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

(Update - Google recognized this post over night and is now 3rd on Jared Covit's internet profile - also, important to note you should search in 'incognito mode', otherwise your search results are biased by previous searches.)

Before I get started with the matter at hand, I do have to say I watched a movie last night at the Roxy Hotel, NYC named Sasquatch Sunset that ranked right up there with Swiss Army Man for weirdness which lured you in with a cast you knew from other hits. And when I say weird, I mean just out there and thoroughly unexpected. I recommend both.

Nothing gets under my craw ('hunters centuries ago noticed that some birds swallowed bits of stone that were too large to pass through the craw and into the digestive tract. These stones, unlike the sand and pebbles needed by birds to help grind food in the pouch, literally stuck in the craw, couldn't go down any farther') more than disrespect for the efforts we make to provide good looking and value oriented shelter and accommodation for the past 25 years. But while it may get stuck in my craw, for the most part the gag reflex recovers with some mutual reflection and we all go on with our lives, sometimes repentant, often just turning the page to other more valuable affairs.

However, on occasion, but not many occasions for the amount of contracts I engage - large and small, verbal and written - they digress into the messy process of litigation, and then we all waste a lot of time and money trying to prove this or that.

In 2021 and 2022, we built a house for Jared Covit at 174 Rivka Road, Saugerties NY. It is a premium piece of land with a wonderful meandering stream defining its border. The home we built and personalized wall by wall by Jared Covit and company sold in the $600's and now is probably worth $950k now worth over a million in the right hands.

So what do you do if you are Jared Covit, and your upstate building partner - who built your dream home in the middle of a world-wide pandemic pretty much on time and on budget with supply-chain challenges never seen before - ? You sue him/them for breach of contract, attempt to pierce the corporate veil and harm him personally, accuse him of unjust enrichment, breach of implied warranty, and deceptive acts, and all attorney fees to boot. More or less, you go for the jugular of someone made you $300k-$500k in 24 months - an ROI even Warren Buffett would approve of and probably other than a lucky chance in a high tech start up, the best return he will see in his life.

All but the 'breach of warranty' claim was deemed improper (I would personally would call it harassing, insulting and offensive to the team) and dismissed by an Ulster County court. The assertion - the siding could have been installed in a different fashion. I would argue, as could be asserted of every item in the house.

I'm not a big fan of the 'litigation privilege' concept - I mean I totally get why what you say and plead in court cannot be used in a defamation suit, since you can easily see dozens of defamation lawsuits birthed from every legal action. But, that leaves us businesspeople, in an internet era of google search results, in the precarious position of having our names smeared with the headlines, and the initial cause of action, but the not ultimate resolution. Right now Jared Covit's search results are a mix of professional and this lawsuit he filed, but now this rebuttal will also appear along his search, and it will have professional repercussions, as the Violent Femmes sang in the 80's with their hit Kiss Off, "this will now go down on your permanent record."

Google search loves my blog since it satisfies a lot of what google search demands - 1, it's been around forever. 2, it is constantly maintained and updated. 3, it is relevant. 4, a lot of people read it (but like porn, won't admit it!!). So, if I mention you, and you don't have a lot of entries about yourself online, you better believe my post will start to show up. Quickly. Prominently. It helps when someone has an unusual name like Covit. 'Petersheim's' a great example of a unique name, but I have so much written about me over the last twenty years that to penetrate my google search it needs to be a pretty big event that gets covered by the news and then picked up by other outlets. That at least for awhile would gain some traction. You can always post to online review platforms but people take those with a grain of salt, or actually a sea of salt.

I think it's fair. Tit for tat. The only reason I can think of that Jared Covit would accuse me personally of the nastiness he did was to harass and pressure us to resolve the issue, to make us look bad, to affirm his compulsions. He started an Instagram account solely dedicated to throwing shade at me, and then targeted my followers with invites to this seemingly innocuous page that then got dark once you entered. He stopped when it was clear he was going to get sued, and probably have gigantic personal exposure for he and his wife.

