Time is on my Side
I went to order some swim trunks the other day, and I guess I’m fancy now because a lot of the trunks being offered were nice, and expensive. Like north of $100 expensive, maybe closer to $200. But with a 3 week sojourn to Sardinia, Corsica and some still undefined places, I thought ‘what the heck?’ So I order a pair or two, and work my through the ordering, shipping info, billing info and then they tally up my total, and for the first time in all my purchasing, there is a ‘tariff’ or in this checkout, a ‘duty charge’ that was like $100 for this order - it was coming from Europe and I guess we put a 35% or so tariff on some goods. And in an interesting answer to how macro policies impact individual decisions, I cancelled my order before checking out. Just made the purchase too expensive.
After a cinderella end of season run of Overtime upsets, our local High School got pretty creamed in the sweet 16 of States. The below score wasn't the end of it - Parkland 'exploded' in the 2nd half with nearly perfect long range shooting. Only two good things came of that game - losing saved us from being creamed even worse in the next round, and it brought to an end a fun and exciting season. I don't have anyone on the team, but several of my son's friends play on the team.
I haven’t been following the war too much, other than to see the debate over the dueling narratives in the media and government about whether the news is covering the war results and efforts honestly and accurately. I can’t say in this particular case, but ever since the cover-up of Biden’s decline and the coverage of Israel’s can-hardly-be-called-a-war effort in Gaza, anything is possible. The impact on real estate is unknown for sure, and doubly unknown for my little slice of it, since our buyers and the interest in our homes are not tethered to the traditional tides of demand. Interest rate insensitive to some degree, using reserve cash and not their last dollar to use as a deposit and down payment, purchasing not for relocation but as a discretionary lifestyle choice that very well may be driven by world events and their perception of their safety in the NYC. We are going to know before too long since I have some houses for sale.
This beauty below will be for sale by the end of the month. Really has everything - 30 acres, 4500 sq ft, 2 story garage, views. We will see what the market thinks of it.
We played around with some wallpaper which was fun.
Many times I wonder if I don’t get a little too excited about things that shouldn’t get my attention, but then typically I wind up thinking that’s not the case. The amount of whirling complex problems to solve that come my way on a daily basis is staggering. All with associated financial, employee, municipal, regulatory, client aspects interconnected. Right now, among others of similar stickiness, I’ve nearing the completion of getting service to my two last homes at the Crest - I’ve literally been working on this for 2 years, which is interminable even by Utility standards, which works on its own clock. To keep your cool and keep to the plan while working through some of these big problems is an art, since a wrong word deed or action can set you back in some cases permanently as half the time these decisions and timelines depend on one person doing something to push it along. It reminds me why Schindler spent so much money and time flattering and bribing the Germans when setting up his armaments plant in WWII. Sometimes progress and goals are dependent on a real understanding of what is in your way, and how to remove it successfully.
The house in New Paltz gets great sunlight.
The warm weather last week got us off to a fast start, and it’s fair to say Catskill Farms is positioned to get some serious work done this year. The office team continues to mature into their roles and the field teams are sufficient and motivated. We have 2 spec homes for sale nearly finished, 2 client homes just about done. 2 client homes just getting started, 3 spec homes under construction. We are back to where we used to be - it will be interesting to see where the market is - since even though we are a bit concentrated in one aspect of one industry - building homes for sale - within that sector we are diversified. Different price points, different styles, different counties.
Birding lookout at the Bashakill just down the street from our offices. Nature is coming alive that's for sure.
One of the downsides of firing on all cylinders is the cash flow needed to to such a thing - and when the company and progress slows down like it did this winter, 2 things happen. 1, your bills become less since you are doing less construction, and 2, your cash flow tightens because you are doing less work. So when you start to pick up steam, you also stress your cash flow until reaching cruising altitude where the receivables match the payables. But to say we are pushing the pedal to the metal (not sure if that’s still a saying but back in the day it used to refer to pushing the gas pedal down the whole way to the floor) and we will see what happens. What used to not be true even in the slightest, is very true now - Time is on my Side.
The Blue Fox outside Narrowsburg NY is a fun place to grab dinner and drinks. It's out of the way locale makes it feel a bit lost in time and place and gives it a real 'shake-off-the-cold and grab a whiskey' feel to it.
Spring is springing
I’m sure everyone is not only sick of the weather, but actually sick of me talking about it in my blog too - and the last few days of ice, melt, ice was no fun at all.
We are inching ahead with our spring plans, ready to burst through the earth like a tulip or other like-minded spring plant. Within a week it may be soupy wet and muddy, but winter’s restrictions will be in the rear view mirror, even if it would dare to artic blast us again.
It’s pretty amazing how little chance the snow has versus the sun. Bright rays and some mid-30’s and you can literally watch the snow disappear.
