Hamptons Real Estate

John Candy and his fictitious family of characters were dealt a lousy hand on their summer rental, but your chances are significantly better. Why? Because according to a new Hamptons/North Fork market study from Miller Samuel and Prudential Douglas Elliman, next summer is going to be a season for renters.

As Oliver Haydock of the New York Observer reports, sales of Hamptons homes has dropped nearly 30 percent annually. In an interesting turn, the South Fork has been hit much harder than the North Fork. The median home sales price in the Hamptons fell 19.4 percent since the third quarter of 2007. In tangible numbers, that’s a drop from $1,030,000 to $830,000.

Three big stats are leading some to believe that a downturn will be pulling into the driveway and settling in for an unwelcome stay in the near future. Sales are down, inventory is up, and homes are taking longer to sell, which is never a welcome trifecta.

For those in the real estate game: cheer up, nothing lasts forever. And to those looking for a 2009 summer getaway, the Hamptons will be for rent, start packing!

Apparently lightning can strike twice, or at least as far as the price point on Hamptons real estate. For anyone who missed the opportunity to buy the $65 million spread on Gin Lane this spring, a pedigreed Ox Pasture estate “Linden” hits the market at $67.5 million.

“Architecture against death,” is one of the missions of the Bioscleave House in East Hampton, an innovative, interactive, compact living space that is the antidote to the soulless Hamptons McMansions. As artist-architect-poet designer Madeleine Gins says, “In this house you aren’t buying space, you’re buying time.”

You know times are tough when real estate agents are taking waitress jobs, albeit on Shelter Island so they don’t run into their clients while offering them the short ribs. The figures are out to prove that the Gucci belt is tightening as sales slow down. Suffolk Research Service Inc. released the first quarter figures for 2008 and present some statistics that, while sobering, are certainly not doom and gloom

Like any expensive hamlet with both blue blood and blue collar roots, the Hamptons have seen the spectrum of wealth including old and new money. Descendants of old fashioned industrialists have given way in the recent buying boom to Wall Street masters of the universe and hedge fund managers who may be completely self-made. While Southampton may have had the reputation of being old money, and East Hampton that of being new money, the lines have been blurred.