Real Estate Report Memorial Day Issue 2003
You would think they were war heroes, just back from Baghdad or the desert of Iraq. The bargain hunters, after years of humiliation and meekly having to pay the price, were having their day. And the ones we saw were strutting their stuff, hormones raging, and egos proud and satisfied in beating down the price of a rental this summer.
Admittedly, rentals, even those over-the-top trophy rentals, are small potatoes compared to the still stratospheric sales prices in the Hamptons, but it was, nevertheless, a victory for the high-end, highly competitive consumer, the kind who carries a lot more baggage than a weekend tote. If we can ice Saddam, he can certainly bring a haughty Hamptons owner to heel.
Brokers kept inventing reasons for the slow season. First it was the long, bitterly cold and snowy winter. Then it was the heavy rains on the weekends. Then GW2. Finally, everyone had to admit it was just a lousy rental season. Things picked up a bit in the past few weeks, but by now word has gotten out and the bottom fishers are circling.
Some owners caved and rented for half the asking price. One Sagaponack house that went for $120,000 last year rented for $60,000 this year. Other owners held on to their pride and stuck to their pre-determined lowest price, sometimes renting and sometimes just savoring the satisfaction of saying no to the deeply discounted bids. Still others are nervously waiting for split-season and monthly rentals to bail them out.
The picture is a bit –just a bit—brighter for sales. At least enough to keep the buyer-warriors at bay for now. Brokers report they are doing well, or moderately well, selling houses that are correctly priced. No dire predictions, no one wants to utter a negative word, but the concern and uneasiness are there, a constant chord in the background. The attitude seems to be: let’s just get through this week, this month, and look for hopeful signs in the economy.
The entire real estate community is nostalgic for the 90s. Those good old, long-gone days when sales prices swirled up and up, and everyone—brokers and owners—looked like brilliant players. They were not actually particularly clever in the real estate market, but the seemingly unstoppable rising tide of sales carried them all. And the assumption in the rental market was that any house would rent at virtually any inflated price. A few landlords are still trying to hang on to that world, but at this point they only need their turbans to become the Norma Desmonds of the Hamptons. For most of us, 2003 was the year reality trumped.
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Up for sale: Martha Stewart’s Georgica Close house
The place has a bumpy history. Martha Stewart, in her empire building days, spotted the property while out canoeing on Georgica Pond and called her broker. She then beat out a pack of hungry buyers to acquire the Bunshaft house. The only residence designed by the renowned managing partner of Skidmore Owings Merrill, the pondfront house, a sleek travertine faced box in the International Style, has long been considered a gem of modernism, small slice of his famous Lever House. On the death of Bunshaft’s widow, Nina, the property along with its extraordinary collection of outdoor sculpture, was willed to the Museum of Modern Art.
The sculpture was added to the museum collection and house was fought over by group of well-heeled buyers, including Charles Gwathmy and Robert Menchel, a member of MOMA’s board. The price, plus her non-binding commitment to preserve the house, backed by the credibility of her celebrity as a lifestyle expert, qualified her. It seemed she would not embarrass herself by going back on her word, whereas other buyers were determined to replace the modest-sized architectural treasure with another sprawling Hamptons palazzo.
Then came the problems. With the village for overclearing. Sustained litigation with next door neighbor, real state tycoon Harry Macklowe. (Martha at one point angrily backing her truck into one of his employees.) The falling out with British minimalist architect and designer of the Calvin Klein Madison Avenue store, John Pawson, who was to be the design brain behind the renovation.
Maybe it was all too much. Martha bought her 60 acre Skylands property in Northeast Harbor, Maine (built for Edsel Ford, with David Rockefeller and Douglas Dillon in the neighborhood) and for all intents and purposes never went back to the Georgica Close property. For years, the house has remained gutted, the two foundations for outbuildings yawning holes, and the property a mass of weeds with a construction fence on the street side.
It has just gone on the market for $12.5 million, listed by mysterious broker with an answering machine in New York, and given as a co-broke to local agencies. We see almost no chance of the house being preserved. But the real truth is that the house was fairly run down by the time Martha acquired it. Rather than a pristine modernist box, it had deteriorated to having duct tape securing the Formica and smiley faces on the stonework.
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Glamour on Cape Gardiner
Ed Burns and Christy Turlington just made it official. Not their relationship—but their real estate. Whatever it meant to them personally in buying a house, it sent a message to the market about the direction things are going. And in the process they brought Gerard Drive in out of the cold.
Out at the end of The Springs, past the Jackson Pollock studio and homestead, tucked between Gardiner’s Bay and Accabonac Harbor, lies a low sandy spit of land called Cape Gardiner. For most if its history, Cape Gardiner has been home to horseshoe crabs and ospreys, clammers, fisherman and some summer residents living often in houses on pilings because of storm tides. Never rich, never chic but always beautiful and sensual and invigorating, the area was the poor sister in East Hampton’s established and expensive waterfront real estate market.
It’s now Cinderella time for Cape Gardiner. Gerard Drive, the single road running along the peninsula, now claims some famous and glamorous faces. Mercedes Ruhle was among the first to buy there, followed by Kim Cattrell, and now Christie and Ed. We don’t know what drew them all to Cape Gardiner. Perhaps it was just good work on the part of Cook Pony Farm, the agency they all used to find their small, simple cottages with knockout views. Whatever the reason, we like the trend toward real, no-frills retreats from city life.
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The Seinfelds raise high the roof beams
After almost a year of demolition and then construction, with extensive changes along the way, the Seinfeld house is framed and sheathed and the roof is on. It’s definitely their house this time around—no longer camping out in the former Billy Joel/Christie Brinkley abode on the beach. Starting with $16 million for purchasing the teardown, final costs should be stupendously high, especially if they continue to make changes, but Jerry and Jessica, in the tradition of everyone from Caligula to J.P. Morgan to Ira Rennert, will have a splendid monument to themselves and their tastes.
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Zellweger’s legs: only on the screen
If Ed Burns and Christie Turlington chose to go downscale, and the Seinfelds chose opulence and indulgence, Renee Zellweger is someplace in the middle. As restrained as her clothes and jewelry, the very pretty plain house she acquired on Egypt Lane is as close to an idealized farmhouse as you get in the estate area—lovely, spare, complete with a swing hanging from a tree limb. Don’t expect to see those shapely legs swinging however. A thick row of cedars and spruce and assorted evergreens has been planted in front, shielding the house from a busy intersection.
