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

For those whose State is solidly Red or Blue, the 24/7 campaigning we see here in the Swing States is not for the faint of heart.  Television ads stacked one after another, yard signs, trucks signs, mobile offices staffed with loud volunteers.  And most of these States have multiple competitive races, so it’s not just the presidential race.  Here in Pennsylvania, the temperatures are running high and the conversation among us more dispassionate people is which side will be more lost if they lose - on the Trumpian side, his campaign and individual support for it has almost become an almost definition of who they are.  On the Harris side, the loss of faith in their neighbors, friends, community and country will be hard to reconcile.  From an historical perspective, other than climate change, current events really don’t stack up to critical moments in the past - in terms of what’s on the line (slavery, WWII, nuclear war, Vietnam, civil rights, Depression) -, the economy is doing fantastically, - who knows?  Maybe just a lot of noise to keep us at the table, stressed and unhappy.

Having just finished and sold yesterday an amazing house to valued clients in Narrowsburg, NY, I’m definitely benefitting from reduced distraction and a less diffused effort.  I’ve been so busy for the last four years that no amount of work or talent or time was enough to ‘get ahead’.  We got it done, but it was a heavy lift, every day.  Not just for me, but anyone professionally associated with me.  That has come to an end.  In a very good way.  I’m almost having ‘weekends’, defined by consistent time off.  In one episode of the Crown, one of the members of royalty asked ‘weekend, what’s a weekend?’, coming from her perspective of having no obligations in her life that would somehow make one day more fraught with obligations than another day.  I’m the same, but in reverse, I’ve been working 7 days a week for so long that weekends only mean I can do my job in peace instead of while drinking from a firehose of problems to solve (I’m actually not a fan of the ‘drinking from a firehouse’ saying, but its a good one).

I mean, I’m quite good at what I do.  And surround myself with very talented, smart, experienced, problem-solving people.  But when you take that expertise and effort and spread it too thin - diffuse it too broadly - you may not get actual diminishing returns, but you get an existence that is perilously close to spiraling out of control at any minute, as problems - which are always going to arise predictably and unpredictably - need to be solved.  Now that we have decelerated out of the danger RPM red zone and are comfortably revved and running between a noisy 3000-4000 rpms (I’m not a car guy so I’m making this metaphor up right now based on limited expertise), I can focus the full spectrum of my knowledge, relationships and experience and lean into each opportunity, problem, conversation.

For years, I had companies working for us that worked miracles on getting stuff done well, quickly, but it was never enough, never heroic enough, because I kept pressing down on the accelerator, buying more land, designing more homes, getting more homes in the ground, leading from the front, so no matter how skilled we were, how quick, how efficient, we never were fully in control - since that was the tempo I set.

I mean, any moron can take 2 years to build a simple a house, but we never lost our pace of taking about 6-8 months to build a home, no matter how many we had going, and 2024 is going to be our most profitable year yet, and that is compared to some pretty major profitable years.  And considering all the internal staffing turmoil we had as I tried to figure out how to best position the company in the marketplace, the achievement is hard to fathom now that it is complete.  I see these salary reports for surgeons and white-shoe lawyers and veterinarians and I’m just frankly amazed at how I’m 4-10x that at times - it’s pretty crazy, and not living in a high cost place, you can build some real generational wealth.  And this isn't earned by overcharging or sneaky pricing, upcharges or gimmicks - it's a lean operation, with an eye always on efficiency, a business model that demands discipline. We consistently deliver homes for $250 - $400 per sq ft, not an easy thing to do in this market while infusing the homes with a lot of smart upgrades such as spray foam insulation, hardi-plank siding, wide plank floors, on-demand hot water heaters, cable rails and a lot of other options we consider standard. These profits are earned through a serious understanding of the business and product I produce. I know of some builders who charge lump sum times some operating and profit percentage - completely eliminating any incentive to keep prices down - in fact, the opposite, for every dollar one of their subs or vendors charges, they make more money creating seriously perverse incentives even for honest people, which most of these builders aren't. There are certainly situations where this lump sum + makes sense, but building home is not one of them.

So the point is, I got skills, and now I can focus them in on solving problems in a more gentlemanly way, and that allows me the ability to visualize what the next 5 Year Plan of my life could look like- doing what I love (that may be a stretch), what I’m good at, at a clip that is sustainable for my mental health.  I’ve been working hard for at least 3 years at figuring out what a sustainable existence looks like in this business - and I think the answer lies in a tempo where people can succeed without being heroes on a daily basis.  They can succeed because they are good at what they do, and we run an organized shop.

