This 2,200-square-foot arts-and-crafts style cottage was built in 2000.
This property is very close to the center of Sag Harbor but on a very quiet, dead-end street. The street runs down a peninsula that juts out into Sag Harbor Cove, which ultimately connects to Gardiners Bay. To make things even better, the lot faces south for plenty of sunlight, and there is a dock for launching small boats.
The house has three bedrooms and 2½ baths. It is a shingled traditional in excellent shape with boxed beams, wood floors, a brick fireplace and a screen porch overlooking the water. There is no pool, and given today’s environmental restrictions, it would be very difficult to place one on the small .35-acre lot.
The seller purchased this property in 2006, near the height of the market, for $2,307,155. Unfortunately for the seller, he appears to have been a victim of bad market timing, selling this property for a small loss after enjoying it for 5 seasons.
This 12-acre vacant parcel is located in the center of the South Fork, about halfway between Southampton Village and North Sea.
These days, such large parcels are in short supply in the Hamptons and one would think that would make them exceptionally valuable. That is sometimes the case, depending on the location.
Since the crash, the land market has suffered in many locations from a lack of ready financing. Before the crash, it was possible, without great difficulty, to obtain a construction loan, which allowed a buyer to purchase land and build immediately on plans approved by the bank, or even buy land on credit as a pure investment without any immediate plans to build.
Today these loans are much more difficult to obtain and while that hasn’t had an effect south of the highway where buyers have plenty of cash, the lack of credit has made selling land north of the highway considerably more difficult. As a result, there is more interest in renovation or teardown candidates today, which can be purchased with bank financing; although it is generally considered a default on such a loan when the buyer guts the house or tears it down without bank approval.
For buyers who are able to do so, purchasing raw land can be an excellent investment, especially compared to buying a house, as houses tend to have much higher carrying costs, which can dramatically reduce an owner’s return over the long run.
In this case, the seller did not have great timing. He purchased the lot only a few years before the crash, in 2004, for $1,300,000, so this sale represents a very small gross return. But other recent sales—including a 12-acre lot in East Hampton’s Northwest Woods—have provided very large returns for sellers when held for longer periods of time.
This home is located in the far reaches of the Northwest Woods, in the Landfall subdivision near Cedar Point Park.
This community was developed in the 1980s. The area is made up of 1-acre lots and an eclectic mixture of home styles, including many now-aging contemporaries.
The furthest reach of this neighborhood is Hedges Banks, a road that runs along the top of a high bluff far above the bay. Like other homes on the water side of Hedges Banks, this house offers elevated views of the bay looking northeast. There are communal beach-access trails nearby to the sandy bay beach below.
This house is 4,000 square feet with five bedrooms and was built in 1980. It looks and feels somewhat like a cruise ship, with a large double-height glass-enclosed central living area and two staircases behind it going up to the bedrooms. Like many modern homes of its era, this one is now out of fashion.
But this property has two important pre-existing features; a pool on the water side of the property overlooking the bay and a private staircase down the bluff to the bay, which is almost impossible to obtain today. Over the long term, the waterfront location, waterside pool, staircase and large footprint of this home are likely to be valuable commodities even if the present house is not designed or built to today’s standards.
27east on Jun 15, 2011