East Hampton Home Sells For $7.9 Million

One can just imagine the headlines: Adam Levine, one of the celebrity coaches on the show “The Voice,” a guest star on the cable series “American Horror Story,” and most important, lead singer of the popular rock band Maroon 5, has bought a house in East Hampton. How soon until he and Jon Bon Jovi team up to perform at a rich guy’s backyard benefit?

Alas, if only the county clerk had made the typo of adding an extra “e.” The new owners of a house on North Bay Lane are Adam Levin and his wife, Heather McDowell. However, while it is unlikely that Mr. Levin will be profiled in Rolling Stone, he does have a distinguished and active career.

First, the real estate. The property on the eastern shore of Northwest Harbor was purchased for the handsome sum of $7.9 million. The lot size is 1.56 acres, and on it sits a 7,200-square-foot house built in 1993 containing 7 bedrooms and 5.5 baths. One indication of how appealing that wooded section of East Hampton is: The seller, Samuel Ben-Avraham, bought the property in 2014 for a little more than $6 million, meaning he scored a profit of close to $2 million in just two years.

Back to Mr. Levin: There must be good money being a consumer advocate, because that is what he has been doing for 40 years in the fields of personal finance, privacy issues, real estate, and government service. That has included a stint as the director of the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs. A timely and as it turned out popular book written by Mr. Levin was published last November by Public Affairs. “Swiped: How to Protect Yourself In a World Full of Scammers, Phishers, and Identity Thieves” is, according to Publishers Weekly, “an alarming book,” and Kirkus Reviews called it “a real eye-opener” on issues of identity theft, consumer frauds, and similar rip-offs. His other writing chores include writing a weekly column for ABC-News.com, the Huffington Post, and Credit.com, of which Mr. Levin is a co-founder.

You may have seen the new East Hampton resident on television. As an expert on cybersecurity and other privacy matters, Mr. Levin can be seen as a commentator on “News Nation with Tamron Hall,” “ABC World News Tonight,” “Good Morning America,” “Fox & Friends,” “CBS Evening News,” and other programs. To help raise the next generation of journalists, he and Ms. McDowell recently donated $150,000 to the journalism program at the University of Georgia, warming the hearts of ink-stained wretches everywhere.