I’m not sure if all the above brings me to my point, since I don’t really have a pre-determined point, but I did want to rehash why I feel we succeed - and it’s hard-wired into me not just out of good customer service but out of a need for survival.

I love the cohesive blues in this home across the paints, cabinets and tile.

So we just finished and sold Barn 55, to a family who relocated up to the Narrowsburg area and enrolled their daughters into a local rural school (and by the reports of it, are really enjoying the new-found way of life).  And I want to compare and contrast, as I mentioned in the last post, about my experience in St Pete’s with a punchout and closing.

We had a closing set, and we had a punchlist and a day or two prior to closing the about-to-be homeowners did a pre-closing followup walk-thru, to ensure the previous punch was completed and identifying anything new - and the reports I got back through the notes of the meeting was that enough of the previous list was still undone, and there were some issues that were important enough for me to understand directly - not 2nd or 3rd hand - in order to deal with them, and this is important - so the Owners didn’t get lost in a communication finger-pointing circle jerk of who knows what.  Punch lists are tough for many reasons, and one of those many reasons is the fact that some issues that appear on the surface to be readily solvable, when you get into them prove to be more complex, and that’s where the real ‘jerk around’ can start because instead of flooding the zone with efforts, the issue keeps getting kicked around.

Without too much internal debate, I had to call up the Fixer, the Closer, and get some real answers, some real solutions, and some real results - and that Fixer/Closer is me.  And it’s that personal investment of time and experience that I’ve always, from day one 23 years ago, leveraged on behalf of my projects and my homes.  So I reviewed the list, called the appropriate vendors, and we met there and went through the remaining issues one by one, under my supervision - meaning no footprints in the house, no stupid parking of work trucks that made soon-to-be arriving vendors jobs harder, no tools on the countertops, no forgetting to put the breaker back on after fixing an electrical issue, no shitting in the toilet.  In the end, in a few hours, prior to selling the home, we had identified, and resolved most if not all and there was zero lost in translation from me to subcontractors to homeowners.  I was acutely and personally and intimately aware of each and every issue.

Now true, one could argue that’s not a good way to grow a business, that delegation is key, and make no mistake, I delegate all day long, but when it comes down to trading off annoying a client with the run-around, or getting in there and bullying each and every factor of production until the problem is resolved to my heightened expectations, I’ll get in there and get it done.  That’s one thing slowing down allows too - the ability to allocate time not in a stressed and anxious manner, but in a thoughtful and patient fashion -big difference.

And to contrast that with my process in St. Petersburg, where I now have 5 different companies who aren’t communicating well and seem to not have one point of authority and accountability trying to punch out a pretty simple punch list in a timely and clear way, where the idea of ‘do no harm’ with site and floor protection seems to be lost on the various characters coming in and out of the Unit, that my rising level of frustration does not seem to trigger any sort of change of process, it just validates how much I care about what we do when compared with a common approach to managing expectations during the process - oh, and did I mention, it’s over a year late being delivered.

What the ‘team’ down there at Reflection, in St Petersburg is putting me through is in stark contrast to the effort we make not to torture our clients.  No one is perfect, and construction is always going to make you look foolish with both avoidable and unavoidable hiccups, but you can strive to mitigate minute to minute how that gets passed to the Client.

Had a fun Halloween party that was a sequel to the Homecoming party and the new game room performed as designed.  My house is a fun party house because while it’s not gigantic it has lots of ‘spaces’ interdependent of each other, so there literally can be like 5 sub-parties happening.  We got the game room, gym, down by the pool, by the fire pit, the screened porch area, the living room and the basketball and spike ball area.  I think we had like 60 kids over and like 25 boys stayed the night comfortably, but I think like I’ve said in the past, the boys in the know stake out their sleeping areas early as well as their blankets so they don’t get stuck using a thin gingham table cloth as did Bill.

I’m in St Pete’s doing my final walkthrough on my top floor condo unit in an 82 Unit boutique highrise in the downtown area.  What this process makes me realize - which I already know but it’s validating to see up close - is the process at Catskill Farms is good, centralized, buck-stops-here, no chasing your tail type of process.

That's Fred Hemmer, the man behind the vision of the building.

It’s ‘fun’ being on the other side, so I can see how I react and communicate items of concern, and I can say that I think I did pretty good.  Plenty of issues, but definitely not looking for my pound of flesh like we encounter at times.

