Sullivan County Real Estate

Storm Update and Electric Status

By any measure, Sullivan County has been slammed by the one-two punch of this week's snow storms. Snow on the ground in many areas is now over two feet. Sullivan County has declared a state of emergency, in effect until Noon on Friday. While driving has not been banned, any non-emergency driving is strongly discouraged.

This snowstorm ranks up there in the 'pretty major' category, and may end up being the biggest since 1993. So many newcomers to the area may have not dealt with a snowstorm with this kind of depth. 24 to 30 inches of snow on the ground is a lot different than 10 or 12.

A big problem with this storm is potential electric outages, due to the combination of heavy, wet snow and strong winds. If you're not in the country, and worried that your electric might be out, you can check the Outage Information section on the NYSEG website at http://ebiz1.nyseg.com/cusweb/outage/. You can check your road by village / hamlet / area. Note that NYSEG may not list your address by your mailing address city, e.g. my home address is "Callicoon" but NYSEG includes my road under "Hortonville". If your service is out, you can get an estimated service restoration time by going to their "Report an Outage" page at https://ebiz1.nyseg.com/cusweb/OutageNotification.aspx. You'll need your NYSEG account number, or, if you've registered a phone number with your account, you can check by phone number.

There is a similar online reporting system for Central Hudson and Orange and Rockland, but those utilities do not have the more general "Check Where Service is Out" type lists like on the NYSEG site.

DIY Network's "Blog Cabin" is Coming to Sullivan

The Do-It-Yourself Network (on cable) has a cool show, Blog Cabin, where they either build or renovate a house for the tv show, and the audience votes on choices as the project progresses on the Blog Cabin website. Think of it as "American Idol" for houses, where the 'contestants' are countertops, faucets and paint colors.

The next Blog Cabin series is slated for Bethel. DIY has bought a dated ranch house on Happy Ave. in Bethel, with a view of Bethel Woods, and over the course of this coming season plans to transform it from a frog into a prince. The plans for the renovation are already up on their website, http://www.diynetwork.com/blog-cabin/index.html. This will be a fun project to follow, and should be great publicity for Sullivan County.

Foreclosures and Short Sales

I get a lot of calls from folks asking about bank owned foreclosure properties. Those calls often lead to a fairly long discussion about the pros and cons of buying a foreclosure property. As much as many buyers want a super deal, they often aren't good candidates for pursuing foreclosure properties. I've put up a new page on the main site with some information about buying bank-owned properties that's a must read for anyone searching in this part of the market. I also included information on short sales, which is a different animal, but with their own unique considerations. The URL for the page is http://www.catskill4sale.com/foreclosures.html.

Bank-Owned Lakefront House on Bodine Lake Just Listed for $144,900

I know the post title sounds like a dime-a-dozen real estate pitch, rather than the lead-in to one of my usual posts. But I just saw this listing come through the MLS and had to post it up. It's for a 3 bedroom, 2 bath lakefront ranch house on 1 acre on Bodine Lake near Yulan, a bank-owned foreclosure with an asking price of $144,900. This is the first lakefront foreclosure I've seen come on the market here, which makes it notable, even though the house and lakefront are far from perfect.

I showed this property a few times over the last couple of years when it was listed, and before you get all hot and bothered about picking up that perfect lakefront getaway for under $150,000, there are a few drawbacks. It's on the Eldred Yulan Road, the main road between, well, Eldred and Yulan, so does get some traffic. It's not on the more private other side of Bodine Lake. The house also has a quirky layout. The lake frontage itself, though, is actually kind of nice.(Bodine is a small non-motorboat lake.) If you want lakefront, and can put up with the house and the road, this is a great deal.

Be aware, though, that bank-owned foreclosures aren't for the faint of heart. You have much less opportunity for a full inspection, as bank-owned houses have been drained and winterized, and the bank generally won't turn on the systems for you to test them. They sell these houses "as is". That makes them very difficult to finance (because, for a conventional loan, the appraiser has to verify that the systems are in working order.) Even if systems could be turned on, banks impose strict time limits from contract to closing, which would also make financing difficult. So this probably has to go as an all cash sale.