One could legitimately ask if this was and is good for business, and, my answer is that it's hard to know for sure, but I think over the years, people like it when I stick my finger in someone's eye - that they would like to do it themselves but can't. And at this point, what's good for business isn't that paramount for me - I'm about retired (not true, but aspirationally it's fun to say). Who would have known that 'aspirationally' wasn't a word? (at least according the squiggly line under it).

In our response and request that the Court dismiss this frivolous and harassing cause of action by Jared Covit- attempting to pierce the corporate shield and hold me personally liable for actions of the corporation my attorney wrote:

"Plaintiffs veil piercing-claim must be dismissed pursuant to CPLR 3211(a)(1) for failing to state a claim because (i) Plaintiffs only recite conclusory allegations of the veil-piercing factors and, also, (ii) failto allege any fraud or wrongdoing beyond purported contractual breaches."

And in doing just that - In dismissing the cause of action attempting to pierce the corporate veil and envelop me personally in this lawsuit (ie, harassment), the Court, in a brief almost dismissive response, seemingly agrees completely with our response and writes -

"Upon review, it is apparent that the portion of the Plaintiffs' second cause of action seeking to pierce the corporate veil cannot survive the Defendants' motion to dismiss.  Even recognizing the liberal manner by which the sufficiency of a pleading is to be adjudged in determining a CPLR 3211 (a) (7) motion, it nevertheless remains that the Plaintiffs' complaint is insufficient as ... is totally devoid of solid, nonconclusory allegations,..."

I love the 'totally devoid of solid, nonconclusory allegations'. Lawyers aren't supposed to file lawsuits they now to be frivolous, but in the cases of insider baseball, few are held accountable for wasting the courts time.

The problem with filing a lawsuit with 4 or more suspect (and I'm only using such a moderate phrase since I'm feeling generous) causes of action is that I will blog about each and everyone separately, thus accentuating my impact on Jared Covit's internet profile.

Stay tuned as we measure the speed as which Google recognizes my relevant blog post about Jared Covit and Lauren Rich.

My son proving his metal as the JV starting QB on a lovely Saturday afternoon.

And the garden is producing a steady stream of peppers and tomatoes.

Cottage 45, with the post-sale addition of an artists studio and a lot of good looking landscaping, is being resold after who knows how many years of graceful living - is it 10? Hard to say without digging deep into the archives. But it's been awhile. Asking $650+/-, we sold it for low $300's. It's on an amazing piece of land that fronts a large creek/stream. On 12 acres. It's such a snapshot of how hard we used to work for how little money, perfecting our craft, making a living. And then wham, pandemic fueled NYC migration to the Catskills, and we were able to monetize it, since we had the team and the engine all tuned up.

I forgot how busy we actually got, since it's been 4 years and it's hard to remember that it hasn't always been this way. Well, in some ways it has, since even though we were building less, our team was capable of less. Now our team is capable of more, and we are building more. And soon, we will be building less, but our team is capable of more, which will present some difficult man-power decisions.

I hope they get their price. Looking at what's available in Barryville for between $450k - $650k, and this house is definitely the most attractive of the lot. When we started building cottages in 2006, the idea was to provide a lower cost option of getaways without sacrificing land quality or build quality. Only way to do that is a smaller home, and some counterintuitive market ideas that there was a market for 2 bedroom homes. Ideas that formulated by talking with my perspective clients, and hearing what they were saying, many times they were unaware of market insights they were giving me. Talk to enough people, put in the time, ears perked and listening and before you know it, you have information others don't.

These long-held homes that hit the market gives me a lot of nostalgia for the journey of Catskill Farms. One thing that has been true, among many, is my uncompromising ability to find good land for good homes.

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Thursday - Saturday morning in Orlando to watch my son’s JV football game.  Their team organizes a trip down there every 2 years or so for a fun week of fun and football.  Then to Raleigh NC to visit my nephew then back home on Sunday to prep for the week ahead. My pickleball skillset has accelarated.

