This Week on Upstater: Make the Hudson Valley/Catskills Your First Home Haven

  |  September 14, 2015
325 gables road narrowsburg ny

325 Gables Road, Narrowsburg: $189,500

There’s a bit of buzz over the weekend about real estate in the Hudson Valley and Catskills. First, we read this installment of a series in the Woodstock Times on the rental market in Woodstock which poses the question, is it possible to find a rental in Woodstock? Not a short-term rental, but an actual apartment (remember those?). Read the article, because the information about landlords turning their former apartment residences into short term AirBnB rentals, essentially obliterating the apartment rental market in Woodstock, gave us a lot to think about in terms of the real estate future of the Catskills. Where’s it going? Are short term rentals going to become the norm in other places around the region? What effect does this have on the non-rental market?

We don’t have the answers, but the last question is somewhat related to the other bit of real estate news we found. The NYT published a piece over the weekend about downstaters currently shelling out big bucks for their apartments looking to make their first-time home purchases further upstate. In other words, “Buying a Second Home First,” as the article title aptly says. And what are these downstaters doing with their second home that’s actually their first real estate purchase? Why, they’re turning them over to the short-term rental market when they’re not using them. This is a little different from the Woodstock situation, but the outcome is similar: Less inventory on the market, more short-term rentals. 

Regardless of how you feel about it, the Hudson Valley and Catskills are primed for first-time home buying, even if you’re first home is a second home. There are communities all over the region with affordable properties on the market just waiting to be scooped up. And the hard truth is, we can’t all live in Woodstock and Rhinebeck. Time to get real about looking for first homes in some less well-known towns (Sullivan County is loaded with them, as are some parts of Delaware County in the Catskills and Orange County in the Hudson Valley), which is exactly what we’ll be doing this week. Stay tuned…

About Kandy Harris

Kandy is a writer and musician/music teacher living in Saugerties, NY.

Read more from Kandy Harris

Read On, Reader...