels like it with interfering building departments - but it’s probably the speed at which we are moving.  And we are moving fast - because, see above - I’m out there in front solving problems.

But to digress back the zebra, that’s why you don’t see domesticated zebras - because their flight and fight instincts are so hair-trigger because for millennia they’ve been bred to worry about all the predators that would love to have them for dinner.   I relate to the plight of the zebra.

Houses all over - in all states of completion.   We are just finishing up three.  Starting 3.  Mid-construction 5.  That’s a lot of construction.   All the dust from this round of housing investment that I started in September 2025 should be washed and rinsed by November of 2026 - and not one inch of it has been done without my micro and constant oversight.

‍

Teaching my son how to drive my travel van so he and his bros can go up to Lake George for a few days.

Say what you will about me, but one thing baseline truth is that I've handled a lot of other people's money - a lot- over the course of decades - money that had their hopes and dreams wrapped up in it - we are talking millions, hundreds of millions - and never, not even once, have I mis-used, mis-appropriated, borrowed-against or otherwise put it in danger. As a big business story reader, the stories are endless about people in my position of managing other people's money during a building or development process that somehow - purposely or not, competently or not, honestly or not - end up losing this money by not finishing the project or running out of other people's money to finish the project. The responsibility is immense, and I've always met the moment. There has been plenty of times where the cash flow of Catskill Farms was severely strained for periods of time, and that's when you want a businessman at the helm of the business, and not some carpenter who rose through the ranks whose books stink and knowledge of finance is weak.

‍

Happy 4th. I'm staying close to home.

NYC is definitely having its moment and for all of us who once lived there there seems to be a shared lowkey nostalgic FOMA for all the fun they are having down there.  The World Cup crowds are in Town, the Knicks ticker-tap, beautiful weather, Mamdani…  And the 250 Anniversary of the founding of the Country, where glorious ideas of freedom and self-governance were captured out of thin air, while enslaving millions and building a powerhouse off their whipped and skinned backs.  Don’t get me wrong - the US occupies no moral low ground on how it achieved its wealth and position - there’s not a western country who didn’t do the same or worse, but still…

At least according to my TikTok feed, the local multiculturalism that defines NYC combined with the International summer crowds and the fanatical World Cup crowds and now the exuberant city-wide Knicks party is creating a brew of united optimism the world and the US needed.   And there is some irony in the fact that the only game lost Trump attended.

I see people from all over the world posting from inside of Costco, or Walmart, or an Outdoor store, amazed at the immensity and options and selections.  Giant cups of Coke, refilled on demand.  Ice galore.   Air Conditioning created arctic conditions.  Barbecue.  Wide streets.  Baseball games filled with Scots singing Sweet Caroline.   Reports of shocked foreigners who can’t understand the friendliness of strangers and waitresses.

Politics and their handmaiden, the Press, thrive on chaos, disappointment and tragedy.  And with the 24/7 news cycle, and now the ever-ready doom scrolling of social media contagion, it’s actually hard to remember, at least here in the US, people just want to have fun.

Though, as I was talking it through with a friend of mine, these Europeans who are having so much fun admiring our excess, ‘freedom’ and space, they get to go back home to free education, childcare,  medicine and a strong social safety net, whereas here people are going bankrupt everyday after they get sick, stuck in debt for decades for education of increasingly questionable value, and more and more difficulty just affording a basic day to day life.  When childcare costs $30k annually for two kids, healthcare $2k a month, college $50k a year, autos that seems to start at $40k now- you just have to wonder if we are having fun yet?

And somehow, Billions and even hundred of billions are available for any overseas military action at a moments notice, ICE funding can be quadrupled overnight, but try and solve some simple day to day issues like healthcare and education, and we spend decades getting nowhere.  To ensure every person in this country with $1000 a month premiums would cost $330 billion per year.  To give all 12 million college bound students $10,000 is $120 billion a year.  These sums are commonly available for other purposes.  All the American billionaires should get together and set up a non-government healthcare system - free of politics and run with the steady hand of capitalists.  Instead of pledging to give away most of their money in the Giving Pledge thunk up by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, they should funnel and aggregate it into a fund fixing an American need that has gone unfixed for too long by a broken political system.

