This 2,900-square-foot contemporary was built in 1979. It has four bedrooms and three baths. The house also has a great room with kitchen, a dining area, a fireplace and sliding doors leading out to a deck and a pool.
There were hundreds of these homes built throughout the 1970s and ’80s all over the South Fork—boxy, low-slung and inexpensive to construct—typically conceived as summer homes only, often with undersized framing and little insulation. Many of these homes have not aged well because they were often of poor quality from the beginning and not built to be well suited to our cold marine climate, which inspired an indigenous architecture—the saltbox with central fireplace—much better adapted to this climate.
Despite the negatives attached to this type of house, modern is in again and there is never enough good modern architecture, with current finishes, at any price point. The trick is to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Some of these homes have big frames, high ceilings and are appropriately sized for their neighborhood. These can be turned into desirable properties with varying degrees of effort and expense. Others, such as this one, may be teardowns, even if they are in excellent shape and are attractive, for no other reason than their location in neighborhoods where much larger houses are today’s norms.
In this case, the seller purchased this house in 2003 for $2,290,000, then expanded its size and modernized its interior. In another location, that would have been just the right thing to do. But here in Bridgehampton south, on an acre near the ocean with deeded ocean access, a lovely house sold for around $4 million may still be a teardown irrespective of its condition, as were many other old contemporaries on similar-sized lots in this neighborhood.
We brokers often visit homes in which owners proudly show off their nicely remodeled new kitchen, baths or other improvements and we have to break the news to them gently that the home they love may still be a teardown, or that their improvements, while attractive and useful to them, do not add much value for the typical buyer or tenant. If thinking about selling, owners of any style home would be wise to consult with a broker prior to undertaking a major renovation to determine whether it makes economic sense.
on Nov 4, 2011