After what felt like an endless stagnant market, mansion sales in the Hamptons have finally shown signs of life. “We’re coming out of a really down market,” said Beate Moore, a broker for Sotheby’s International Realty. “It was very frustrating. But the market has picked up, and we’ve seen a surge of huge sales.”
The numbers, as reported last month, back it up— this year’s second quarter saw 48 home sales priced at $5 million or higher, the most activity in almost a year and a half, according to a report by Miller Samuel Inc. and Douglas Elliman Real Estate.
Now that wealthy second home buyers are returning to the southern tip of Long Island, they have noticeably different criteria than their predecessors of 10 or even five years ago. Prices might be the same or even higher than before, brokers said, but the needs of an often younger, less-showy buying set have changed.
Bigger Isn’t Better
One of the pronounced differences in taste has to do with scale. Drive through the Hamptons today and you’ll see mega-mansions built over the last 20 years or so, many with dozens of roof lines and such a variety of windows that it appears owners were given a catalogue and asked for “one of each.” Echoing a trend already evident in places like Greenwich, Conn., these monoliths have fallen from favor.
“Those great big huge houses from the 1990s and early 2000s, they’re sitting,” said Paul Brennan, a Bridgehampton-based broker at Douglas Elliman Real Estate. “I think that conspicuous consumption isn’t in vogue these days, and that’s why bigger isn’t better.”
He continues, “The taste is: ‘I want it now, and I don’t want it huge,’ and those substantial houses haven’t come down in price enough to either knock them down or renovate them to a certain standard.”
Taste aside, it’s also about recognizing that mega-mansions aren’t always the most fun to live in.
“I think there’s a different awareness,” said Moore, of Sotheby’s. “If you have a really large family, with grandchildren and staff, of course you want to accommodate everyone graciously.” When a house is too large, though, “that almost suggests an alienation factor between families, where everybody is in their own wing.”
A final factor is ease of use: People who spend $20 million on a house want a vacation home, not a headache.