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

We have definitely recently hit a sort of nirvana state of construction, construction administration and construction sales.  Smooth is the way it is, like a Marvin Gaye song.

We are construction busy, and it’s going well. 

Someone put this on my car. 2 astonishing takeaways - they were right, I parked horribly. and 2, who cares enough to carry these around with them.

We have good cash flow, so we move without impediment.

We have a constant stream of new clients. Each year I wonder what it holds in store for us, and each year for 25 years we surfed and prospered.  The rarity of that type of small business success is easy to miss for me, because I’m surrounded by successful small businesses since that is the type we tend to associate with.  But outside of my daily experience bubble, the odds of succeeding year after year for decades is statistically low.

All sorts of things can happen.  You can make the wrong investment in technology, land, product or people.   You can make a mistake.  You or a family member could get ill.  The marketplace might change and you might not.  You might just get sick and tired of dealing with the baloney, the neverending fire drills and responsibilities.  You might not make enough money.  You might pick the wrong partner.  You might get divorced.  You might not be able to keep up with taxes, benefits, insurance.  More can go wrong than right for sure.

So that we are entering our ¼ century mark firing on all cylinders, houses for sale, houses going into contract, a half a dozen home build projects for contracted clients on the books, AND have a talented skilled vetted and experienced team both in the office and in the field, AND we have a responsive roster of lawyers, engineers, surveyors.

We know how to solve problems.  How to avoid problems.  How to minimize problems.

Today is Saturday, and when I can I like to tour my projects on Saturdays.  They typically are quiet, so I can concentrate and appreciate without a bunch of yapping in my ear about this problem or that issue.  Unfortunately it’s supposed to rain a bit but that’s life in the fast lane.

I’ve had some projects I’ve been working on for a very long time finally finishing up - electrical infrastructure to two houses in Fremont NY that held up the completion of one of my homes for over a year, and the other one a final punchout of the engineering approvals for a 4 lot subdivision in Phoenixville PA, where I own and rent four single family residential homes.  Projects that took an insane amount of delicacy, perseverance and intelligence.

My residential homes I own and rent now number eight, and the cash they spin off isn’t mind-blowing but it does add up.  The depreciation tax benefit also adds up, where the purchase price plus improvements can be written off over 27.5 years (I believe that is the correct duration).  Just turns out that the depreciation benefit about wipes out the income tax on the net profit so the rental income is mostly untaxed - well, it’s taxed, it’s just offset by the depreciation.  So, at my income tax rate in this state, using easy numbers, if I clear $100,000, I’m keeping $100,000, not $60k.  That’s a big difference over years.

The tax problem isn’t solved however.  When you sell the rental, your tax basis value is the purchase price minus the depreciation, so your gain is bigger, and so is your tax bill.  But that’s typically a capital gain, which can be half the rate of regular income.

I’ve probably mentioned that unless you own a construction company with a book-keeper, operations guy and the owner, I wouldn’t mess with residential rental real estate.  It’s not passive, it carries a lot of risk, the profits are slim, and if you are paying interest on a mortgage, you really aren’t clearing any profits meaning vacancies and repairs and the everyday inflation of taxes, insurance, etc… will literally eat you alive while you are hoping for appreciation.  And a lot of times not liquid so once your in, your in.

My email inbox overfloweth. I find if I just ignore it a bit and come back to it a week later, 75% of the emails don’t need to be answered for one reason or another.

I’m getting ready to build for some folks over in Bethel NY and they husband and wife just were going back and forth about where to put the house and I was like ‘I gotta go’ and the wife’s like ‘you just got here’ and I said ‘I got here awhile ago and this is our 3rd try’ and the wife looks put off and the husband says “I don’t mind his personality” right in front of me.  LOL.  I don’t care.  I’m awesome at what I do, I’m extremely effective and if you want a pro, take it, you want something else, leave it.

Monopolies always suck in one way or another and let’s face it, Apple sucks. At least if you extrapolate their simple voice texting understanding and contrast that with voice queries with Claude or Chatgpt.  How can Apple’s suck so bad and the others are reasonably accurate?  What else sucks so bad about Apple we don’t even realize it since it’s standard and competition has been stymied by the power of a monopoly?   I used to say if Apple voice texting is an example of AI, we have nothing to worry about.  Now I see Apple voice texting and Ai share little in common with forward, high-impact technology.

