MLS Sales - Last 360 days Sullivan County
This Farmhouse, Famous Farmhouse 12,
was built around 2008 or so, and has resold 4 times, to very different families each time. Quintessential Quaker style with short roof overhangs and a deck off the MBR. We built and sold this home back in 2008 for $450k. Just sold for $995,000.
I've said for years, and the metrics don't lie, our year to year, decade to decade contribution to the pocketbooks of a wide range of the upstate working community is immense. Our local sales tax contribution is eye-popping; I'd say pushing $600k a year. Real estate transfer taxes, mortgage taxes, etc... - it adds up to large numbers. And it's not just one year - it's year after year. There may be bigger upstate one off projects, but if you measure the totality of what I've created out of thin air over 2 decades, I think we would outshine even the largest upstate investments - just because we just keep at it. These are needle-moving numbers, creating a consumer market for restaurants, hotels, airbnb's farmer's markets and dozens of others that never existed to a degree that small business in the area could be much more than expensive and time-consuming hobbies.
I had some fun doing a MLS search in Sullivan County for the homes of ours that sold last year - those new ones driven by us and the incredibly vibrant resale ecosystem where homeowners and realtors both pocket serious bang. Country House Realty and its lead agent Erik just celebrated most single family sales and highest sales volume agent - and that is made possible in part to the turnover of our good-looking and highly sought after resales, and I also used Erik to sell some of my new stuff, and he also brought some buyers to us on his own. And what's always been true, selling our homes builds some serious cred in the marketplace, and that leads to other listings, and that leads to be considered quite the mover and shaker of good looking high quality inventory.
But truth be told Erik made the first move by blowing doors off some of resales just at the start of the pandemic, and that caught a lot of peoples eye, including mine.
Listed here are just Sullivan County, the county where we made our start in 2001. Doesn't include Ulster or Dutchess, which actually have more sales than these at higher prices.
On 18 acres, this Ranch sold to a couple who already owned one of micro-cottages in Eldred but wanted to upgrade. Famous Ranch 55.
A house I designed, built and finished without a buyer lined up, which resulted in a final inspiring product. This was our last house for The Crest, phase 1. On 10 acres. Famous Barn 52.
This Ranch on 10 acres was another one behind Lander's River Tours off of 97, an area we have been mining for solid 5-10 acres of wooded parcels since 2010. Famous Ranch 62.
Clocking in at around 2000 sq ft, these Mid-Sized Ranches fit the bill for families, couples and singles. Famous Ranch 63.
This good looking classic farmhouse in Cochecton was a larger version of our very first home, inspired by a farmhouse in Fremont NY that was falling down then and still is managing to continue to fall down. Great lines. Famous Farmhouse 60
Classic 1500 sq ft mid-sized barn on a large pond in Bethel, in a development I bought from the same guys who sold me The Crest in Fremont. We built out a project that had more or less seen zero sales in 15 years till we came in a blew the barn doors off by selling out the whole thing - Famous Barn 31.
Built and sold around 2018 for $350k. Just sold for $655,000.
Believe it or not, in 2004 I found a ramshackle one story 800 sq ft house and turned it into this on Fox Mountain Road in Livingston Manor. I would have been better just renovating it into a small cottage ranch but that was before I was the first one to realize the market potential for small homes in the area.
Renovated and sold for $250k. Just sold for $640,000.
An early Cottage that checked all the boxes. Built into the international real estate collapse, the retreat into small homes worked fine for us - a vertically integrated low cost serious design/build firm. Famous Cottage 20.
We built and sold this home for $240k in 2008ish. Just sold $70k above asking for $615,000.
Famous Ranch 58 at the Crest, a 28 lot project where I combined a lot of lots to reduce the density to 17 max.
Sold in the $600's, Chapin Estate is where value goes to die. Famous Chapin Farmhouse.
Realtors love these Catskill Farms listings. They always sell, always embraced by the marketplace, always top dollar. And a lot of what drives the value is the business idea from the very very beginning in 2001 - good looking, durable homes on a private piece of wooded land.
As a history buff, if someone would ever do a deep dive into the historical record in a couple hundred years - they would be wondering about this Catskill Farms who shows up so often deed transfers and municipal records in the 2000-2030 era. Picture super slow fade out - ken burns style - of yellowed deed in the county courthouse. Big legacy.
