Bone Hollow Studio is designing modern homes in the Hudson Valley

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Owl's Nest, a four-bedroom home developed by Bone Hollow Studio in Accord, sold for just over $2 million within 24 hours of going on the market.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, dozens of people gathered in Accord to check out the town's latest home from Bone Hollow Studio, a woman-owned Hudson Valley development company. It was a presale friends-and-family showing where guests nibbled on hors d’oeuvres, including potatoes with caviar, and drank wine in their socks on pristine 5-inch oak flooring. A festive din filled the large great room under a 20-foot vaulted ceiling and in front of a roaring open fire.

The four-bedroom, 3,282-square-foot home has custom woodwork and beams harvested from the property and a name: Owl's Nest. It's one of four homes on Bone Hollow Road being created by Erika Brown, the woman behind Bone Hollow Studio, in partnership with the local builder Hudson Valley Homes and Renovation.

Brown's background is in advertising, not real estate development, which has proven useful for this endeavor: Hudson Valley Homes builds; she plans, budgets and styles.

"The project management part is what I am super comfortable with," said Brown, leaning against a newly painted wall in an upstairs hallway as guests, including the builders’ father ("he taught them everything they know!), streamed past her, gawking at meticulously staged rooms. The furniture, including some antiques from Ron Sharkey in Stone Ridge, was not included in the sales price but could be purchased for an additional fee.

A brokers’ open house was planned for a few days later to help sell the modern home. But by Monday morning, less than 24 hours after the presale gathering, there was already an accepted offer on the property, a surprise — even though Bone Hollow Studio's last home also sold immediately, last May.

"What I have been thinking and saying to my clients is that I believe the market is normalizing," said Laurel Sweeney of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Nutshell Realty, who is representing Owl's Nest. Sweeney also sold Brown her home, which happens to be on Bone Hollow, too — "a sweet country road," she said.

But after the quick turnaround on Owl's Nest, Sweeney was rethinking her assessment of the market. "It's completely related to the lack of inventory. In a normal market in Ulster County, we have on average 650 homes for sale. Right now we have 271, some in contract, and that's all price ranges. Could you believe it? They go from $70,000 to $4.995 million."

In a buyer's market, Sweeney — who has been selling real estate locally for more than 20 years — notes there have been as many as 1,100 homes on the market at once. "That's influencing buyer behavior. That, coupled with interest rates stabilizing, is what's making this market the way it is right now," she said.

Brown is a master of the fine line between luxury and livable. She grew up in Germany and the American Midwest and lived all over before settling in the Hudson Valley.

"I have never had a strong visceral reaction as I had when I came here. The people, the energy, it's really special to me," she said. So she did her homework, bought about 18 acres on her own road, enlisted her own trusted builder and went through the subdivision process.

Female developers like Brown are few and far between. According to an analysis of real-estate developer demographics in the United States by Zippia, a career advising company, only 33.1 percent of real estate developers in the U.S. are female. Locally the number is smaller. Sweeney said at most there are three. "There are female architects and designers. Developers? You could count them on one hand," she said.

Working literally in her own backyard influences Brown's work. "We are three-acre zoning but on purpose, we wanted to have them a little bigger, but also not so big it could get divided again. I could have made more homes, but this is my neighborhood. I didn't want to put six or seven homes here," she said.

Owl's Nest sits on 5.2 acres. The large building is intentionally set back from the road. In warm weather, when the trees are full of leaves, Brown says you can't see it from the street.

For potential buyers sad they missed out on Owl's Nest, Bone Hollow Studio's next project should be ready by June. Brown works on one at a time. It won't look the same, though; each is unique, down to size and configuration. There are some similarities in terms of design choices — Brown's preferred neutral palette and a penchant for minutiae that make modern feel cozy, but Bone Hollow Studio doesn't churn out cookie-cutter homes. "Each house is completely different. Each property has guided what we are going to do," said Brown.

In addition to the four Bone Hollow Road homes, a fifth project is in the works for Lapla Road in nearby Marbletown. And there will be more in the future. Brown is loving being a local developer. "I’m going to keep going. It's working well."

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Bone Hollow Studio is designing modern homes in the Hudson Valley