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My prep for the week includes continuing to complete a pre-closing checklist for the sale of $2m worth of Olivebridge, Ulster County NY real estate, homes 6 and 7 in our 9 home project.  The other two homes, and another 2 in Sullivan County are being built and completed on ‘spec’, without a buyer lined up or in this case, even without a buyer sought until the homes are complete.  It’s a boss move, keeping them secret, since it takes significant financial wherewithal, which we got.

I know of at least two ‘competitors’, or copy cats, or ‘imitation is the highest form of flattery’ projects, and I’m sure there are more, that are flaming out with lackluster or actually zero sales - one in Callicoon, and the other in Stone Ridge.  The Stone Ridge property I came very close to buying and it would have been a great project and checked a lot of my boxes - already subdivided, in a good town, good screening between houses - but some of the engineering hidden in the footnotes and small print were just too much of a variable for my tastes so I passed, but was non-plussed and had a serious FOMA case when this other group bought it.

But by not buying it, I was available for the next opportunity in Olivebridge, and that one worked out well for me.  As a business person, risk-taker, business owner, speculator - what you don’t do is as important as what you do do.  You quickly forget about the ones you pass on, but something can tickle the chords of recollection and you can remember that what you don’t pursue - be a piece of land, a deal, a person, a problem - is critical to long term survival.

I remember when I started Ashokan Acres, an article was being written about it and made it seem like a sure thing - I assured the writer it was anything but, and listed the failed or struggling projects I knew about, but if you’re not in the game, you don’t realize the struggle.  And since we have such a track record of getting it done and monetizing our efforts I guess it’s sort of assumed we will achieve the goals of the project - which I guess in a way is a bit of a sure bet at this point in my speculating career - but still - hat would be dangerous, since few people make it through a career in speculating without going bust - like the old adage that ‘there are only 2 types of motorcycle riders - those that have laid their bike down and skinned their legs up, and those that will.”  2 types of real estate speculators - those that have gone bust and those that will.

We got two million dollars of real estate closing in the next 2 weeks, and 4 homes being built buyer-less that will be for sale next year. Shifting gears, evaluating the Catskills housing landscape, filtering the information and delivering a prognosis like Ai wishes it could - 

Starting to sort out what 2025 will look like. What it won't look like is moving as fast as I can, building as much as our capacity will allow.

I appreciate the work of a professional the much as the next guy, but no industry compensates mediocre performance more fully than the monopoly that was the real estate industry. There was literally no compensation differentiating between good skill sets and bad skill sets, between experience and inexperience, and there was little to no room to negotiate their fees, regardless of the assertions of the real estate players who claim 'that all fees are negotiable' (especially if you don't want anyone to show your home or you want to get silent black-listed from the collusive activities among all the real estate companies.)

Nobody should be paid $60,000 for answering a phone call, unlocking some doors, and showing up at the closing table. There is a value there, but because of the wink and nod collusion in the industry, it's not valued appropriately.

Here's a Axios article - Subtitled - "Mediocre real estate agents are out".

The unaffordability of using 6% commission based agents forced us in 2005 to sell our own houses, because our profit margins couldn't support a 6% payout on sales price, not profits - where agents who unlocked the door would get paid more than our years worth of effort. We actually are one of the few firms in the country that can claim the vertical integration of development, design, build and sell effort (more accurately, 'successful effort'). Over at Ashokan Acres, only 1 of 9 came through an agent, and that was a suspect arrangement that seemed more like friends or colleagues- 1 with a real estate license - working in tandem to profit from my efforts. So the buy side being eliminated from the commission would eliminate that type of shenanigans.

My guess is this article is right on - different compensation scheme, less shitty real estate agents hoping for that 1 or 2 sells a year for augmented income, more business at lower rates for the ones left standing. That makes sense to me, since to be honest, there are more poor performing realtors than professionals. No other industry compensates the same no matter what the skill level is, no matter the region being served, no matter what the sales prices is v. effort required to complete the task.