Sullivan County Real Estate

Corncord's Monster Golf Course Not Reopening This Summer

Update 4/24: In a change of plans, Louis Cappelli announced that the Monster course at the Concord will be reopening for this season.

Today's Times Herald Record reported this morning that the Monster golf course at the old Concord hotel site in Kiamesha Lake will not be opening for this season. Westchester developer Louis Cappelli bought the shuttered Concord resort, and its two famed golf courses, in 1999, with plans to redevelop the property. The hotel building was demolished in 2008, and Cappelli undertook infrastructure and site work in preparation for a new resort development. That work stopped in late 2008. Since then, Cappelli has made repeated statements that construction on the new resort is imminent, but so far, that hasn't come to pass.

While the hotel was closed, the golf courses remained open. Last year, however, the small International course was shuttered, and only the Monster was available for play. This season, neither course will open.

Cappelli also owns the "Big G" course at the old Grossingers resort in Liberty, and that course will open for the summer. Golfers in Sullivan County still have plenty of other options. The Sullivan County Visitors Association website lists six other 18 hole courses in the county.

Gas Drilling and Mortgages

There's a good thread running over on Liz Bucar's blog, "Mortgage Troubles on Leased Properties" (below the Cochecton township zoning piece.) The thread started with a post about a property owner with a gas lease on their property who was turned down by a major lender for a home equity loan on that property. That was followed up by a post from a PA real estate broker, Jennifer Canfield, who talked with mortgage brokers about this and has been compiling a list of lenders who won't mortgage lease-encumbered property.

It is a significant issue, but not a new one. At every program on the nuts and bolts of gas leasing I've attended in the past couple of years, the difficulty of mortgaging or refinancing a property with a gas lease has been front and center. It isn't a new woodchuck crawling out of a hole. Anyone who was thinking about encumbering their property with a gas lease, and did even the most cursory due diligence, would have been aware of this downside.

In the threads over on Liz' blog, the commenters refer to 'environmental concerns' as the reason for lender reticence over mortgaging leased property. But, from my casual discussions with lenders, I think it's more complicated than that. When a property has a gas lease on it that permits use of the surface for drilling, a third party essentially has the rights to materially change the property. Environmental concerns notwithstanding, those material changes to the surface could affect the value of the property, possibly devaluing the asset that the bank has lent on. Likewise, appraisals become difficult. Any piece of real property comes with a 'bundle of rights' that comprise its value. A gas lease essentially severs one of those rights, gas extraction, from the real property, so it becomes difficult to determine the value of the property without that right to transfer with the real property. It makes valuation very complicated. And in this still-tight lending environment, most lenders don't want to deal with anything complicated or with an unquantifiable risk. So it's not surprising, for the time being at least, that they're reticent about lending on properties with gas leases.

Little Black Dress Houses

[Listing Display > 60 Days. No longer available.] The Times article (below) quoted me as commenting that some houses are the "little black dresses" of the second home market, and buyers are looking to pay about $200,000 for them. That "little black dress" house takes different forms. It can be a smaller, more modest farmhouse, or a log cabin in the woods, or an updated ranch on a few acres in the country. That's certainly the sweet spot of the second home market I'm seeing right now. I've commented a few times on this blog that the rack of those little black dresses has been picked pretty clean. We just really don't have a lot of those houses in that price range to show and sell. I figure, though, that some second home buyers who saw the Times article will be dropping on by in the next couple of days to check things out. So I've pulled together about dozen houses in that "little black dress" price range in Sullivan County to give a feel for what's available in the $200,000 range. All of these houses are in country settings on a few acres, with the exception of MLS 28479 which is an adorable charmer in Jeffersonville and MLS 28190, a small lakefront cottage on Bodine Lake. To see more details about the houses, you can either click on each house as it comes up in the slideshow, or click here to see all 12 listings together. And if you're just starting out your search for that perfect country getaway, or aren't that familiar with Sullivan County, be sure to check out my main site with lots of information and resources about real estate in the Sullivan County NY Catskills.

Catskill Real Estate Article in Today's NY TImes

"Happily Settling for a More Modest Country Getaway" is this week's Great Homes and Destinations article in the NY Times about second home real estate in the Catskills. Sullivan County is pretty front and center, and yup, I get in a couple of good quotes. I think the general sentiment of the article is pretty right on target.

How Many Sales Really Come Via the MLS?

In the post below (So Few Really New Listings), a few commenters raised the question about how many sales come through the Multiple Listing System. The number bandied about among Realtors is about 80% to 85%, but I don't think I've ever seen a validation of that number for Sullivan County. So I decided to don my data junkie hat and find out.

Let me start by saying it wasn't easy. I thought I could just do some data pulls from different sources, combine them into a database, stir in some simple programming to eliminate duplicates and voila! The percentages of sales by source would magically appear on my screen.