Me, long-term, I’ll be living somewhere else.  I just find the whole premise of American life at this point a bit absurd.  A hamster wheel of bills and precarious financial living and insecurity of basic life things like medicine.  And at the same time, I couldn’t agree more with the celebrations. I'm a shining example of the land of opportunity and the ability to go out kill something each day and drag it home, self-propelled and self-initiated. The rarity of pulling that off for 25 years is a bit of an accomplishment.

Barn 62 is nearly finished and will be for sale soon.  It’s 1800 sq ft, 3 bedrooms, and 2.5 baths.  Sits on a pretty piece land just outside Barryville with lake rights to Timberlake.

‍

NYC is much in the news these days with the Knicks seemingly set to win the NBA crown.  You have to be careful anytime you assert ‘something is in the news’ because it’s possible it’s just in your news, your feed, reinforced and self-perpetuating with each like, follow, linger or forward of any given post. 

As least in my curated algorithm, the Knicks, the games, and the streets of NYC including watch-parties and street corner gatherings have garnered a certain momentum of celebration.  I’m a big NYC appreciator - lived there, fish there for most of my business clients, still read Crain's Business Journal for the micro-business take on the city, do the Five Boro bike tour whenever I can and read the New Yorker since I was 20, which while this publication covers a variety of international and national issues, at its core is a tribal coverage of the five boros. 

Mamdani continues to impress - policy success in real life and real time still to be determined - but as for a coherent vision of what he sees as important for NY, and building coalitions around that goal, he seems to be on the right track.  His infectious smile hurts my face just looking at it.   He eschewed a front-row ticket to the Knicks game, though you can bet it was available to him with all the celebs showcasing their status and access.  Instead he picks a fight with the Knicks owner and watches the game from a small LGBTQ bar.  He’s got a good feel for the micro-political theater, which is an interesting skill in one of the world’s largest cities.  

Glad I checked my facts before posting - seems Mamdani did attend game 3 but with nose bleed seats. The NYPost seems to think this is a betrayal of his 'everyman' act, since even the nose-bleed seats are tough to get and are expensive. But, not to me - since I'm sure he could have gotten court side, could have gotten opening ceremonies, and could be putting himself front and center in the whole spectacle. (remember, this is just my world-view, wholly determined by what's being fed me in my social media). That's a more typical approach and tactic of a NY politician.

‍

Taylor Swift on the other hand, she just can’t see someone else’s parade and not want to be the Queen of it.  I remember thinking the same thing when Olivia Rodrigo was singing Vampire at one of the award shows and Swift stole some thunder by standing, and dancing with prominence, knowing full-well where the cameras would swing.  She did it with Karol G, but less so.  And now with the Knicks - seeing all the attention hoisted on the celebs she’s like “I need to be there” and so she was, getting a lot of attention for a sport and city that as far as I know holds no particular interest for her. Her over-the-top fandom wherever she is grates on my sense of propriety.  Think about - worth billions, universally lauded, applauded and even worshipped around the world and still needs not to miss out on a moment of international fame and attention.  Trump-like. Her constant energy is exhausting. Humans - we are a weird bunch.

‍

You're so much fun to be around

You had to have a white hot spotlight

You had to be a big shot last night

‍

‍

Dua Lipa got married, and that was a bit of a disappointment to see my chance for that relationship extinguished with finality. That guy of hers most be some kind of lover since her energies and demands would seem to be inexhaustible. My employee from a few years ago put together this bar car for me and included a framed photo of my girl Dua.

I was concerned about Ariana Grande's physical appearance so I killed some time googling her and surprise, I wasn't the only one. But then I opened up my unrelated TikTok app just a few minutes later and low and behold the very first thing in my feed is a threat about Grande and her appearance. We used to think the idea that our phone is listening and recording was coincidental and eye-brow raising - now it's clear it's happening real time all the time. Every conversation, All the time. Catalogued and archived. Marketed to and surviellenced from.

My Tik Tok feeds is giving me a lot of raucous loud boisterous New Yorkers being New Yorkers. Fun to watch.  A bit dangerous this brew of excitement and mix of all the classes of NYC.  

Well, updated - Knicks win and NYC is showing why it's a one of kind type of place.

It’s been a wild 9 months of planning and a wilder 3 months of construction execution.  We are literally firing on all cylinders across the whole company - the team is in place and doing just fine.