Ai’s response to why Apple voice texting sucks - 

5) Model size and training approach

AI assistants:

• Trained on massive conversational datasets
• Fine-tuned for natural language output

Apple dictation:

• Trained more narrowly for phonetic recognition
• Not heavily optimized for conversational repair

6) Real-world effect (what you’re experiencing)

Why it feels “so bad”:

• It doesn’t correct your phrasing
• It doesn’t infer intent
• It fails on names, slang, or fast speech
• It locks in early mistakes instead of revising

Meanwhile ChatGPT/Claude:

• Smooth over errors
• Fix grammar automatically
• Reconstruct meaning even from messy input

Jared Covit Lawsuit Fun Fact - we calculated that we estimate we received over 700 emails during and after this house build, started by Jared Covit and Lauren Rich.  That’s the ones they began, not the ones we began, and not counting responses - we are thousands at that point.  If I get two emails a week from a client, that’s about average.  And he thinks he’s behaving normally.  Also found out he’s not married, just got engaged a few weeks ago.  Can you imagine - “Will you marry me?  Oh by the way I need you to get grilled next week at a deposition for this lawsuit I put your name on?  BTW, who loves you baby?” #5 on his search results and it's only been 2 days. And I've republished all the posts I took down last year in an attempt to lower the temperature.

Jared Covit was delivered a great home in the middle of a world-wide pandemic.  We responded to another 100 emails after he moved into the home.  Then he sues us for stuff that judge laughs out of court, and he starts a trade-mark infringement Catskill Farms instagram account, and he ruins his girlfriends upstate experience with this exercise - and I’m the 'mean' one.  

Can’t make this stuff up.  But what you can do is post the entire transcript of the 8 hours of depositions with commentary.  Will be fun.

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We just had two successful days of legal discovery (which the main takeaway is Jared Covit thinks I'm mean), and I'm just about heading to Italy for better part of a month, so I'm not going to harp on this one thing as we are crushing it from a business perspective. but here's the letter I submitted to the NY Bar concerning the actions of Martin Shell.

Charles Petersheim
2458 State Route 209
Wurtsboro, NY 12790
917-838-5342

4/20/2026

Attorney Grievance Committee
Third Judicial Department
286 Washington Avenue Extension, Suite 200
Albany, New York 12203

Re: Complaint Against Martin Shell, Esq.
The Shell Law Firm, PLLC

Dear Members of the Committee:

I write to file a complaint regarding the conduct of Martin Shell, Esq., counsel for the plaintiffs in an ongoing civil matter in which I am a defendant.

The conduct at issue occurred during a scheduled site inspection of the subject property located at 174 Rivka Road, Saugerties, New York. The inspection took place on March 30, 2026.

During the inspection, Mr. Shell engaged in behavior that I believe was unprofessional and inconsistent with the standards of conduct expected of attorneys in New York. Specifically:

• Mr. Shell raised his voice and addressed me in an aggressive and confrontational manner on multiple occasions.
• He attempted to direct and control my actions during the inspection, issuing instructions in a manner that was inappropriate for opposing counsel.
• His conduct disrupted the orderly process of the inspection and created a tense and adversarial environment beyond what is typical for such proceedings.
• Mr. Shell produced a camera and began recording in a manner that I experienced as aggressive and intrusive. This recording was not disclosed or agreed upon in advance and was conducted in close proximity in a way that appeared intended to provoke or intimidate rather than neutrally document the inspection.
• His aggressive actions only were tempered after several warnings from my counsel.

It’s also appears that Mr Shell and Mr Covit (the homeowner) set up a listening devices at the exterior of the home to eavesdrop on our privileged and private conversations.  Since I was using my phone to videotape the condition of the home, I captured Attorney Shell speaking into thin air ‘Jared, can you open the front door’? while Jared Covit is inside the home far from our location.  The door then opens.

The purpose of the site inspection was to facilitate discovery in a professional and cooperative manner. Instead, the conduct described above interfered with that objective.