Yeah, right. I started on this little project Monday morning, and didn't finish until the sun set. I started by pulling all single family sales (Class: residential-single family) with closing dates between 7/1/2009 and 9/30/2009 for Sullivan County from Reallist, the property records system from First American Title. Some sales I knew had closed were missing from the list, and figured out I had to add in a second class, rural residential, and ran the data again.

So far, so good. There were 167 recorded sales. But, alas, all weren't "arms length" market sales. 10 were title transfers from the county tax auction. 3 were foreclosure transfers of title back to the bank (not foreclosure sales from the bank to an ultimate purchaser, which I did include in the arms-length market sales group.) I categorized a further 12 as not-arms-length sales. How? By checking each sales record, looking for same last names as buyer and seller, sales with no dollar amount where it appears there has been an in-family transfer, and sales from one real estate or corporate entity to another with no change in tax address. There were also a couple of transfers of property into conservancies or family trusts.

Pulling out these tax sale and non-arms length transactions, I ended up with 143 "arms length" sales. Then I pulled data from another source, the tax records system (not the sales system) of the Greater Hudson MLS to double check, and alas the numbers didn't match. I identified an additional 11 sales that hadn't been recorded yet as closed in Reallist but were recorded as closed in the tax records in the other system. So I added those in.

I came up with a total of arms-length, non-tax-auction single family residential sales (excluding mobile homes and seasonals) in Sullivan County between 7/1/2009 and 9/30/2009 of 154. At least that's my best guess.

Then I started the process of coding those sales as to whether they were sold through the Sullivan MLS, the adjacent Greater Hudson MLS (which covers some sales in Sullivan by brokers in adjacent counties that aren't members of the Sullivan MLS), or didn't appear in either MLS, and would be non-MLS sales, whether they were handled by a broker or not.

It turned out this, too, couldn't be done in an automated way because of inconsistencies in the way parcel identifiers and addresses are entered into the different systems. So again I went through transaction by transaction, matching the compiled master sales list with the solds from the Sullivan MLS and Greater Hudson MLS.

At the end this is what I came up with. Of 153 arms length transactions, 104 (68%) were sold through the Sullivan MLS. Some of those were also included in the Greater Hudson MLS totals, because some Realtors belong to both systems. Pulling the dupes out of the GHVMLS data, I ended up with an additional 18 sales (12%) that were only in the Greater Hudson MLS. The majority of the GHVMLS-only sales were in a single township, Mamakating, that borders Orange County. So the percentage of arms length sales that were MLS-sourced (either Sullivan or GHVMLS) came to 80%, with 20% not appearing in an MLS.

One question that may arise is why I didn't use more recent data, and went back to the 3rd quarter of 2009. The reason is that it takes so long for sales to catch up, be recorded by the county and then be picked up by the third party property records systems like First American and included in their databases. Using a more recent period, I would have had to make even more judgement calls to fill in the gaps.

So Few Really New Listings

Buyers are often surprised at how few new listings come to market. After I've spent a day with buyers looking at houses in a certain category, they'll often say, "That was great. We'd like to come back in a couple of weeks and see anything new that's come on the market like the houses you showed us today." In most cases, there won't be really much new to show them in two weeks or even a month. They often have the impression that there's a steady flow of new houses for sale, like baggage tumbling onto a baggage carousel. But that isn't the case.

Buyers do see new listings come to market all the time on the web. Look at the "Sullivan County Real Estate New Listings in the Past 7 Days" page on my site, and this time of year you'll likely find about 50 "new listings". But only about a quarter of them are truly new. Most in that group have been on the market, some for quite a while. They can show up as "new listings" for a number of reasons. Most commonly, a listing expires before the listing extension from the seller is received by their agent. When a listing expires, the status is automatically changed to "expired" in the MLS. When the listing extension is received, the status is returned to "Active". Whenever a listing status changes to "active", for whatever reason, it get flagged as "new". Another example would be when a deal in contract falls apart, and the status is changed from "Contract Signed" back to "Active."

Houses can also be re-listed. Most commonly, the seller has allowed the listing to expire for more than 30 days. This is a frequent occurrence here, when sellers take their properties off the market for the winter and put it back on in the spring. If a listing has lapsed for more than 30 days, even if it's being reinstated by the same broker, it has to be entered as a new listing. If a seller changes brokers, it will be a new listing. And some agents do suggest to sellers that they allow 'stale' listings expire and then relist to start with a fresh listing date and lower "days on market" count. This practice, however, is less common than many buyers think.

I know that raising the relisting issue, and the lack of a transparent listing history on consumer websites, will draw the ire of some readers of this blog. It's a hot issue, but one that I have absolutely no control over. Suffice it to say that when I work with a buyer and they're interested in a property, I pull a detailed listing history for them.

