A Sort Of Homecoming

It’s been several years since my last piece in The Press. I took the hiatus not for any other reason but that I missed a month, and, the next thing I knew, three years had passed!I spent much of the past week searching through my thoughts and old columns to find a topic that was appropriate for my reentry into the world of journalism. As I felt this piece was a sort of homecoming, I thought it apropos to write about “home,” and, more specifically, the Hamptons home.

Home, defined by Webster, is “the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.” I don’t say this with even an ounce of criticism, but there are two entirely different definitions of the word “home” in our neck of the woods.

Perhaps to those of us who live here year round, raise our children here, attend PTA meetings and book clubs in the Hamptons, the Webster definition fits. To those who weekend here, however, home is less of the everyday, less of the mundane, and more of the escape and retreat, and characterized by a decadence and luxury that often is not associated with the homes of the year-round population.

This dichotomy leads to some interesting challenges for the professionals working in the East End home industry, as creating a home for everyday life is something entirely different from the creation of a luxury retreat.

While the varying types of projects require different skill sets, common among all projects are the two stresses of budget and timing, and the client management requirements fluctuate depending upon the relationship between these two.

While, often, the weekend home project has a higher budget than the year-round house, that doesn’t mean that the financial pressures are greater. Often, the projects with smaller budgets are the ones that require greater attention to how every penny is being spent. Squeezing a laundry list of wishes into a tight budget requires a management process that is inherently different from managing a client’s dream list and how to accommodate every last luxury into a larger budget. Common among all projects is the need to work with a budget in mind.

This seasonal aspect of our community also places another pressure on our industry. For those working primarily on weekend homes, the demand for summer occupancy can be extreme, with penalties often included in contracts for slow performance that result in the loss of a summer season. For the year-round population, the loss of a summer occupancy often means that they will have to pay high prices to find a home for the summer. This often can push the overall budget for a project well beyond what can be stomached.

Expectations have to be managed in both cases, with budgets being more sensitive on the smaller projects and timing often being the more sensitive issue on the weekend homes.

The industry has to walk a balance beam between the often more lucrative projects for weekend homes, and the smaller budget and less opulent projects for those who live and work here. Taking care of the community in one vein, and looking after your family in the other.

I’m sure this divide exists in most cities, or at least wherever there is a socioeconomic divide within a community. However, I feel it’s at its most extreme in resort towns, and the Hamptons again is probably on the extreme end of this subgroup. It is easy for those working in the industry to be attracted to the sizable rewards of the high-budget trophy home jobs, but high budgets often come along with extensive demands and increased cash flow risks. Nothing is simple.

Circling back to my topic, home: While jotting down my thoughts for this column, I thought of another way in, that all I describe above affects our community’s notion of what we expect out of our homes.

As so many of us full-time East End residents have our work connected to the housing industry, much of our daily lives is spent working with homes that have amenities such as movie theaters, steam showers, saunas, fitness rooms, wine cellars, and even bowling alleys. These luxuries become so commonplace that they skew our perception of what a “regular” home is really like.

When planning our own everyday homes, we try, in whatever fashion we can, to squeeze these luxuries in, both financially and literally. It is easy for us to forget that most of our clients don’t have these luxuries in their daily houses, but only in their weekend houses. They are the badges of accomplishment for the weekenders, in one sense, yet for many of us working out here, they become expected.

“Home again, home again.” Perhaps this simple phrase doesn’t mean the same to those of us living in the Hamptons as it does to those living elsewhere.

But, then again, perhaps it does.