I’ve been waiting for 2 years for electric to one of my homes. Two years is a bit of an exaggeration because that’s when I first applied for electric when we started the house, but 2+ years it has been, and now almost a year with a finished home just waiting on electric. It’s the type of thing you are happy didn’t happen earlier in my career when holding onto a house for the fun of it wouldn’t really fly too long.
Or, maybe the timing would have advantageous like if I was trying to get it up and sold in 2020, then Covid happened, then by the time I had electric house prices doubled but the increased cost of construction didn’t matter since the house was built prior - A guy can dream.
This year my goal is to fully price my homes. Meaning not sell too quick, or early in the marketing campaign. It’s hard to argue with the success of our sales strategy - take good offers everytime, but it’s also hard to argue I’ve left a lot of money on the table by doing so, specifically thinking about at the beginning of 2025, when I had my last two houses in Olivebridge to sell. I was worried about the market, so was (and still am) happy to have sold them, but it was a strong year for real estate in Ulster county so I probably walked away $200k lighter than I could have.
And since I’m picking up this long-awaited post after writing the above paragraphs, we are having a nice spring week with temps touching 70 and dry. I’m running around from job to job to make sure all is moving forward in as straight of a line as possible. Played pickleball on the home court yesterday, first match of the season. Heard some geese coming home high in the sky last night. Watched the water melt and run from all directions.
I have a 3 week trip to Sardinia, Corsica and points still undetermined coming up in May.
Pictures of the Ranch home in New Paltz we just are finishing up.
The long winter slog
The long-awaited blog post after an extended delay is mostly winter-related - plus my friend Eric from G5 Insurance must be too busy with his accomplished daughters to poke me about the lack of posting.
I’ve been busy, in a slow winter way. I guess I’m also a little tired of talking about the weather, which has been a daily slap in the face of cold, snow and what have you. Cold wet winters are very expensive and logistically complex for a construction company with jobs spread out over 4 counties and a wide region. What is true in one area is not true in another. Andrew, our project manager, has had his hands full keeping the job sites open with 3 or 4 different plowing companies which tend to be local in nature.
Trent, our in-house Revit (drafting software) has been busy navigating the various building departments, their changing personnel, requirements and expectations. Our favorite town to build in, Kerhonkson, has gone from business-friendly to anti-business in head-spinning one year time frame, after Catskill Farms building there for over 10 years, and literally dozens if not more homes.
The Town of Rochester would never agree they have now pivoted from a place to do business to a place to avoid, but that’s because the new leadership really doesn’t understand the impacts of their changes, be it personnel or process. But me, as someone who runs a business and has to navigate it, I understand it perfectly well.
It could be a planning board that is looking to obstruct, consciously or unconsciously. It would be a new building inspector who may be looking for 20 page plans of details rather than the 8 pages that has worked across the Hudson Valley for the past 25 years, because from a résume standpoint he looks great with solid experience in a busy town, but culturally bringing expectations that will be very hard for this rural area to achieve.
Savvy Town Supervisors understand a good cultural fit is as important as a good skillset fit. This isn’t Westchester, it’s rural Ulster County, and there are few overlaps in what is actually necessary to successfully build a home when one place is hyper-dense, and the other is hyper-sparse.
The problem with a winter severe enough to slow the construction process is that a lack of construction progress also means a lack of cash flow progress since construction progress is necessary to get financing advances or client payments. And a lot of our costs to run the business happen with or without a lot of construction progress such as payroll, insurance and everything needed to keep the lights on.
On the other hand, we have had the luxury of time to do a lot of office work for these projects that once the weather breaks, we will be not only off to the races, but positioned to pull our scull out in front of the pack.
One thing that is true is that the spring will be busy busy for a lot of subcontractors such as excavators and masons and framers, and that’s when relationships will come in handy so you are able to skip the queue, like buying the Fast Pass when skiing at Killington which allows you to skip the lines, for an extra $75 per day.
New homes going up in New Paltz, Yulan, Narrowsburg, and Kerhonkson.
Aspen, January 2026
Ahhh, Aspen. Just spent 4 days skiing there with a small group of skiers from around the country and literally world champion instructors. The goal was to improve some fundamentals so I can ski more safely and more efficiently for the next two decades. Mission accomplished.
Wednesdays high school basketball game was between the Aspen Skiers and the Coal Ridge Titans. Everyone tells you their wealth story and Aspen real estate story in less time than it takes the gondola to travel the bottom of the slopes at the Gorsuch Cafe to the Sun Deck at the peak. Real estate stories abound, mostly buying early and holding on, with an acceleration over the last 7 years that exceeded all expectations. In one gondola ride the rider and a lawyer who didn’t know each other were talking real estate transactions (that cost $20k-$30k for legal fees alone) and the gentleman described it as the ‘immoveable vs the indestructible’.
