Yesterday, when Googling "Sullivan County Real Estate", an Adwords ad caught my attention. "Cozy and Rustic Catskill Mountain Homes for Sale from $279,900. www.chapinescapes.com" Yup, that Chapin, the upscale gated community with lakefront lodge style homes, many of which are upwards of 5,000 sq. ft. and cost into the millions.
There are two "Adirondack Cabin" designs in this range, one 1,250 sq. ft., the other 1,500 sq. ft., on 5+ wooded, non-lakefront parcels. It's not a bad move on Chapin's part, given that Chapin has quite a few unsold non-lake parcels and buyers have definitely downshifted to smaller and more affordable. Catskill Farms has enjoyed tremendous success through the downturn by building country charmers that are smaller and more affordable to hit a buyer sweet spot. Chapin Escapes look to be a riff on this model. (This isn't entirely new for Chapin. They dipped into the market with similar designs a couple of years ago, but I believe at a somewhat higher price point.)
It's going to be interesting to see if this takes off. Clearly the price point is good, and owners can enjoy lake access if they join the Lake Club at Chapin. The key will be whether the target demographic for "Chapin Escapes" will embrace the Chapin concept. Those iPhone toting, Mini Cooper driving Park Slopers who are drawn to Catskill Farms houses, in my experience, shy away from gated communities or anything that feels too 'developmenty'. On the flip side, there could be an untapped cabin market that isn't turned on by the repro farmhouse look. We haven't had a sub-$300,000 cabin product on offer to test that market.
"iPhone toting, Mini Cooper driving Park Slopers" - nothing like making snarky, stereotypical comments to win you customers. You sound angry & bitter. What's the matter? Can't afford a Mini?
Posted by: mm | July 03, 2011 at 09:15 AM
Not at all. I can afford a Mini if I want one. It's just that ground clearance isn't that well suited to the terrain I drive up here. Those "Park Slopers" make up a good chunk of my clientele here. It's just that I wonder whether they'll gravitate to the gated community concept.
Posted by: David Knudsen | July 03, 2011 at 09:55 AM
I had the same reaction that MM had to that comment. I was uncomfortable with the stereo typing. I'm not sure you were aware of how it comes off. In an effort to be entertaining you pushed the limit.
I think your assertion is invalid, but not limited to that specific group. I do not have an iphone or live in the areas your profiled and am probably 20 years older. I found a house I liked in Timber Lake estates. I didn't like the fact that it was behind a gate and it kept me from making an offer. I"m not getting a house in the country to isolate ourselves from the community.
Posted by: dmann | July 03, 2011 at 09:33 PM
I didn't mean it that way. Good Realtors have a sixth sense for lifestyle cues — where they live, what they drive, and yes, even what cell phone they choose. My clients are often surprised by some of the questions I ask them, like where they like to go on vacation or their favorite restaurants in NYC. I've even, on occasion, asked folks to take a photo of their living room in the city and email it to me so I can get a sense of their decorating tastes.
One thing I hear from buyers, after their first trip out with me, is that most of what I showed them was on target, something that they've seldom experienced with other Realtors, who often show them houses that are just way off base from what they're looking for. That doesn't mean that there aren't other good Realtors; there certainly are. But it does mean that they probably haven't connected with Realtors who are good at lifestyle matching.
Is it a form of stereotyping? In a sense, yes. But it's not always such a bad thing. It helps narrow down and hone in. Sometimes I'm off base, and then I change direction in a heartbeat. But in that first class, before I've met them in person, I have to glean enough information about a buyer's aspirations to pull together a group of listings to send them that I think are reasonably on target. I usually include a few that are interesting but may be 'off target' as well.
Posted by: David Knudsen | July 05, 2011 at 11:03 AM
David, If you meet anyone who actually buys something for $279k in Chapin Estate, please let me know. I think in the end these buyers will somehow have to 'upgrade' to $400k+. You can't even build a 1400 sq ft house of any substance for $240k, unless you aren't including the driveway, the land, the septic, the well (you get the picture).
I think it's less 'will the buyers accept the gate' and more can Chapin successfully turn their marketing and interest from uber-high end (edited) to more mundane budget oriented home buyers. I think it's a real challenge, since the markets couldn't be more different.
And David, come on - after 80 homes, if we relied on the small group of people in your example above, we would have been out of business long ago -lol.
Posted by: Chuck - Catskill Farms | July 06, 2011 at 01:01 AM
I have an iPhone and a Mini, lived in the Slope for many years, and have a place in Sullivan County.
I also have a sense of humor.
Posted by: Mitch | July 06, 2011 at 02:21 PM
Lighten up mm. David could have just as easily mentioned those young baby/ brown lab toting, crossover SUV driving, UWS families. Would you have pointed out his transgressions then or do you only take offense to stereotypes that hit close to home?
Guess what, people stereotype because they're people. Wait, now I'm stereotyping. Please forgive me. This world could do with a little LESS uber-sensitivity (how un-PC is that!?!). My goodness, it's not like David was judging their morality. All he said was that they have good taste!