When I say and compare the process of Catskill Farms with this process, it’s really just the centralized control and command we offer - with my closing, my real estate agent is referring me the punchlist person, who I’ve never met, and she is jousting with the construction team, etc…  So for 8 weeks there has been a round robin of non-accountability so I got my white ass down here to straighten it out - something our clients would never need to do, and if they did, it would be directly with us.

But all is good.  St Pete’s is a great town.  My unit downtown.  The hurricane devastated the coastal regions - the trailers, the simple homes, the non-updated, weathered homes.  When people think of Florida beach towns they can think of Miami or Palm beach with wealth oozing from the sand grains, but in all honesty, Florida is made up of small homes near the water, that are part of communities that weren't expensive to buy. Those - from Sarasota to Clearwater - are gone. Thousands of homes. Thousands of lives.

The tidal surge pushed a few feet of sand hundreds of yards into mainland, a cleanup that will rival Asheville's mud for expense and tediousness.

That had its heart ripped out by the hurricanes.  Even folks not directly impacted were directly impacted by the loss and suffering of others.   St Petes is a beach town, with beach bums, day drinkers, and early happy hours,  You got your high end real estate, but like a lot of florida, you have a whole nother housing stock of low slung 1 story homes on grade built 80 years ago.  Jimmy Buffet style front porch picking shelters that didn’t shelter rich people but average earners, low earners, beach bums of assorted diversity.  They got wiped out.  That sort of leisure housing was just demolished.  Miles of it.  Abodes of paradise and simple living gone.  Really gone, like won’t be coming back.

Some immature person in the Publix candle aisle!

The water surge just rolled right through these homes - in the front door and out the back.  The entire miles of beach front hotels are closed as sand 3’ thick has covered inland hundreds of yards, if not a few miles.

The cleanup is slow.  Wheres the Feds, where DeSantis?  Helene hit 4+ weeks ago, and the debris is everywhere.  It’s a mess.  The cleanup is like non-existent.

There are always reminders that just before the storm, life was normal.  Then it wasn’t.  Then everything changed.  And in this case, like Asheville, changed forever.  

I’ve dealt with a few floods, and it’s the smell that get you as everyone hauls their life out to the front yard and waits for relief. Waits for electricity.

I met a person or two who stayed the storm, and they said the storm was bad, but after was worse.  The city had turned off the water as a precaution, the electric went out, and gas supplies dwindled quickly with delivery roads unpassable, and infrastructure down - and just like they predict will happen, within 24 hrs society became a little unstable, a little Mad Max.  Just like that -  Just like our bodies operate on a fragile balance of blood and oxygen, society seems to operate on a set of assumptions that once are pierced, anything goes.

What has me annoyingly perplexed is the lack of federal aid - especially during election season. I mean, as an incumbent. lead a convoy of 1000 army reserve troops and spend a few days helping to cleanup and organizing the effort. Coming to people in need. So, a great opportunity to showcase leadership, and nothing. As a leader who continually leads from the front, this makes the candidate nearly unvotable for me, except the alternative. Weird times. I mean, flood the zone with attention and assistance - campaign on action. Instead nothing. Literally nothing.

We got a new house started at the Crest where we have a few more to build on an exciting piece of land. Gonna be a Ranch, and gonna be on like 20 acres. And gonna have a nice view.

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Paradise Lost.  How else can you describe and confront the impacts on two of America’s best cities, where peace and beauty and sun and arts defined the way of life.  Until one day it was changed.  St Pete’s - sure, carried some risk being a beach town, but Asheville, just minding its own business far away from anything remotely seen as a hurricane threat.  It’s like Woodstock NY just wiped out one day, with its history soaked, broken, mudded, and lost.   Not good.  Washington Post now has an app or something where you can plug in your locale and get a risk evaluation of climate change.  Turns out, this whole region is on the safer side of things.  But still, if a storm hangs over our heads and it rains 22 inches in 3 days, anything goes.

Getting a lot of hiking and walking done in the brisk autumnal days.  Trails abound all around my daily travels be it near my home in Milford PA surrounded by the Delaware National Water gap and trails within, where my offices are near the Bashakill protected nature swamp, and all around my travels to Narrowsburg, North Branch, Olivebridge, Kerhonkson and beyond.  2024, post shoulder heal up, has been an active year in terms of biking, hiking, walking, and home gym.  Bodes well for this aging body. Today a 4 mile uphill climb at Vernoy Falls on the south side of the Catskill Park proper.