It’s hard to describe the power of a team in this business.  There are several rungs or circles - you have your employees; you have your subcontractors that while may run their own businesses act for the most part like employees just by the amount of business we throw off their way in terms of coordination and orchestration and communication; you have larger subs where we comprise a measurable but not absolute piece of their business; and you have the vendors and subs where we occupy the standard ‘just a valued client’ position.

We spend upwards of $250,000 a week on goods and services, and there are few if any of those goods and services which don’t require a fair degree of effort on our part to get the job done.  Few things in my world are on auto-pilot.  Too many moving pieces, too much human failability and fragility, too much interaction of people, parts and circumstance - an interplay of Murphy’s Law and what could happen will happen.  It’s not easy; it’s actually downright hard. And 25 years into it, with over 300 homes up and running well, I’m under no illusion as to the price it takes to do my job well and extend the positive legacy of Catskill Farms.

The ‘price’ is measured in many ways.  The cost of the effort - the cost of supervising and tweaking or improving the effort - the cost in time - the personal cost in mental health.  It’s a grown up job with grown up responsibilities and grown up consequences.  The price a person pays for small business survival is a price most people can’t fathom in the slightest.  We entrepreneurs are aliens to the rest of you.

Part of that is because I push.  I push everyday. None of our job sites sit around.  We just finished a 5000 sq ft home 2000 ft off any other road with a complicated utility project, complicated access and a horrid winter.  And we did it in less than a year.  We did it without power to the site.  We did it with day to day site access management.  We did it with hard to communicate directions to the job.  And that was by no means the only thing we had going on.   Some of our clients, for whatever reason, get the immensity of the effort.  Others don’t.  In the end, our efforts seem to get rewarded with our longevity.   I look around at all the players who have come and yes, gone, and there are few examples of those who stick around.  There’s Western Sullivan Properties, but they just copied us with little in the way of shame for doing so - they are putting out some nice houses and seem to be here to stay, but other than that, the number of companies that scaled and stuck around is nearly zero in terms of building new homes for the sales market. 

The “Our Homes, Your Land” idea of 2022 remains just another stroke of my market insight abilities that have powered this company since the first contrarian market thoughts I had in 2002.  My contrarian streak has served me and a lot of other people well in business throughout this journey - 2002, build new when the fad was farmhouse fixer-upper; 2005, build 2 bedroom cottages when everyone else was going big and bigger; 2009, keep building in the face of an international real estate collapse; 2020, put all the chips on the table with land purchases before it was clear that Covid would propel the Catskills like it did.   There’s been a lot more contrarian bets and decisions, and while it’s easy to see the big pronounced ones, the day to day ones - the conversation, pivot, insight, hire, purchase, investment, approach - those are woven into the fabric of each day. I think differently. And that works sometimes, infuriates others, bemuses others and evokes pity from others.  It’s a mixed bag for sure; I’m well aware of it. But it is the secret sauce.

I’m also very well-aware I’ve been using a ton of semi-colons here, which gives me a weird sense of accomplishment because I’m using them correctly. If I can weave in a colon, then I’m really in business.

So the ‘Our homes your land’ concept came from the insight that some, quite a few actually, families who couldn’t find the house they wanted from 2021-2023, bought land thinking it was the easier route, or a viable route.   Then they found out it was hard: hard to get started, hard to get engineered, hard to find a design, hard to get a permit and then even harder to have a successful build.  So they were sitting on land, sitting on land that was then unavailable to me, increasing the scarcity and thus raising the cost of land in general.  So I marketed our ready to go homes, our plug and play homes you can personalize but don’t need to reinvent, our homes that we know how to build and price, our homes that we have worked out the issues.  In sum, our homes that can get you moving forward quickly and affordably and professionally and predictably.

So we are building a lot - 

In Catskill.

In Saugerties.

Another in Saugerties.

In Bethel.

‍

In Kerhonkson.

‍

In Callicoon.

In Narrowsburg.

‍

In Barryville.

In Cochecton.

Each with their own building departments, full-time, part-time, never-time. With their own inspection criteria and priorities and processes.

Lots of personal adventures including a big graduation party at our house for my son's friends who are graduating (he's just ending his jr year but his friend group is heavily weighted to seniors). Really fun and quite large party, that ended by me discovering a puncture in the pool and the water drained 85% of the way and few snakes crawling around in the pool. We went big, with tower lights for the pickleball courts, lots of food, even a beer pong hat (without the beer) apparatus.

Go Big or Go Home.