Is collecting real estate the same as collecting art or jewelry or books or cookie jars? There is, I think, one essential difference. Even if one’s art is obscure and specialized and affordable, one can still be considered a collector. And if you have enough jewelry, no matter its source or value, it’s a collection, as it would be with books or cookie jars or other objects.
It’s different with real estate. You only have a collection when it is trophy real estate. If you own a few rental properties, you’re a landlord. If you own shopping centers, you’re an investor. If you own enough skyscrapers, you’re a mogul.
But it’s only when you have the Park Avenue apartment and the Southampton estate and the Palm Beach mansion and the Aspen ski lodge and the London pied-à-terre, or their equivalents, that you get to be called a collector. It comes down to having the storied addresses, and having enough of them to impress peers who make do with just one or two sumptuous spreads.
This is real estate that you use, maybe not often, but you get there at least once—and in the proper social season. And that in a way limits the number of properties in your collection. Even with your jet share, how many places can you travel to? Even those people with insatiable appetites for luxury goods and prestigious digs have to draw the line, though the line might be fuzzy and soft as cashmere.
Since the world works on physical principles and laws of nature, money and status must be ultimately be obeyed. And in this strangely logical universe there is at least one category of property that is neither a serious residence, nor anything so commercial as an investment, that comes with bragging rights and a certain hard to touch status, and that as a bonus is fashionably green and close to nature.
I’m talking about what at one time was quaintly called gentleman farms, and what in our generation has scaled down mainly into horse farms and vineyards. (Never say ranch on the East Coast except when you are referring to the house of someone you don’t particularly like.)
Michael Lynne, the co-CEO of New Line Cinema, owns Bedell Cellars and Corey Creek Vineyard, on the North Fork. While you might not find him out there pruning vines in mid-winter, he runs a serious business, producing notable wines. Paul Lowerre, who with his wife Ursula, owns Peconic Bay Winery, has a day job in finance, and Peter Carroll, the owner of Lenz Winery, is a management consultant.
Opportunities are there to join this elite group—but it takes more than play money. Ackerly Pond Vineyard, on the North Fork, with 80 acres, several houses, and frontage on Route 25, is being offered at $10.75 million. Castello di Borghese and Galuccio are also officially up for sale, and several others are said to be quietly on the market. At prices hovering around ten million dollars, and marginal returns on your purchase, buying a vineyard in the current market is an option for only the very rich and adventurous. It is probably not the kind of thing your investment advisor is going to jump up and down about.
Yet there is an undeniable appeal that transcends dollars. It’s not the accounting cells in your brain that make this decision. It’s the irresistible, incurable lure of romantic real estate. And you might be doing the community some good. A fair portion of the agricultural land that still remains on Eastern Long Island is used for vineyards and horse farms and plant nurseries, and it is one reason we can still claim at least the veneer of a rural character.