Mr Shell may counter his performance was in appropriate response to me introducing him to my fellow inspectees as the 'lawyer who sued us for fraud' (cause of action dismissed), which was just stating the facts that he himself created.  I believe Mr. Shell’s behavior falls below the standards of civility and professionalism required of attorneys, including the obligation to refrain from conduct that is disruptive, harassing, or prejudicial to the administration of justice.

I respectfully request that the Committee review this matter and determine whether further inquiry or action is warranted, especially the potential eavesdropping of client-attorney conversations.

I am available to provide additional information, including a more detailed account of the incident, the identities of other individuals present, and any supporting documentation.

Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.  There were four witnesses to this, including another member of the bar.

Respectfully,

Charles Petersheim

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What Claude.ai says about the situation -

If this happened, it is a serious violation:

From a legal standpoint, attorney-client privilege and work product doctrine protect your private conversations during that inspection. If opposing counsel actively participated in or directed the recording of those conversations, that is potentially one of the most serious ethical violations an attorney can commit. It could constitute:

• Eavesdropping — a criminal offense under New York Penal Law §250.05, which makes it illegal to unlawfully engage in wiretapping or mechanical overhearing of a conversation
• Violation of attorney-client privilege — intentionally intercepting privileged communications is sanctionable conduct
• Bar ethics violations — under New York Rules of Professional Conduct, Rule 8.4, attorneys are prohibited from engaging in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation
• Potential obstruction — depending on what they did with the information

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The Jared Covit, Lauren Rich, Martin Shell Show is Back in Town.

Some of you long time readers might remember the homeowners of Ranch 51 in Saugerties, that great house with a stream, views abutting a lovely field in the rear of the property at the far end of a 16 home project we did in 2020-2022, those perfectly nasty folks who after we delivered a home to in a world-wide pandemic sued us for deceptive business practices, tried to pierce the corporate veil to sue me personally, breach of contract and bunch of other nonsense that an Ulster County court unceromoniously threw out and dismissed.  Unless you know a little about the law, or run a business that gets up in the morning and works hard all day for decades, it’s hard to overstate the offensiveness of these causes of actions these jerks brought.

Jared Covit also created a shadow Catskill Farms instagram account which looked friendly and then turned nasty if you liked or followed, and used his digital prowess to seemingly auto-contact a lot of my Catskill Farms followers, many who are my friends and one who got caught up in this was my son Lucas since Lucas is an active follower of mine on Insta. Now Covit doesn't have a kid, so he can't really fathom the rage a situation like that can feel like to a parent. He took it down after he was rightfully shown the potential liability he was creating for he and his apparently long-suffering wife Lauren (we will learn how long-suffering tomorrow) with his business interference tactics.  One of the few smart things he’s done in this regard.

So Jared Covit and Lauren Rich have a few issues with their home, which is true for every single home we’ve ever built, and as we tried to work through them, the level of obsession became frightening - during and after the build.  Hundreds upon hundreds of emails.  Texts.   Followups.  Add ons.  Repeat.  Remedy one thing, four more emails arrived in our inbox.  And then followups to the new emails.   Really, a sickness the level of obsession. 

So anyway, this was years ago, and his home is perfectly fine, performing in a fashion I hope all our homes perform - dependable, safe, appreciating in value, good looking, low maintenance.

But this fucking guy Jared Covit wants his pound of flesh so the one legal cause of action that withstood immediate dismissal was about a warranty claim about siding, and that wasn’t dismissed not because its valid, but because the judge wanted to learn more about it because it was a dispute on the facts, whereas on the 4, 5, 6 causes of action that were dismissed were just wrongly pled and really just a tool of harassment.

So here we are years later and Jared Covit won’t let it go even though there have been so many off ramp opportunities I’ve lost count, so today I had to sit for a deposition discussing among many things, if I’ve read and committed to memory and had team meetings about a 110 page technical manual about how to install Hardy Plank siding.  His attorney Martin Shell, attorney at law, who showed up an hour late since I guess he doesn’t know that there is traffic getting out of the city, put on a ridiculous performance of ill-tempered, easily-provoked amateurness that only he and his seemingly delusional client could think was effective. It should be self-evident, by the very nature of a blog, that these statements are my opinions derived directly from watching him in action.

