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

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.

Wow, now that I’m not spending half my energy on a pointless legal exercise, there’s actually a lot going on in the world, with it evenly split between greatly benefiting me and greatly possibly harming me.

But first things first - 

If anyone is looking for a good podcast, the New Yorker has done 3 seasons of an investigative nature where they dig deep and exhaustively into some case or situation.  It’s called In The Dark, and while I’ve only finished the 14 part season 2, and now listening to season 1, I can recommend it.  As a student of history, especially Civil War history, reconstruction, Jim Crow eras the Civil rights moments, the ingrained racism in every fabric of that southern culture is always astounding.  In season 2, you see how even simple justice is denied through an institutional racism that has no fear of consequences.  I’m sure not everyone and their mom drives as much as I do, but it’s a good listen and the time and energy and I guess budget that went into the show is mind-boogling.

And I came across this - 21 Travel Books - that looks really like a good curated list of books, fiction and non-fiction, about traveling.

With the 2nd hurricane bearing down on the Gulf Coast of Florida, my St. Petersburg investment of a top floor condo in a new building is under a pressure.  I didn’t buy it yet but have a large deposit down and have been waiting to close for like literally 3.5 years - it’s a new building just finished, but for some reason I still haven’t closed and haven’t got a lot of information about why.

My risk I don’t think is not flooding or wind - in fact, my new building should flex in the face of this storm, but the risk that is apparent would be a general avoidance of Florida in general trend.   Luckily, I got in early, at a good price, so while I was kicking myself for not spending another $100k or 2 to get lake and ocean views (and get that appreciation that has far outpaced my west facing unit), I’m now happy to have gotten in at the lowest possible price, the same thinking I had 3 years ago.  

Money and making money and investing money is always a real mind f$ck - you always have FOMO about what you didn’t do or what someone else did, and you are always second guessing your timing - many times rightfully so.

For instance, I sold a bayfront Miami condo in March 2020, just before the Covid influx occurred, so probably lost out on $125k if I would have timed it perfectly like a year later.  But at the same time, as many of you know, layered over the Covid boom times was the Surfside collapse and new Florida condo laws that resulted in maintenance fees skyrocketing, and large one time assessments in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per owner in order to properly fund improvement reserves.  Now the Florida condo market is in distress, especially among older buildings where buying into one is like buying a time share, but worse, since you never know what type of special assessment is coming down the line.  So that one is sort of a wash, although selling it was part of a larger effort at concentrating my efforts and investments, narrowing my focus, and that has resulted in a tremendous financial upside as a lack of debt compounded gains.

So, the destruction of the Gulf Coast of Florida is a bummer for sure, and poorly timed for sure, and feels undeserved for sure to all involved, but one thing for sure, because I don’t have leverage, whatever will occur will be much easier to navigate and work my way through because of the lack of debt on the property.  There’s lots of stories about leverage, and my journey has been fueled by leverage, but I didn’t really start accumulating real wealth until I made it a point of using less leverage.  I mean, that’s not really the right way to say it - when the leverage produced free cash flow and ultimately profits, I used the cash flow and profits to pay down debt and not accumulate more leveraged assets, and that resulted in more cash and more assets in a more sustainable fashion.

Speaking of fashion...

I can’t say my forays into Florida real estate have been hassle free, that’s for sure.  And I’m always amazed at the continued rush to buy build and speculate down there, when everyone knows it a bit of a ticking time bomb.  Nothing will bring that home more than like a 5 year period of hurricanes that doesn’t spare any corner of the State.

The thing about floods and rain and wind is you can see the devastation a decade after - an abandoned house, a bunch of downed trees, the carved discolored sides of a receded river.  It’s expensive to clean up, and sometimes, it just stays the way it is.

Can’t say I’m that impressed with the federal government response, or at least how they are communicating it - seems like a perfect opportunity to show leadership, to show how Americans come together, to show that human spirit of helping a neighbor - the trending TikTok videos of 75 Walmart tractor trailers convoying down to NC was just the type of human story a good politician should latch onto like a spur on a hike pant leg.

Helene just sort of came out of nowhere.  But this new one, Milton, it’s pressing down with lots of notice, which always reminds me of one of my favorite movies, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, where Brad Pitt’s character ages backwards and the movie is overshadowed by the approach of Katrina. Since I wrote this this morning, the hurricane has increased in strength in dramatic fashion.

This Phoenixville house above was raised 8' after the storm.

Katrina’s a good case in point - when I was there in 2015 and took a long bike ride through the 9th Ward, there was a lot of evidence of the flood, which was what, 2005?And I just returned from Phoenixville where I own 4 single family residences which saw some serious flooding from Ida in 2021 - and lots of homes that were flooded are still vacant, and I guess the first wave of FEMA money for tear-downs and federal buyouts came through, since there were at least 6 houses torn down with nothing but iron piping from the well hinting at the lives lived there previously.

The flood was serious, putting 8' of water into this gigantic basement of this home, coming within 3" of seeping into the first floor, which would have been a disaster. Bad enough as it was.

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What is looks like not flooded.

My tenant being rescued.

Playing with real estate is often a heartbreaker - so many things can interfere with the best laid plans of real estate enjoyment.