If this is something you're interested in taking a look at, give me a call at 845-468-5710 or drop me an email at davidk@beechwoods.net. I expect this one will go very quickly.

New MLS Search Up and Running

The final piece of my site revamp is now up, a new and, in my opinion, vastly improved MLS property search. It's taken a while, but finally I've been able to get a property search system for this site that has really usable functionality. There are two things I've been looking for, the capability to show property taxes on the property detail page, and the ability for users to search for specific types of waterfront or water related property, like lakefront only, or even just motorboat lakefront. The new system has both.

There's even an iPhone app. Like most iPhone apps, it's a slimmed down version with less functionality than its web-based sibling. But it has one very cool feature. The map-based app is "location aware." So when you're tooling around Sullivan County (in an area where you get an AT&T signal), you can zoom in on the map and see all the properties listed for sale in the MLS right near you. I went out with a friend last week who has an iPhone to give it a test drive. When we'd pass a house with a For Sale sign, there would be a corresponding pin on the map that we would push and get the property details and even interior photos!

I realize that many visitors to catskill4sale.com have a lot of saved properties and searches on the old system. So I'm leaving the legacy system up through April 30th. After that date, any saved properties on that system will no longer be available, and any saved searches you have set to email out notifications of new listings, well, won't. I'd encourage you to set up a user account and start using the new system from this point forward. A note to Earthlink users: The new search system requires email verification of new user accounts, so if you have Earthlink's email spam system enabled, please add my email  davidk@beechwoods.net to your approved list.

I'd appreciate any thoughts or feedback you have on the new MLS search. And if you find anything that doesn't work, or is frustrating, please post a comment here or drop me an email at davidk@beechwoods.net .

Current Market Conditions Posted with January Data

Happy Valentine's Day! I'm a little late this month with the latest market conditions report. I've been burning the midnight oil with the site redesign and tweaking and testing the new property search function. (That should be live tomorrow.) But I did squeeze in getting out a market report, 'cuz I know if it isn't up by the 15th I'm gonna get emails.

The latest data is pretty much a reprise of the last few months. Volume and prices holding fairly steady, buyer activity slow, continuing softness at the upper end. Kind of like being a tv weatherman in Lake Chapala, Mexico, where every day is spring like with highs in the low 70's, a chance of afternoon showers, and nighttime lows in the 50's.

The one thing to watch in the next couple of months is a possible trending down in the median sales price, from the low $130's into the low $120's. The median, on a single month basis, slipped in both December and January, although the average has been holding pretty steady in the $160's.

Please check out the latest Current Market Conditions report on the main site and then drop on back here to post your thoughts on where you see the market. I always look forward to the lively discussion after the report posts.

Site Overhaul

If you've been over to my main site you may have noticed a new look. I've been working on a site overhaul for the past couple of weeks. (For you web jockeys, I've finally joined the modern era, converting from a tables-based layout to a CSS layout.) I roll my own, and don't use an outside web person, so the learning curve has been steep. But hopefully everything works. However, I don't have every browser loaded on my system (only IE7 and Firefox), so I'd appreciate it if anyone comes across problems, particularly inn other browsers (Sarafi, Opera, IE8 and IE6), or any broken links. I haven't converted every page yet, so some 3 or 3 levels down still have the old look.

Next up is a new MLS search. I've contracted with a new vendor, and I'm really excited. That should be live in the next couple of weeks.

What's Happened to the Upper End?

I'm haven't seen many upper end buyers in the past few months, and looking at the sales data, not many other Realtors here have either. In 2009, there were 17 closed single family sales above $400,000 reported in the Sullivan MLS Compare that to 29 sales above $400,000 in 2008 and 51 in 2007. For the latest 3 month period (11/09 through 01/10), there were just 4 closed sales in the MLS above $400,000 — 3 of those were lakefront and 1 was a 6500 sq. ft. executive home in Monticello. (That one, selling for $570,000, came in at about $87 a square foot!) Keep in mind that I'm not talking about the top upper end here, those trophy properties in the million and up range, but rather houses above $400,000, a pretty low threshold for 'upper end'.