Following your thoughts
A dash of arctic air this week before a rapid rise into the 30’s and 40’s. I hate the swings; they cause such a mess with snow melting and frost coming out of the ground causing havoc all around, especially driveways and private roads - mud galore. Get cold in November and stay there till March is best for homebuilding - the cold causes its own issues but I’d rather have the consistent issue than navigating the roller coaster of frigid and luke-cold.
34” of snow in Vermont over the last week. We head there for our 10+/- annual Vermont ski trip over President’s Day. With my son now skiing pretty well, makes it a lot of fun. Actually thats not true - he’s actually a pain, never knowing which personality he will bring out that day.
I’m reading The Rings of Saturn, which is a combination ‘serious piece of good writing, with original structuring (think oddly placed paragraphs or lack of and few chapter breaks), a travelogue of sorts, book-ended with writing that follows the writer’s thoughts wherever they may lead” - luckily for me they lead onto random English history based on the coastline he is on, and where is mind goes.
Currently, the coast of England led to quite a few pages about Joseph Conrad (formerly Joseph Koreniowski of Ukraine) and his seafairing experience that led him to the Congo, and a meandering about the Belgium presence there under King Leopold. That intersects interestingly the Kingsolver book I read recently, The Poisonwood Bible, all about the Congo. Let’s just say it’s hard to square any of our western self-impressions of the ‘good guys’ when you read much into the history of colonialization in Africa, South America, or heck North America. All western societies have been more or less white supremist in their actions over their non-white neighbor throughout history. We may now be supportive of individual non-white rights within the individual context, on a broader level among societies, it still is solidly white supremist. We believe ourselves to be better by a long shot over these societies.
The New Yorker had one of their long reads that I turned page after page - some of these can be 15 pages long. This one, “The Long Way” was about a kid traveling solo in the 70’s and his crazy tale of adventure and survival.
My college friends - Leo and Justen - and I zoom on occasion and we were talking about when we traveled after college in the mid-90’s, long before cell phones and daily email. How we would call home on occasion, with our parents having no real idea where we were. How once Justen got disconnected after a short static-y late night call to his mom (the time change never fully considered when deciding to call home), where his mom was left in complete uncertainty as to the point of the call, why it was placed, what was said, and if it was an emergency, - and just sat on that information until Justen called back a few weeks later. That would and could never happen today.
Sullivan County projects
I started this business in Sullivan County in 2002 and continue to build in this county to this day. Currently we have quite a bit going, and the county has always been a good source of business for me. Up until Covid, I literally had next to zero competition because the selling price points were just uninteresting to most people - and I use the word ‘uninteresting’ in sort of the English understatement sort of way - there was little to no way to make money on new construction in Sullivan County (SuCo) - the sales prices just did not support them. SuCo had a ceiling of around $425,000, and if you got that you were really doing something right. The real target was low $300’s.
I guess one of the reasons I’ve been able to hang around so long in this risky business is I honed my whole game in one of the most unforgiving business environments a lot of us have/had ever seen. There’s a saying if you can do it in NYC you can do it anywhere, but back in the day, the business environment of SuCo made NYC look like child’s play.
What a business landscape/environment like that means is you have to be creative with your product, you have to very cost-efficient, and you have to be constantly pivoting with your price points and product. I had an ‘advantage’ in this because I showed a lot of homes back in the day (after 2008 with my son in his child’s seat) and I would always invite the clients in my car, and since it’s SuCo, with big distances separating everything, I would get to know the people, but more importantly, I would learn of their changing tastes, their preferences, and other market insights that to a careful listener would be a lot of information to incorporate into my business plan. And I was a careful listener indeed because I frankly couldn’t afford to go out of business because I had so much debt my life would have ruined forever with that big black stain of bankruptcy.
I learned all sorts of stuff - and always had the modesty to immediately incorporate any valuable market insights into my product. And when I say “the modesty”, I just mean I didn’t let ‘my plan’ interfere with ‘the reality’. Many times people are committed to their ‘plan’ and feel insecure about changing it because that would mean they were wrong to some degree in the first place, and somehow being wrong was a ding to their credibility. Me, I was too insecure about too many other business things (ie survival) to worry about ‘being wrong’ about the exact details of my business plan. I never started building log homes, or modular homes, or ‘going green’ or 100 other ‘ideas’ that crossed my desk, but I did constantly refine my product line and product process - so I stayed in my lane, but incorporated as many inputs as I could. Information was everywhere, you just had to be listening, but as importantly, you had to have a business product that was able to be tweaked and refined.
