Foreclosures Hit the Tiny Hamlet of Catskills

Posted on July 20, 2009
Filed Under Repo Homes | Leave a Comment

Foreclosures have now hit the tiny hamlet of Catskill. The big event each year has been the June Trout Parade. The event is sponsored by Livingston Manor Chamber of Commerce to raise dollars of the Livingston Manor Central School’s Art and Music events. The shops lining Main Street become busy with activity. One of the plans put forward to revive fortunes of the hamlet was placing aquariums on Main Street. These aquariums would be fed by Willowemoc River. People walking around the town then would be able to see the trout.

Some of the shops catering to the nouveau riche of Catskill are booksellers Hamish & Henry and Willow& Brown dealing with home furnishing. But Dick Lambert Gunsmith and Wildlife Gift Shop has been wilting as it does not cater to this group. Today much of downtown is in foreclosure.

Andrew Krieger is a financial adviser and currency trader operating from Dubai. He commented, “It’s really quite simple; we became sort of a cog in this global credit crunch. I never expected to have a credit crunch in Korea or Spain end up having an impact on this little town in Sullivan County, but if you want a lesson in the globalization of the economy, you’ve got it. It’s all three degrees of separation.”

The severity of Krieger’s finance is not known to anybody. He is however confident that within few months it will stabilize and be able to meet the demands of his creditors. But his local agents gave the same assurance in February when the first foreclosure got into action. He now owes over $900,000 on four properties. This everybody has now come to know. A spokesperson said that of eight buildings owned by Krieger six are in foreclosures for sale .

When Krieger started purchasing properties in 2002 he never dreamt that this situation would arise. He began buying, refurbishing and declaring with much fanfare the revival of the forgotten village. Hitherto the fortunes of the hamlet had been linked with Borscht Belt hotels, couple of lumber mills and a plant processing chicken meat.

Krieger has a residential home in this region. He had plans of setting up an $80 million resort centre, and about hundred residential units on 500 acres of land. Also included was a medium sized housing unit for the elders as well as a spa of international standards. But now it has become a question of holding on to what he owns in downtown.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Related Tags

Nobody landed on this page from a search engine, yet!

Comments