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The Hamptons for ProcrastinatorsBy SARAH MASLIN NIR
SUMMER is in full swing in the Hamptons. On the beaches, surfers and piping plovers vie for sand space, and at the Bridgehampton Polo Club the games have begun. In East Hampton, the fresh lobster salad at Claws on Wheels is selling briskly at $60 a pound. Every weekend, the parade of cars from the city snags horribly in Watermill. And renters have returned in large numbers to snap up houses from Southampton to Montauk.
For those who wish to join this sun-bleached and sandy set, it is not too late to rent a place: options are still available in every price range. And this year they are down from prerecession heights, and owners are being more flexible on the lengths of rentals.
Brokers said they were relieved to see a return to a “normal” market just one year after the post-Lehman summer of 2009, which some referred to as “catastrophic.” Some houses stood empty of renters all season long.
“What a difference a year makes,” says Judi Desiderio, the president of Town and Country Real Estate. She described 2009 as the worst Hamptons rental season she had experienced in 28 years in the business. And she says her company has done three times the number of rentals it did last summer.
Prices have also rebounded, which is undoubtedly a disappointment for the people who last year were renting at half price from desperate homeowners.
Rentals are up between 10 and 20 percent this year compared with the dismal market of last year, said Rick Hoffman, the regional senior vice president of the Corcoran Group for the East End. But these prices are still lower than those that homeowners could command in the high-flying years before the recession. Many rentals are also for sale.
“From the banner year — being 2007 for rentals — the market is still down around 20 percent,” Mr. Hoffman said. And “2010 is shaping up to be much better than last year, and even 2008.”
Alan Wiener, 63, a real estate agent in Manhattan, has rented a summer place for his family in the Hamptons for several years. This year, on the advice of his broker at Town and Country, Mr. Wiener waited until just before Memorial Day to bid on three rentals in East Hampton, each offer representing a significant discount.
“Ten days before Memorial Day, they hadn’t rented — forget for the summer, not even for the month,” he said. “We made an offer that was in the area of 20 to 25 percent below the asking price.”
Two of the homeowners said no and one said yes. The Wieners ended up with a four-bedroom house on two and a half acres in the Northwest Woods, with a pool and room for their two grown daughters and their families. Mr. Wiener would not say how much he was paying for the house, but he secured it for the entire season.
“Compared to last summer we paid a little bit more,” he said, “but for a lot more house.”
As for availability, brokers say the old rules still apply on top properties — like those directly on the ocean or those south of the Montauk Highway, which traverses the Hamptons from east to west. Such places were rented long ago.
What’s left tends to be far from the beach, to lack an amenity like a pool, or to be a bit snug for a gang of friends who want to share. These are also the places that cost less.
Perhaps the biggest change in the market this year is in the willingness of owners to rent their houses for shorter periods.
Stuart Epstein, an owner of Devlin McNiff Real Estate in East Hampton, says that in the past, most owners were determined to rent their houses for the entire season — Memorial Day to Labor Day — and not by the week or the month. But last year many homeowners, fearful of being left with an empty house, agreed to abbreviated stays.
That trend seems to be persisting this summer.
“People are just optimizing,” says Amadeus Ehrhardt, an associate broker at the Engel & Völkers agency in Southampton. “Before, it was always, ‘Got to get that best house before somebody else does.’ ” Now, he says, renters are focused on finding the right house for the time that best fits their schedule.
Mr. Hoffman of Corcoran agreed. “In the good old days,” he said, “we did nothing less than a full summer rental.”
Gary DePersia, an associate broker and senior vice president of the Corcoran Group Real Estate in East Hampton, said that although he had done fewer partial-season rentals this year than last, the number was still higher than in prerecession days.
“Now even if they have that money,” he said, “they want to be a little more frugal, but they don’t want to necessarily rent a lesser house. So if you don’t want to rent an inferior house, you rent the same house for a lesser period of time.”
“A lot of the marginal houses have still not rented,” Mr. DePersia said. He defines marginal as “a house that’s not in a sexy location,” adding, “It could be in the woods; it doesn’t have the latest amenities; it doesn’t have the latest furniture.”
In an area of hot spots, the towns that make up the Hamptons fluctuate in popularity. Time was when Montauk might as well have been in Montana, but not anymore.
“There’s virtually nothing left in Montauk,” Ms. Desiderio says. That’s because of a paucity of housing stock in and around the outlying surfer village, which has become shabby chic.
The central towns of Watermill and Wainscott, Mr. DePersia said, do better with rentals than the “the bookends” of Amagansett to the east and Southampton to the west. The Shinnecock Canal separates Southampton from communities like Westhampton and Hampton Bays, which brokers say constitute a somewhat separate market because of their distance from the favored and more easterly Hamptons.
But for renters who don’t require the latest in décor and amenities, or the most with-it address, there are many properties that are fine for stringing up a hammock.
Houses without pools, says Maryanne Horwath, an agent at Prudential Douglas Elliman, linger longer on the market. Of the 30 or so rentals she has done this season, she said, only one did not have a pool.
Prudential Douglas Elliman has a three-bedroom house without a pool in a part of Southampton north of the Montauk Highway listed for the relatively low price of $9,000 a month. It is surrounded by trees, in a development with communal tennis courts.
In the Springs section of East Hampton, Victoria Van Vlaanderen, an agent with Town and Country, is listing an Adirondack-style three-bedroom house with a heated pool and views of Hog Creek.
The house has a double-height peaked ceiling over the living room, which is paneled entirely in rough cedar. But two of the bedrooms are in the partially sunken lower level that opens onto the backyard. The pool, set away from the house, is surrounded by woods. The remainder of the season at the house will cost $25,000.
In Southampton, Mr. Ehrhardt is showing a four-bedroom two-and-a-half-bath house with two fireplaces on Heady Creek Lane. Several of the bedrooms have extra beds to accommodate weekend guests. It has a screened-in porch and a small pool.
The house is near Hill Street, a main thoroughfare of Southampton, which can bring some street noise, but shade trees and hedges block out any unsightly views. The rent is $25,000 for this month and $35,000 for August.
Mr. DePersia is seeking a renter for one of the more upscale houses still available: a six-bedroom seven-bath shingle-style mansion on Fithian Lane within walking distance of East Hampton’s main street. It is not on the water, a deal-breaker for some high-rolling renters, but it does have a pool and a pool house. The rental price for this month and August combined is $225,000, and Mr. DePersia said the owners might consider shorter-term rentals.
Almost right, but not quite? Although at this point most of the ultra-high-end places are gone, there are still opportunities to indulge in the ultimate Hamptons dream house.
In Watermill, Mr. DePersia has a place fit for a professional athlete (or those with the income of one). It has 7 bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, 4 fireplaces and a vast wine cellar. There’s an elevator, which is uncommon in the Hamptons but useful if you sprain your ankle on the sunken tennis court.
The two gated acres are also home to a pool and pool house, complete with a hot tub, as well as a large guesthouse with a separate hot tub for when the guests are your in-laws. There’s a basketball court and, for the Tiger Woods in you, a putting green. The place is available for select weeks in July and August, at $75,000 a week.
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