Posted by: Doug | July 07, 2011 at 11:03 AM
Ah, Chuck must be feeling some competitive unease, to see him trash the Chapin offer. Wonder if he even realizes that he's just described his own customers as "mundane." No worries, Dave will continue to shill for CF, as he always has.
Posted by: ar | July 07, 2011 at 02:34 PM
We have an iPhone and an Android, just bought a Mini (btw - David must not be too familiar with the new Mini Cooper Countryman All4 because it is absolutely perfect for driving on Sullivan County country roads even in winter) and live part-time in a neighborhood very much like Park Slope and the rest of the time in our beautiful home in Sullivan County. I also happen to be a realtor in our "city" neighborhood. Were I ever to make an unthinking remark like that I would APOLOGIZE for offending my potential customers rather than try to back peddle out of admitting I was wrong. Oh - and I also have a sense of humor but also a sense of respect for others.
Posted by: mm | July 08, 2011 at 10:23 PM
I'm finding the response to this post, or rather one phrase in this post, very interesting. I didn't use a judgemental adjective at all. The folks who have taken offense with it have extrapolated some type of judgement from that, and that's happened in their own heads, not mine. I just don't see what was 'snarky' about what I wrote, nor how it was 'disrepectful'.
30-somethings who value design (whether modern or retro) are the bread and butter of the $300K market. In my experience (which comes from going out with scores of buyers every year) is that this demographic in this price range tends to have an aversion to 'communities' and 'gated'. Somewhat older buyers, in their 40's and 50's, tend not to have that reaction (who, by the way, are more likely to hail from Long Island or Westchester than Park Slope or Williamsburg.) That $300K, 30-something Brooklyn or UWS buyer typically wants something "cool' or "hip", with an element of design --- whether that's the car they buy or their choice for a second home.
Posted by: David Knudsen | July 09, 2011 at 08:49 AM
mm, there's one big difference in working with buyers in Brooklyn or here in Sullivan County. In the city, I would posit that buyers in some fashion make a neighborhood selection based on price, lifestyle and self identity before they start looking for apartment or townhouse. In my experience with friends shopping for apartments in the city, they generally 'know' they want to be in Park Slope (or an adjacent neighborhoods), or Williamsburg or whatever. I doubt you have a lot of customers who come to you and say "We don't have a clue where we want to be or what we want." And if you do, I bet you can figure out in just a few minutes whether they're going to be a better fit for the Slope or for Williamsburg or DUMBO. If you're a good Realtor, you're making those assessments all the time, whether you want to fess up to it or not. One of the things we do is to make the match based on the clues we're given.
Here's in Sullivan, the vast majority of buyers, in my experience, present a pretty blank slate. Often they only have the vaguest notion of what they want, and very seldom know where they want to be in the county (unless they have friends or relatives who already have a place here.) At the outset, they often don't have a grasp of prices. It's not because they're stupid or clueless, it's because they don't have the experience or knowledge they have in the city. So up here, Realtors generally start a few steps back than where you might start with someone in the city. I doubt you get many calls from people saying, "Hi, we want to buy an apartment in Brooklyn, but we've never been to Brooklyn before." (OK, the occasional out of area buyer, but likely not anyone who's in New York.)
Posted by: David Knudsen | July 09, 2011 at 09:23 AM
People's anger over the Mini remark is the reason I moved out of Park Slope.
Posted by: Mitch | July 09, 2011 at 12:31 PM
It was just a factual statement. Mini Coopers, iPhones, and Catskill Farms houses are all aggressively designed very small objects.
Posted by: nick | July 11, 2011 at 10:54 AM
Yo, ar, great to see the glass is still half empty for you. Yes, our 1300 sq ft homes whose entire proposition revolves around simplicity and straight-forwardness are quite mundane when compared to Chapin's design approach - where trees grow out of the floor system, bears are carved into support beams, tree limbs are used as handrails and a host of other unique design characteristics are employed to amplify the 'country-ness' or 'adirondack-ness' of the homes.
Of course, it could be said that anyone who knows our homes would know the the word 'mundane' was used irreverently, and a looking glass on other design approaches.
Posted by: Chuck - Catskill Farms | July 14, 2011 at 08:51 AM
Over the past couple of days, a number of comments have come through in the 'slam Catskill Farms' genre. This post was not about the pros and cons of CF houses, thoughts about them or the people who buy them. It is about whether the new Chapin product will hit the right target. Given the tone of some of the comments, I decided not to post them through. I expect to be slammed for shilling for CF, but my policy has been to not post through comments that have a real slam tone, regardless of the target.
Posted by: David Knudsen | July 15, 2011 at 09:19 AM
Dave,
Maybe you can explain why Chapin is so exclusive? Isn't Toronto reservoir public? I know there are some issues over the years in terms of the access and different owners going ch 11 - maybe you could clear that up.