The point of this post isn't relisting or property history, but rather how few new houses for sale flow to market. I was talking with a colleague last week who also does a lot of work in the lakefront sector, and we were both commenting at how almost no new lakefront houses have some to market in months and months. We find ourselves showing the same houses over and over. We ticked off a long list of lakes where there hasn't been a truly new lakefront home listing in a year — Swinging Bridge, Timber, York, Wolf, Devenoge, Yankee, Masten and Elko. On some other lakes — Black, Wanaksink, Tennanah and Highland — there have only been one or two each. So we end up showing the same houses over and over.

The situation is similar in a number of other popular second home categories. There's very little new in modestly priced farmhouses, vacation chalet style homes, houses with views  and little "cabins in the woods". For a modest farmhouse buyer, it can be a month or two before a good new one comes on the market. This isn't across the board. There are some categories where there has been some nice new inventory. Smallwood, Emerald Green and the village of Jeffersonville come to mind.

The lack of new inventory does have a dampening effect on buyer interest. A number of folks check in with me regularly to ask if there's anything new that would interest them. In a lot of cases I have to answer, "No, not really." Some will broaden their criteria to open up new options. Others drift away.

We need new fresh inventory. But I'm not confident we'll see a lot of it this year. Another colleague and I were chatting recently about the limited selection of houses in certain categories. He commented that this isn't a market to sell into unless you have to. More discretionary sellers just aren't putting their houses on the market.

It's a conundrum. We have buyers that want to go shopping. But not much new on the shelves for them to buy.

Sullivan County Real Estate Current Market Conditions Report Up With March Data

A very interesting picture this month. Sales volume was flat over last year, with only 76 closed single family sales in the Sullivan MLS for the 1st quarter, and down from the 93 for the 3 month period ending Feb. 28 2010. On the volume front, I was a little disappointed there wasn't a year over year uptick, given that we were seeing a modest trending up at the end of 2009. The harsh winter may have contributed to the poor March sales figures. Since the weather turned in mid-March, I've noticed a nice pickup in activity.

On the price front, the picture is rosier. Both the median and average closed sales prices were up, even adjusting for the large $1.35 million sale that had an upward skewing effect.

I have some new thoughts about buyer dynamics in this month's report as well, along with some opinions about seller pricing in different market segments. I'm also noticing more interest in hunting property, which may be a result of sharply lower acreage prices in Sullivan. So check out my latest Sullivan County NY Real Estate Current Market Conditions Report and then drop on back here to add your thoughts about what's happening in the Sullivan County real estate market. (And please Tweet this on down the line using the Tweet link below!)

The Coolest House

Yesterday I visited what I think is one of the coolest new listings I've seen in quite a while — a 4 bedroom, 3,000 square foot modern contemporary perched practically over the water on Fillippini Pond. I'm talking like right on the water, with the kind of settins and views you think of in a house on Pacific Coast Highway in California. (OK, I know Fillippini Pond isn't the Pacific Ocean, but work with me here!) When you're in the house, you just go "Wow" at the views of the lake.

Before seeing it, I had some hesitation about this house, because it's on a fairly small parcel, with its backside just below Hurd Road. (Bing Maps aerial of the setting.) But the house was very well designed to not orient to the road at all. I also thought the house would have little outside room for children to play, dogs to run or plant a garden, but there's a nice sized yard off to one side.

This is not the typical house we see here. Sullivan County is not ground zero for striking contemporary homes, so when one comes on the market, it's notable. Add in the practically cantilevered water setting and it's close to remarkable. Asking price: $469,000.

Readers of this blog don't see me gush about houses very much. More likely, I'm slamming them as ridiculously overpriced. And everyone's taste is personal, so what I like isn't the same as what other people like. But this one is very unique and interesting. Click here to see the listing with more photos.

3 Fabulous Grand Fancies

[Property listing display > 60 days. No longer available.] No, it's not the title of a new Merchant Ivory historical costume drama starring Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant. But any of these three houses could play a starring role in a film. Periodically, I work with buyers looking for a grander historical home (what I often call the "Love, Valour, Compassion House"), but the pickings can be slim in Sullivan County compared to areas closer to the Hudson. The reason is largely historical, because Sullivan County was settled as a more modest farming area without the large merchant and banker classes that were prone to build these fancier houses. (Although some of the timber baron houses in the northern parts of Sullivan were pretty fabulous.)

So it's notable that there are three "fabulous grand fancies" on the market in Sullivan County at the moment. I use the term "grand fancies" rather than the more commonly used "Victorian" because these aren't all "Victorians". MLS 27920, between Youngsville and Jeffersonville, has the simpler exterior lines of a large farmhouse. The interior renovation, however, rises to the level of magazine-quality. The other 2 fall more into the Victorian genre, with ornate exterior detailing. All 3 have been beautifully redone. The Youngsville house is set out in the country on a quiet country road. The Jeffersonville and Bloomingburg homes are on the edge of town.

The see more information on them [Property listing display > 60 days. No longer available.]