For many a harried city dweller, it’s a longtime dream: finding a quaint, historic Hudson Valley house and lovingly rehabbing it into the perfect weekend oasis.
But in practice, that dream can quickly turn into a nightmare as the list of surprise must-do fixes grows — sending costs soaring, and turning that supposedly peaceful upstate getaway into a permanent construction zone.
Enter a new breed of Hudson Valley second-home purchasers: the turnkeyers. Innovative builders have discovered that buyers are increasingly hungry for properties that aren’t just brand-new but also totally customizable — and are responding with a slew of fresh options.
“Everyone’s life in the city is so complicated and busy, and the notion of taking on a renovation project is appealing and romantic in theory,” says Drew Lang of Manhattan-based firm Lang Architecture. “The actuality of it, however, can be something else — and unfortunately some people have to figure that out the hard way.”
And Lang ought to know. Along with his architecture practice, he is the founder and architect of Hudson Woods, a 26-home development set on 131 acres of old-growth forest about 25 miles west of Kingston in Ulster County.
Hudson Woods draws on Lang’s years of architectural experience, which includes projects such as New Orleans’ post-Katrina Faubourg St. Roch Project.
He created a sleek, 2,800-square-foot standard home, crafted from sustainable woods and featuring huge windows, that includes custom options like kitchen tiles and roof color.
Buyers can also choose from a wide range of add-ons — everything from a pool to a fruit tree grove to a detached guest house. Depending on the lot size, which ranges from 3 to 12 acres, the basic Hudson Woods home is priced between $665,000 and $715,000.
“People make their choices and then they show up when it’s done, and we hand over the keys and they move in,” says Lang.
The blend of rural setting and modern Scandinavian-style design has proven very appealing; since the model home was finished in July, Hudson Woods already has four buyers — all successful New York City professionals.
“The lines are clean, the materials are natural, the size is perfect for a weekend place, and the houses are integrated in a harmonic way into the landscape,” says Hudson Woods’ very first buyers, a couple in their mid-40s who prefer to remain nameless but are both biomedical scientists at a Manhattan hospital.
Their home, with mountain vistas in two directions, is slated for spring 2015 completion.
For Hudson Valley buyers seeking more flexibility in terms of design, location and cost, builder Catskill Farms offers a wide range of turnkey options.
Having already built more than 100 houses in Sullivan and Ulster Counties (with high-profile clients including comedian David Cross and ex-Vice badboy Gavin McInnes), Catskill Farm owner Chuck Petersheim specializes in what he calls “new old” homes, using a template of five classic designs (cottage, farmhouse, barn, mini-cottage and mid-century ranch) that are fully customizable.
That was a key selling point for buyers like Jason and Jaime Windau, a Park Slope couple who just moved into their 2,200-square-foot Catskill Farms-built home near Woodstock in July.
Having fallen in love with Woodstock during a visit last year, the Windaus knew they wanted to build nearby, and were able to do so on a 5-acre lot that Petersheim found for them.
“What we loved about it is that we could collaborate with [Petersheim] on some of the finishes, the lighting and the layout,” says Jaime, 38, who heads the visual marketing department for Banana Republic’s field organization. “We helped him change out one of his designs and tweaked it slightly, which obviously we wouldn’t have been able to do if we bought a pre-built home.”
Catskill Farm houses seem to strike a chord with today’s first-time second-home buyer who might not be entirely familiar — or confident — with the building process.
“Aesthetically, people never thought that they could have a new home that wasn’t sterile and cookie-cutter and sort of imitation, and they also never thought that they could weather the building process,” says Petersheim. “We try to keep it fresh, keep it artistic, and keep it quick.
From you calling me up and saying, ‘Hey, I’m ready,’ to us being done is somewhere between five and seven months.”
Given the range of choices, Catskill Farms’ homes vary greatly in size and cost, but Petersheim notes that the majority of his clients opt for something between a two-bedroom, 1,300-square-foot cottage and a three-bedroom, 1,800-square-foot farmhouse, selling in the $350,000 to $500,000 range.
Virtually all of his clients are New York City residents building their first second homes upstate, mostly couples (including about 30 percent same-sex partners), but also many singles.
“We have a lot of young millennials, late 20s and early 30s, who are really an active marketplace for us right now,” Petersheim says. “And then we have our bread-and-butter, 36- to 44-year-old established professionals who are spending a lot less on a new home than they could, and are just super-excited about doing that up here in the Hudson Valley.”
Even veteran New York City/Hudson Valley time-splitters are getting in on the new-build action.
Married 50 years in October, Manhattanites Sam and Vivian Makhmaltchi first came to Saugerties in 1967, drawn by an irresistible waterfall on the 3-acre property they found.
A converted general store (which once catered to workers at a nearby mill) served as their weekend getaway home for decades, until two years ago when they decided to build a new house just 50 yards away.
The Makhmaltchis hired local Saugerties builder Ashley Homes to construct a design by Delaware County’s Alta Log Homes.
“We basically kept their existing house on-site, and we built right alongside of it so they could still use it for weekends,” says John Hommel, owner of Ashley Homes, which builds log, passive solar and modular houses mainly in Ulster, Greene and Dutchess counties in the $175,000 to $700,000 range — for a clientele that’s about half New York City-based second-homers. “And as they were ready to move in, we just demo-ed that house out and finished up the landscape for them.”
As seasoned part-time locals, the Makhmaltchis are longtime lovers of the Hudson Valley, and have borne witness to the huge changes in the area over the years — mostly for the better.
“We used to go a bar down the road when we first came here, and I’m not kidding you, a woman couldn’t sit at the bar,” Sam says. “It was very George Wallace, very conservative. The area’s come a long, long way.”