I had that, and was constantly adding to the line up. Farmhouses, then Cottages, Barns, then Moderns, then Mini’s, then different counties. Each insight, expansion, and risk-embracing pivot allowed us a little more diversity, which translates into a little more fortitude and dexterity which translates into a little more chance of survival if you experience an international real estate and financial system collapse when your pants were fully down (2008), 12 long years of a sort of morbid housing market, the Pandemic, the Inflation, The Competition (because of higher price points). I benefited over and over from information and the ability and willingness to pivot.
5 of the 12 homes we got going currently.
Not many people make it an entire lifetime in speculating in real estate without hitting some sort of hurdle that tosses you into bankruptcy at least once - could be something outside your control like 'the economy' or could just be some land investment that didn't pan out. It's the old adage that there are two types of motorcycle riders - those who have crashed, and those that will in the future. On both accounts, (I was an avid and reckless rider when I was young), I have bucked the traditional wisdom. Since my risk-taking is much less these days, and i don't ride motorcycles anymore, looks like I stand half a chance to buck it for good - which is fine with me.
1st Snow of the season
Our first big snow storm of the year, and it was a picture perfect one at that. And the timing was fantastic too, starting mid-afternoon Saturday, ending by Early Sunday. Plenty of time to enjoy, cleanup and get back to work with minimal disruption for such a large snowstorm. Here in NE PA we got 12” of pure light white powder, and throughout the Catskills that much or more. That’s a significant storm.
And it turns out, now that it is Tuesday morning, we didn’t miss a beat. Monday morning full steam ahead with nary a delayed delivery or logistical
Finished Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, and enjoyed it thoroughly. Set pretty much current, taking place in Applachia, it tracks and storytells everything from the opioid epidemic’s impacts on the youth of these parts, to the general and commonplace depiction and caricature of these folks, to foster homes, HS football stardom, to extended families to broken families. It’s an American tale, with a nod to Dicken’s and his concern for the underserved children of society’s underbelly. Pics of my high school play below.
It occurred to me I had a successful Christmas season with a litany of activities with family and friends that came off pretty good. Starting with my annual NYC trip with my son and his brahs, a super fun dinner party where even my mom and brother made the trip up, a trip to the Biltmore in Asheville NC for the whole Christmas holiday and then a quietly productive pre-New Years’ week when all the other mice were sleeping.
2024 is shaping up to be a year of finely honed execution - the sales are in place, the team is in place and experienced, most permitting or municipal interactions are behind me - so it’s just a day by day task by task exercise of execution and supervision. At this point, if we didn’t sell another house all year we’d be ok, and the chances of that are nearly zero.
Sometimes it hard to remember some effort or task that didn’t have any immediate impacts, and the results are harder to see because the efforts were preventative rather than triage, and last week was a good test and example of that - our main finance woman was unexpectedly out of the office the whole week, but we didn’t miss a step because we now have a part-time back-up book-keeper who could keep the whole thing moving forward, get our bills in, pay our vendors. That redundancy was what I was seeking to insert into the organization so we weren’t thrown into chaos everytime life happened to someone in our employ - and it was tested and worked perfectly. That’s progress of the most professional and important nature.
An amazing thing happened in Highland NY (Sullivan County) with the election of John P as supervisor. I started the effort to oust an 'old boys club' member back in 2015 and got roundly pummeled for my efforts, but it opened the eyes of people better qualified (from a disposition standpoint) and similarly concerned individuals and 9 yrs later, we got it done. Lead from the front - you don't always get the cheers, but you do some of the hardest and most important work laying the groundwork for change or action.
The real and only question is - am I the only one in the world with an updated blog?
Insurance rates have skyrocketed, with home insurance really catching my eye. At first you think ‘wow, price gouging’, but then after a little bit of education you realize that all the things you read about and know about firsthand (construction costs, weather damage) impact the cost of home repair after an insurance claim, and then it becomes more clear that the rates increases, while hard on the pocketbook, are just a micro example of the big picture impacting the individual picture.
Did two more deals this week. Yeah, that’s right, we rock.