Also, good call on the Frack documentary showing a month and half ago in Callicon. Great movie and the NYT times natural gas series 6/25-27 puts a whole new spin on this "clean energy". It looks like it offers the best of both worlds - Enron-like accounting scam with one of the most polluting (air , water, noise)ways to drill for energy. As one industry insider has dubbed it - the process is an "underground dirty bomb"
Locals wake up, hydro-fracking is not a jobs program as some suggest (well maybe for a few hundred roughnecks from Texas and Okla it will be), but will only be an incredibly expensive problem in multiple ways for the county. Who will pay for the new water treatment plants, or for the 100s of millions of gallon of water this process needs, or to fix the road destroyed by 100,000s of tanker trip just to name a few of the problems. Oh thats right, it could also destroy the local aquifer system (100s of home owners have already had this problem in Pa)in the area potentially costing NYC $10 to $20 billion to build a filtration system (probably at the higher end given how these things seem to always work out)while it also puts at risk the $26 billion tourist industry in the Delaware river basin. And for how much in new taxes? Zero, NY State is not going to tax the wells??? like Texas and other energy producing states do. The is definitely a lose/lose for everyone except a handful of energy executives and a few local land owners. heck, even shareholders at the public energy companies are asking for further review of this dangerous process since they can see the potential long-term liability this process presents to the companies - smoking was also supposed to safe remember in the 50-60s.
Didn't mean to change the topic, but once I get going I can't stop ...
Posted by: Jed | July 18, 2011 at 01:17 PM
Jed,
The NYT articles were proven to be faulty and incorrect-after reading the 'drilling down' series, I now consider that great paper pure fiction. As for the "insider emails" and "Ponzi scheme" referrals, those have also been blasted as having poor sources, and the writer failed to make clear that the story was only written about small, independent and floundering energy companies, not the big guys.
I don't know why, but the media in NY wants to chase away prosperity. I don't blame you for being upset if you believe the advocacy campaign in the newspapers. Just take it with a grain of salt-there's a very powerful agenda in the state that prints anything, however poorly sourced, that makes gas the BIG BAD GUY.
Because no one ever believes anything that's contrary to what they want to believe, the truth will only come out when some wells are actually in operation, and NY can see for itself that gas is not the great destroyer that the population has been led to believe it is.
And as far as only a few people getting rich-I don't understand the logic. Each gas well gathers gas from (usually)about 640 acres. If your house is in those acres, you get a check. A well usually produces for about 20 years. That's a lotta checks to a lotta regular folks.
And once again, I don't work for the industry, I just live in a beautiful suburb that happens to have hydrofracked gas wells nearby that have been in operation for about 10 years. I know the anti-drilling peeps won't believe any of this, so all I can reassure you with is, 'wait and see.'
Posted by: Mary E | July 18, 2011 at 11:35 PM
Wow Mary, it sounds like you have been reading Talisman Energy's Coloring book featuring the kid- friendly Terry the Frackosorous (I think they got it right using an extinct animal as the spokes cartoon for this process, but Joe Camel may be able to sue them for stealing the cigarette company's original idea). For those who didn't catch the 7/11 airing of the Colbert Report www.colbertnation.com I strongly urge to check it out on the web. At first, I thought it was a complete spoof, but these guys (Talisman)apparently are now pandering even to kids about how supposedly safe this process is. Everything is the same after drilling, except now you also get a rainbow - who came up with this???
I have no idea where you live Mary, but if they have been drilling in your area for 10 years, it is not the same type of hydro-fracking. Today in Pa they use millions of gallons of water at much higher pressures per well, combined with chemical toxins that have shown to be leaching into the aquifers or well water in 100s different locations in Pa for an example. Who knows, maybe some of your neighbors water has been poisoned, but they signed a non-disclosure contract in order to have the energy company truck in water for them?
All I know is that I own land in Sullivan and live in the NYC, and from what I can tell with the available data, there is a real possibility of polluting the water for both of these places.
Jed
Posted by: Jed | July 21, 2011 at 12:21 PM
Mary,
You don't work the for industry, you work for their PR firm obviously. I love the logic of your statement that the only way to find out how great it will be is to let them drill? It will be to late then. It sounds like you have been reading too many of the Talisman coloring books that were lampooned on the Colbert report on 7/11. Anyone looking for a good laugh should check it out at www.colbertnation.com
Posted by: Jed | July 21, 2011 at 09:50 PM
Well, I guess you'll just have to see for yourselves. Like I said.
I have hydrofracking near me-no public outcry, no problems so far. Just money.
But of course, you have no need for that. You already have a 'mini.'
Posted by: Mary E | July 24, 2011 at 12:20 AM
Meow. Meow. Scratch. Scratch.
Posted by: David Knudsen | July 24, 2011 at 09:08 AM
Of course there's no public outcry where Mary E lives. Who freakin' gives a hoot about TX??? And when I mention TX, note that I exclude Austin. Also note that, although hydro-fracking has been used for decades, fracking in combination with horizontal drilling is new. Let them frack horizontal wells for about ten years in Mary E's neck of the woods then she can get back to me.
http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/local/ut-to-study-gas-drilling-impacts
Posted by: keith | July 25, 2011 at 05:40 PM