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Or as ChatGPT says - Yes—blogs are personal in tone and perspective.They’re essentially your voice, your take, your narrative—more like a journal or commentary than formal writing.

Tomorrow, Jared Covit and his wife Lauren Rich have to sit for their depositions where we will closely evaluate their claims, approaches, theories and opinions about a lot of different things. I don't want to spoil it tonight, but expect a good recap tomorrow or over the weekend.

One of the off ramps I offered in an attempt to lower the temperature was to take down four funny blog posts from a year ago after all most of his legal causes of action were dismissed, highlighting Martin Shell’s apparent lack of legal acumen and Jared Covit’s insane obsessiveness (in my opinion) as well as all the time he has on his hands and well as the perverse need to stain his and his wife's upstate life with this exercise.  

Well, those posts Google loved, as I’m sure Google will love this one, since Google loves this blog.  Why does Google love this blog? - because it’s pertinent, it’s informed, it’s regularly updated and I’ve been keeping it for the better part of 2 decades. So I’m going to republish them and then watch to see if anything has changed with our authority with the world's smartest algorithm.  Since Jared Covit doesn’t have much of an internet presence, my blog posts quickly - and I mean quickly - became the dominant search return on his name. Forever. What do they say? FAFO?

When I intimated that I’m going to repost those and create new ones tracking this new uptick in energy with this site, Martin Shell once again lost his cool saying ‘I’m going to the judge’, “I’m going to do this”, “I’m going to tell my mom”.  I’m just like ‘free speech bro, free speech.  Let it ring my Brother.” Martin Shell also wasn't that happy to learn I filed a ethics complaint against him for his actions towards me at a site inspection, which can actually be a big deal depending how it gets viewed by the powers that be. I don't have a copy of it handy but I'll post it when I can. It's a great rebuttal to his dismissed causes of actions against me, personally- to make one against him. Only mine has legs and his didn't.

Anyways, it’s weird when $100,000 or $200,000 is just a business expense, one that is reduced in half because of NY and Fed taxes on big earners.  The time to compromise with these pricks is over - this will go all the way now.  Stay tuned. Amazingly, I didn't get a parking ticket in Kingston today.

And the lame cleanup Chatgpt version:

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The Jared Covit, Lauren Rich, Martin Shell Show Is Back in Town

Some longtime readers might remember the homeowners of Ranch 51 in Saugerties — a house we built between 2020–2022 at the end of a 16-home project. After delivery during the pandemic, disputes arose and litigation followed, including claims for deceptive business practices, attempts to pierce the corporate veil, breach of contract, and other allegations. Many of those claims were ultimately dismissed by an Ulster County court.

If you’ve never run a business for decades, it’s hard to appreciate how disruptive and frustrating litigation like that can be, particularly when you believe the claims are unfounded.

Kingston – Scene of the Deposition

During that period, there were also some unusual online dynamics involving social media accounts that, from our perspective, appeared connected to the situation and interacted with our audience in ways we found concerning. Those issues were addressed at the time and eventually stopped.

Covit and Rich have raised various issues with their home — which, to be fair, is not unusual. Every home has punch list items and follow-ups. What made this situation different, in our experience, was the volume and persistence of communications during and after construction — extensive emails, texts, and follow-ups as we worked through items.

That process became difficult to manage at times.

Where Things Stand Now

Years later, the home is performing as intended — safe, functional, and consistent with what we aim to deliver.

At this stage, the remaining legal dispute centers largely on a warranty-related issue involving siding. That claim was not dismissed early because it involves factual questions that the court determined should be explored further.

Despite multiple opportunities to resolve things along the way, the matter has continued, and today included a deposition covering, among other things, technical installation standards and documentation.

Attorney Martin Shell, representing the plaintiffs, participated in the deposition. As is often the case in litigation, there were moments of tension and disagreement about approach and conduct during the proceeding.

What’s Next

Tomorrow, Covit and Rich are scheduled for their depositions, where their claims, positions, and supporting facts will be examined in detail. I’ll share a recap once that process unfolds.

At one point, I offered to remove prior blog posts written after earlier dismissals as part of an effort to de-escalate things. Those posts discussed my perspective on the dispute and the litigation process. Ultimately, that proposal did not lead to a resolution.