Aspen is an old silver mining town, it’s heyday in 1880’s or a bit before, with 12,000 persons employed in the mining industry and the related bars, brothels, hotels, eateries and what have you. Then you had the Sherman Silver Act which set a floor on silver prices, prompted a rush on silver mining since a price floor had been established with the government as the buyer of all things silver, to the repeal of that very same act a few years later when the unintended impacts of the act became clear, and with that repeal a crash of the price of silver when the artificial price and demand were removed, spelling the end of Aspen as a silver mining town.
Then you had the quiet years, when the population dipped to just over 1000 hardy farmers working a short season, and then the 40’s when the skiing and tourism industry emerged, slowly then all at once.
It’s hard not to hear about ‘Aspen’ but it’s easy to stop your understanding of the place with the superficial ‘billionaire club’. It’s that, but it’s also hard to get to, limiting the crowds, it’s small with the silver mining days and architecture still defining the cityscape, with buildings no higher than 40’, and many of the original hotels, bars and even miner shacks still standing (now worth $12m for a tiny little spec of Aspen).
It’s the first time I’ve ever been somewhere where I see how comfortable and comforting the insular club of wealth and connections and confidence of position is so cleanly in view. I've been to plenty of places where this is true - Martha's Vineyard comes to mind - but never with the reach and touch it attainability. You just aren’t doing anything without running into opportunity or network or advancement. That strata where social and affluence mobility is assumed, tangible. I could see how an interloper, a fraudster, an Anna Delvey (Sorokin) type character could quickly assimilate with tall tales of nobility, generational trust fund wealth and gilded lifestyles - it’s so quickly a topic of conversation among the Aspen crowd, a crowd that crows with accomplishment and privilege and its parallel track of hitching your wagon to other’s success, that if you play the part well, spend freely (even if it's debt), have a lot of energy, and remember your lines, I can see how fraudsters quickly assimilate.
On the other hand, I’m reading a book written in 1999 by my friend Nina Burleigh, A Very Private Woman, which details upper class American life in the 30’s-60’s, through the eyes of one of JFK’s lovers, and interesting, this woman is a Pinchot, a local Milford family of lore and owners of the Grey Towers where I volunteered for a winter organizing and catoluging old books.
So the day in day out hob-nobbing, cheek-rubbing, back-patting, leisurely life of lunches, colleges, horse riding, travelling within your little club of privilege provides a very firm footing for where you belong, where you are going, and a sure-footed way of getting there. It’s just all laid out for you, and there is an entire social construct that provides soft guardrails and red carpets, introductions and soft-landings.
The Colorado ski resorts are getting almost no snow this year, and leading up to my trip it was worrisome, but then two storms in the weeks prior that dumped a foot each provided a decent base when combined with cool temps and snow-making efforts. 4 straight ‘bluebird days’, with crisp bright skies and sun. The typical 4-5’ base of snow is more like 9” - it’s extreme, worked out well for us, but not many other weeks of ski plans, and will be a problem for the plains and farms and ranches and reservoirs that depend on the melt for their annual reup of moisture and irrigation - a snow pack is like a reservoir, since the soil can only hold so much water before it is saturated, so the snow pack lies above, slowing leeching into the ground during the spring, allowing maximum absorption.
I stayed a little outside of Town near the Buttermilk mountain, - Aspen is actually made up of 4 mountains, not reachable from each other. A little outside of town, a little lower cost, and since I was 1, alone, and 2, beat after skil lessons each day, I didn’t have much exposure to the ultra high cost of goods and services you hear about.
Fur, real and fake, was everywhere, and I guess this year's jeans look ('denim trends') is a ‘baggy’ blue jean with a loose cut. Maybe this is old news but I don’t get out that much. High platform Ugg-like shoes. It’s a happy place of success and leisure. I liked it. Lots of private jets in and out of the airport, and at least the public building of the airport is a bit surprisingly worn and threadbare, like the town is trying to ‘keep it real’, at least at the airport. With one runway for both incoming and departing flights and unpredictable weather it can quickly become a mess of delay, cancellations and frustration. Not sure where in the Northeast you can fly directly into Aspen, but it’s not Newark, and regardless of where you are coming from, it’s on a smaller jet, and at least in the case of American Airlines, this felt like not their serviced and high-end line of aircrafts.
So, all in all, a 10 out of 10. Learned to ski better, got to see Aspen, the weather cooperated, and now I’m home safe and it’s snowing, so my dog and I are just lounging around in my comfortable and quiet home. I'm definitely good at picking a random place to go to, find lodging and logistics and what-have-you, and have a jolly old time.
And as expected, my team in the office and field held down the forts.