In case you didn't know, the Catskills are two parts - one is a geographical region defined the metes and bounds of a surveyor, the other is a Catskill state of mind which is much larger than its physical and proper boundaries. Few people would argue too hard that Callicoon, or Saugerties, or Narrowsburg or Stone Ridge aren't in the 'Catskills', but according to the map, they aren't. The 'Catskills' is synonymous with 'Upstate', and both sort of mean north of the city but not too north.

My new shades.

Got an interesting year shaping up for next year.  So funny how the fear of ‘never selling another house’ or ‘that might be my last sale’ never really leaves me even after 24 years of doing this.  Fear is good.  Fear is better than over-confidence.  Over-confidence breeds poor decision-making like buying land that is priced too high and thinking the sales price will justify it.  Lot’s of evidence of that not working out for people previously and now again.  Building homes is hard, so when the profit is thin at the end, you can see why newbies don’t want to do it again, in terms of building for sale.  We got some neat projects on the horizon, and the team to handle it.  For the first time in years it won’t be a situation where we are just holding on for dear life as our impossible workload swirls around us.

Just finising this one up with precision and care.

Closed on my new piece of land in Kerhonkson where hopefully we can build 5 homes.

Lucas is now driving, and is getting a lot better day by day.

Football season in high gear. Not a great year for Delaware Valley which is unusual for that team.

I'm not going to try and argue that the gloriously seasonal weather we've been having since July makes up for the 9 months of constant and dreadful rain we suffered through from March 2023-December 2023, but evaluated solely on its own, it's been clockwork weather of warm summer days, then a cool September, and shiver-me-timbers October. Leaves are changing, aurora borealis came through last night, and fall is unmistakenly and undeniably in the air.

Beautiful fall day up at our project at the Crest, in North Branch NY.

The weird thing about the show from the heavens last night was it wasn't able to be seen with the naked eye, at least from NE Pennsylvania. The iphone brought out the colors the eye couldn't see. Not sure the science behind that.

I took a drive around to a half a dozen job sites, and now that we are winding down from a 4 year sprint, I'm starting to ask myself how I actually pulled off what Catskill Farms pulled off. Our effort and results are really hard to grasp now that they are in the rear view mirror. It was a lot of things, but the number 1 thing it was was me holding the team - field and office - together on a daily basis. No one else did that - that was all me. Hiring, firing, mentoring, correcting, supervising, interceding, fixing messes, etc... When I went out to the field, we have 6 homes going in Sullivan County, another 14 in Ulster, probably one in Dutchess, and at one point another 4 in Phoenixville PA. I would go out and create list after list and bring it back to Amanda who had her own list and we would just work through them, item by item and house by house. And Breanna would keep the money flowing.

This new Ranch foundation on 21 acres went in about as fast as you can put a foundation in. Ready for framing by mid week next week.

The complexity, on all levels - deal-making, permitting, engineering, breaking ground, inspections, scheduling, ordering, client coordination - was not for the faint of heart and not achievable to most people. It was literally a 4:30am to 9pm, 7 days a week focus. And, now it's over. The homes have been built. The profits banked, reinvested, growing. The experience gained forever to be leveraged. The team members - those who are left standing - sharp, polished and knowledgeable. The systems put in place scalable on demand. The relationships battle-tested, nimble and responsive.

The custom home in Forestburgh is coming out great. A testament to the talent of the team.

A 800 sq ft Ranch coming to market shortly.

An 800 sq ft cabin also coming to market shortly.

So as I toured our 4 homes under construction yesterday in SuCo, I look back with genuine amazement that I was able to keep that frenzy of activity in line, in order, moving forward, controlled and completed for the last 4 years. That's a long time to be in the red RPM zone. That can cause some measurable damage in a wide range of health issues, mental and physical, and I think I can proudly claim that I bore them all, suffered through them all, and got up and took that first step of the journey the next day, and the next, and next until I've reached today - with it all behind me except the healing.

Another good looking Perfect Barn just about complete. We've built 5 or 6 versions of this home over the last year. Such a versatile home.

Although, when you can say your building and selling 7 homes currently across 2 counties is walk in the park, you know you've far outpaced what poses as your competition.

Great night for Friday Night Lights. My son turns 16. We've had quite the run together as Father and Son team. Happy Birthday Lucas Richard Petersheim.