Buying a true turnkey home
Turnkey is one of those real estate terms that seem too good to be true, unless you’re buying a home designed by Julie Wallach. The Ulster County home she recently renovated and sold was not just move-in ready — all a buyer had to do was bring a toothbrush. The home came fully stocked and gorgeously furnished, right down to the cookware and bedding, making it all set for homeowners to live in or to rent out on Airbnb.
That was the original idea for the Hudson Valley home she and her husband purchased in 2018, for $436,000, in the hamlet of High Falls, a short drive from their New Paltz home. Once the High Falls renovation
was complete, she planned to rent it as a wellcurated Airbnb. If it was winter, Wallach would light
the fireplace so it was going when you checked in. Want the fridge stocked for a special dinner? A s’mores
kit for one of the two fire pits? These were just some
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of the special touches she intended to give guests.
They hired a contractor to renovate the 1880s hunting cabin, set on nearly 3 acres, while her husband cleared away the invasive plants to once again see the year-round stream running through the back. New picture windows were installed to maximize the unobstructed view of the Mohonk Preserve.
Then the pandemic changed her mind about managing a property. She and her husband began craving something more rural across the river. They set their eyes on Chatham in Columbia County, which would make caring after a place over an hour away a serious time commitment. So they put their New Paltz home on the market while they house hunted, and moved into the High Falls property as the work was completed. The more she poured into the renovation, the more she knew she couldn’t bear to rent it out.
“It was going be too nice for me to tolerate as an Airbnb,”
said Wallach. “I think I would have lost my mind if I had come in and seen that the floors were damaged or the wall was scratched. I'm really particular about my homes, and so I could not have stomached that to rent
it as an Airbnb.”
Wallach still planned to stock and fabulously decorate it, though, like an Instagrammable fantasy that was just as nice in real life. “I wanted to make sure that someone…knew that what
they were seeing in a photo was what they were getting,” said Wallach.
And just as luxury condo developers are marketing fully furnished, move-in-ready homes as a way to streamline supply-chain delays during the pandemic, she also wanted to take the friction out of firsttime homebuying.
“I knew how hard it was to find contractors, find a couch, find a lamp. Everything was delayed,” said the former chef and owner behind Tipsy Parson and Little Giant in New York City. “So, anyone who was looking to get out of the city or looking for some sort of escape — or even a house that was going to be a project — was going to have a problem stocking that house.”
She furnished the home the way she would have wanted to live, and filled every drawer, closet and pantry shelf with the kinds of goods a first-time homeowner might spend months acquiring — if they had unlimited funds.
The pantry came not just with all the basic spices and dry goods, but also wine, spirits and every coveted piece of cooking equipment you can imagine: a Vitamix, a juicer, a food processor, Le Creuset and All Clad cookware, an Instant Pot.
Dishes, silverware, utensils and cleaning supplies were all purchased and put away, down
to the microplane for lemon zesting and the Aesop soap by the sink. The linen cabinet was stocked with plush towels, and she fitted Parachute bedding on the Tuft & Needle mattresses.
“Everything that we did was like, ‘Okay, would I want this towel? It wasn't just like, ‘Oh, let's get a towel.’ I agonized over the type of towel to get.” (She chose towels made by an Australian company called The Beach People, in case you were wondering.)
Wallach also sourced and styled all the rooms with furniture found locally and online. The
70s sectional couch came from Long Weekend in Livingtson Manor. Hammertown was another local décor store she shopped, as were Hudson Valley auction houses, which can be an affordable way to stock an upstate home, but Wallach
said that is changing.
(Now that mass-market brands like West Elm are on back-order, the method of bidding for furniture you can take home instantly has become more competitive. “Friends [of mine] who have retail stores or vintage stores are saying that they're getting outbid on auctions because everyone's trying to find auctions to buy stuff to fill their houses with.”)
The former restaurateur had previous interior designing and renovation experience from the build-outs of Tipsy Parson and Little Giant. She also renovated the barn on her New Paltz property. But this was Wallach’s first “down to the studs” project. After the full rebuild, the addition of a separate, prefab home office on the property from Studio Shed, and over $50,000 in supplies and furnishings,
her all-in investment totaled a little over a million.
It was worth it. The house sold for $1.525 million — in 24 hours.
Would Wallach give another house her turnkey treatment again? 100 percent. In fact, she’s already found her next remodeling project, a 1777 Quaker Meeting House in Old Chatham that she aims to complete by midsummer.
“Everyone comes up from the city and they have these rosy eyes about living in the country, but they don't realize what actually goes into making a house livable, especially if you're a firsttime house buyer…so if you can deliver a beautifully furnished, finished house, someone's willing to pay for that,” she said. “I think that's true now, and I think that's gonna be true in the future.”