Then there’s the linchpin of the Hamptons economy: real estate. I asked a friend who operates at the high end of the market whether it would suffer because of the crisis. Actually, he said, the coronavirus was likely to be great for business.
“I’ve got clients who have been looking for a place a couple of years,” he said. “Now they’re coming to me and saying, ‘I messed up. My wife is furious with me. I should have bought that house two years ago. Now I have to rent some crappy place for five months for $200,000.’” He continued: “People with money are going to want luxury bunkers. That’s what we have here: luxury bunkers.”
Another friend, John Nocera (no relation), whose family-owned company builds houses in the Hamptons, said that ever since the coronavirus hit New York City, he’s been getting all kinds of repair and renovation requests — the kind people usually make when they move out here for the summer. Although not all of them are like that.
“One woman called and asked if I could install a tennis court right away,” Nocera said. “She said that she was afraid the coronavirus was going to cause tennis camp to be canceled, so she needed a tennis court so her kids could play.”
There will always be a Hamptons.
Joe Nocera is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business. He has written business columns for Esquire, GQ and the New York Times, and is the former editorial director of Fortune. His latest project is the Bloomberg-Wondery podcast "The Shrink Next Door."