Then look at the inventory of houses with asking prices above $400,000. There are currently 140 single family listings in that range in the Sullivan MLS (128 of those actually in Sullivan County.) That translates into about 8 years of inventory at the current 17/year sales rate! That is a mind boggling number. The total inventory of single family homes in the Sullivan MLS at all price ranges is 958, or about a 2 year supply given that there were 439 sales in 2009.

It's almost if buyers in this upper end have evaporated. Which makes it all the more surprising when sellers in this thin market range hold stubbornly to their prices. We've tried to put together a few deals in the past month in the $400,000 to $500,000 range where the sellers have just said 'no, we'll wait.' The question is, "Wait for what?" I'm just not seeing a lot of buyers in this range coming down the pike.

Not Enough Houses

A shared lament among real estate agents is that there is a glut of inventory and a shortage of buyers. Add the issue of sellers stubbornly holding to high asking prices, and it's a recipe for a molasses slow market.

But I'm sure sure it's quite so simple. My two colleagues and I at CBA are actually having more of a problem with an inventory shortage of houses that our clients want to buy. Some may have even seen the house they like, but want to do more shopping and see more houses before making a decision. Often, we don't have a lot of other choices to fill out the dance card. Without a larger menu to pick from, they're hesitant to make a decision.

Between the 3 of us, we have a half dozen clients who fall into this category. They've seen a house they reasonably like. When asked the question, "What is it about the house that would keep you from buying it?", the surprising response is "Nothing major, really. We'd just like to see more." We're not hearing the major common objections from these folks — price, location, setting, condition, etc.

The common element among these buyers? They're all looking in categories where we may only have a couple of houses — or at least houses that we feel are good examples of what they're looking for — to show. Property categories currently with a dearth of choices include farmhouses or charmers on quiet country roads under $300,000, contemporaries with views under $450,000, moderately priced 3+ bedroom lakefront homes,  "cabins in the woods" in the mid to upper $100's, and the once plentiful "vacation chalet" with cathedral ceilings and a loft set in the woods.

Consider the situation with those under $300,000 charmers. Last spring and summer, we had a reasonably good selection. There were 5 or 6 good choices that I could string together for a showing day that presented a well rounded selection. Most of those are gone, and haven't been replaced by comparable houses coming to market. Even just above the $300,000 cutoff, there haven't been charmers coming to market that will just need some time to "age" and the sellers to get religion about price. The next price jump for charmers is to the upper $300's to low $400's, for a handful of larger, grander houses.

It's a very strange situation to say to a potential buyer, "Here are the one or two (farmhouses or houses on motorboat lakes or view houses whatever) on the market in your price range that fit your criteria." Folks don't want to schlep up from the city to see just one or two houses, so we end up padding out trips with houses that, frankly, don't fit their criteria.

Recently, the most common "end of trip" conversation with prospective buyers goes something like this. Buyers - "We liked the third house you showed us a lot. So we'd like to come back in two weeks to see some more houses like it. If you can put together 5 or 6, that would be great." Me - "I don't have 5 or 6 more houses like this to show you. In fact, today you've seen everything that comes even reasonably close to what you're looking for." Buyers - "Well, then can you keep us in mind and send along anything like this that does come on the market. And when there are few to take a look at, we'll come back up."

So that third house they liked? They would probably buy it, if I showed it alongside 5 or 6 reasonably "close but no cigar" options, so they felt they were making the best choice among a selection of good options. But that psychology doesn't hold when it's one good choice among 5 lousy options.

I've blogged a couple of times about the factors that make a house "deal capable", where the seller is ready to be realistic. For example, a house being on the market for more than one year. Likewise, there are some factors that contribute to buyers being "decision capable." On the buyer side, it is probably less related to "time spent looking" and more related to "selection of reasonably good choices seen." It's not specifically the total number of houses seen, but rather that they've seen enough houses to have a short list of 3 or 4 that they'd seriously consider buying. Without a shortlist of 3 or 4 choices, they may just not make a decision. With shortages in some categories, it may be impossible to come up with a 3 or 4 house shortlist.