For those curious about how content performs online — yes, this blog has been around for nearly two decades, and it tends to rank well because it’s consistent, specific, and regularly updated.

So as this situation evolves, I’ll continue documenting it here.

Stay tuned.

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I was just thinking about the development differences of me and my son, as I was reading about retiring in the South Of France (dream not reality) and was thinking about a girl I met on Martha’s Vineyard who I exchanged letters with, and I would wait for those letters, day after day, walking to the mailbox at lunch of the farm in Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard.  I remember at the height of our correspondence in the summer of ‘91, where my words tumbled onto the page, into an envelope, off to her mother’s home in Ohio.

She was the scion of a large mid-west banking family, attending Brown, and farming, like me, in the summers on the blue-blood enclave.  I would send those letters, and she would return hers, and the turnaround was weeks, with no expectation or knowledge of when a letter might drop.  Just a daily anticipation and then the infrequent arrival of a letter, which slowly faded to black as one of the writers lost the passion of the correspondence. This happened on Morning Glory Farm.

The dopamine drip of waiting on a letter is a lot different than opening your phone and sending a text or receiving a text, a notification, etc…  And I got to wondering on this Friday morning how that changes our wiring - learning to wait versus getting quick feedback.  In my business at least, and I think life in general, there is a benefit to having a muscle trained that knows how to wait, can navigate the impulses of ‘now’, is comfortable in the vast unknown.

Even for those of us raised in the pre-tech era, we have been pretty much re-conditioned to need immediacy and it takes a concerted effort to turn the devices off, power down go tech-dark, even for a few hours in the evening.

But the waiting on a letter that you don’t even know if it was ever sent, walking to the mailbox where you have that 2 second anticipation as you open the mailbox door before most times being disappointed, that’s a unique type of waiting and seeing.  I guess the point is a little bit - we used to have a lot more low-simmering disappointment woven into each moment of each day, when things weren’t at our fingertips, we did not live in the malleable and marginally phony online instagram world.

But even today, I remember those walks to the mailbox with a mixture of memory and shame for the unrequited nature of that one-sided letter-oriented romance with a girl way out of my league, which faded on its own timeline.

We are getting a lot of construction done.  But now it’s wet, and the sun isn’t shining, so it stays wet and saturated.  We need a week of sunshine.  But nevertheless, progress is everywhere.

It will be a big year of construction productivity.  I don’t know about construction profits yet; that we will have to wait and see, but if things come together, if the sales market rewards us for the risks we are taking, then it shall be a banner year.

Even if not a banner year, with the deals we have in place at this early juncture in the year, it will be a manageable busy year, and that's the worst case scenario.  I’m bringing $4m of new homes for sale to the market so there better be some buyers out there!  I’ve cashed out my stock market non-retirement accounts and brought this money back into the business so I can cushion my risks without borrowing at the cost of $8k-$12k a month.  Even though my business and my personal finances are separate, they all funnel to my personal net worth/wealth bottomline, so a dollar saved in interest wherever is a dollar more in my pocket.  With the world acting crazy, I doubt my market returns will be larger and expected to exceed my interest costs of 7+%. 

I remember sitting in the Starbucks in New Paltz in 2015 just reading the business pages of some newspaper and some whipper snapper University kid interrupts me and tells me to ‘buy crypto’.  I brushed him off of course, and of course he was right.  I could have been an early adopter even if I wasn’t ‘all in’.  The one caveat there would be there would be zero chance I didn’t lose or misplace my codes, passwords and security strings, causing imaginable grief at the locked up and untouchable bitcoin appreciation.

I was also at the table when AI was first being discussed mainstream with a girlfriend who worked at a startup in 2022

And I was sitting in the perfect seat for both cell phones and the internet in 1994-2002, as well as the Iphone, etc…

I think going forward I will be a little more open to these conversations I hear, and perhaps make small investments and let them sit and grow or fail.  You don’t have to be a believer and always right about these things to hedge your skeptical nature and make small bets on the future.

I got my wish - a cold but dry week that allowed a lot of progress.

First bicycle ride of the year with gear head from local bike store Xavier.

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