Real estate stories, like dragons, are hard to kill. Here is the latest and liveliest news from the upper reaches of the market.
Gotham Magazine, Real estate report 2002
This is the time when well-heeled New Yorkers usually start thinking about summer sandals and the Hamptons. But contrary to post-9/11 predictions, the season is off to a slow start. According to East End real estate brokers, a flood of new rental listings, too many boring overpriced houses, and a skittish attitude on the part of renters may reverse the trend of recent years and bring prices back to just plain expensive from the breathtaking levels owners had been demanding. No one is certain but everyone is questioning: when the weather breaks, will prices do the same?
The price of top tier of sales however just keeps rocketing upward. And the fuel is still Wall Street money. Ron Baron of Baron Capital Management, the biggest outside shareholder in a troubled Sotheby’s just paid over twenty-three million dollars for an 11 acre oceanfront estate on Further Lane with a big, luxurious but somewhat dated 1960s house. Word has it he will spend the summer there, but bets are on that the days are numbered for that particular house. Fred and Stephanie Shuman took some of the money from his sale of Archstone Partners and moved from Cottage Avenue (it’s hard to say one moves up from the very elite Cottage Avenue) to the late William Simon’s oceanfront estate on Windmill Lane. For seventeen million dollars they even got the windmill that lends its name to the street.
The fifteen thousand square foot house originally built for Henry Ford II once stood on hundreds of acres. It’s been out of the Ford family for a long time, and it’s now pared down to 16 oceanfront acres, but it is still considered one of the jewels in the crown in Southampton. Financial investor Michael DePaola paid nearly twenty-two million dollars to acquire it in January.
Peter Brandt and Stephanie Seymour, after renting different houses over the years, have settled down in a restored barn on the ocean in Sagaponack, about ten minutes from Bridgehampton Polo where Peter rides hard with his successful White Birch team and Stephanie seems more interested in kids and sport than in hob-nobbing under the tent. Their six million dollar barn formerly belonged to Robert Miller and his wife, the of-the-moment decorator, Kelly Harmon Miller. Her brother Mark Harmon should have no trouble finding another guest room.
The blond and beautiful are renting again this summer. Katie Couric will be back and so will Meg Ryan. Calvin Klein still owns his house, which Kelly occupies, and he still rents another for himself.
Main Street, East Hampton will never be the same. The broad tree lined road, which no longer has any local type stores, will soon be home to Tiffany, the third expensive jewelry store within a diamond’s throw of one another. Christy Turlington, an astute businesswoman as well as a beauty, is also focused on Main Street real estate. Dharma, a new day spa that just signed a lease, will be the exclusive Hamptons purveyor of Christie’s Sundari skincare products and the proprietary Sundari facial.