The 1960s live on in Woodstock, where peace signs and psychedelic designs abound in the quaint downtown.
But real estate in Woodstock, and in the other surrounding Catskills towns, is not exactly in a peaceful place at the moment.
While the area is still dotted with New York City residents who own second homes — or are in the market for them — in many cases, sellers are dropping their prices, and buyers are bargain hunting.
On a gray weekend last month, open houses in the mid-level price range bustled with traffic; one house on the market for $299,000 received an offer at the asking price the night before the showing.
On the high end, however, Randy Florke, who owns Rural Connection, a Greenwich Village-based agency that specializes in upstate properties, summed up the market this way: “It sucks.”
He rarely holds open houses because it’s a roughly 100-mile trek between Manhattan and Kingston, N.Y., the gateway to Ulster County, home to Woodstock.
But for many other brokers, open houses are still a sales staple — and the signs advertising them sit at key intersections along Route 212, the main thoroughfare of the village of Woodstock.
At 51 Cottonwood Lane, a three-bedroom contemporary listed at $439,000, broker Beverly Davis served rugelach and tea. The owners, a couple that use it as their primary residence, plan to move to California to be with their grandchildren. They reduced the price from $450,000 after putting it on the market in mid-May.
Coming off a market in which home prices doubled from 2002 through this year, “too many sellers think they’re still in the heyday,” Davis said, estimating that the market is down around 15 percent from last year.
The house, located at the end of a wooded dirt road, stands next to another home that is obscured by a row of trees. The kitchen features granite countertops and a ceramic tile floor.
The house should appeal to “city-based professionals with a child or two,” Davis said. Though the bedrooms are small, the house is well made, said a prospective buyer named Christina, who declined to give her last name. She was the first of 20 visitors during the three-hour open house.
Christina said her home in nearby Stone Ridge is under contract and that she is moving closer to her daughter, who bought a house near the Cottonwood Lane home.
“It’s a really nice house,” she said, adding that she had seen about two dozen homes in the area that fell within her price range, but few with this one’s quality.
Upper West Side residents Jeff and Lil Feuer also dropped in. Eight years ago, they bought a home in nearby Saugerties.
“We’re looking for something big and open,” said Jeff, a broker for Prudential Douglas Elliman. “We’d buy for investment or, if we found the ideal place, we’d look
to upgrade.”
“We love it up here because there are so many artistic people who fit with the Upper West Side ethos,” said Lil, who is in the apparel business and was wearing a black dress. Entering the kitchen, she commented on the stainless steel appliances: “You have to have that to sell to New Yorkers.”
About two miles away, in the heart of downtown Woodstock, Paula Chandler at Coldwell Banker Village Green welcomed visitors for three hours at 39 Millstream Road, even though she had accepted an
offer at the $299,000 asking price the
night before.
“It had already been advertised, and it’s good to be here, because you meet plenty of potential future clients,” she said.
Gerard Sanzi and his wife live along a busy road in the area, but were out looking for a bargain on a quieter street. They are considering keeping their current house and renting it if they can find a home with two bedrooms and two bathrooms on at least a half acre for under $300,000.
The Millstream house, which features hardwood floors and a detached garage, is across the street from a swimmable stream. The home’s disadvantages: It has only one bathroom, and the rooms are cramped.
At the lowest-priced open house, a weather-beaten shack built in 1950, Michael Lowery, an agent with Win Morrison Realty, played Billie Holiday tunes and served fruit and cheese.
Despite the spate of new luxury homes in the woods off the major thoroughfares in the Catskills, there are plenty of old ranches, converted trailers and whimsical structures like this one dotting the roads.
Five potential buyers came to check out the property, which is being sold by an estate and is located at 259 Silver Hollow Road in Willow, about 8 miles east of Woodstock off of Route 212.
“Last year at this time, I had four or five closings,” said Lowery, who sells tie-dyed shirts when he’s not selling real estate. “This year, I had one.” He cited high gas prices as
a factor contributing to the slow summer.
The 600-square-foot structure was first listed at $159,000, but had been knocked down to $139,900 for the open house.
The seller would probably settle for $125,000, Lowery said.
Toward the end of the three-hour open house, Nancy Rowe pulled up in a Subaru station wagon. Rowe, who lives nearby, is scouting out a second home for a friend who lives in California. “It’s cute, but you’d need the right person,” she said.
Meanwhile, on the other end of the Catskills price spectrum, a $599,000 two-story contemporary at 12 Wiedy Lane in Shokan presented plenty of standout amenities, including a soapstone fireplace, a nine-zone heating system in the floors and ample closet space in the four bedrooms.
Still, at an open house held by Terry Spiesman of Weichert Realtors’ Kingston office, no prospective buyers stopped in
during the four-hour window.
“Four years ago, this house would’ve been gone in two weeks; now, it’ll take a while to sell,” she said.
Spiesman, a full-time agent, said she is willing to handle homes priced “from $100,000 to whatever.”
But she can’t escape the fact that the market is showing signs of trouble.
“Every night I go over the MLS hot sheet, and out of maybe 750 properties on the
market, I see 70 price drops every day,” she said.