The first-quarter home sales reports for the Hamptons real estate market are in, and it’s positive news all around.
The number of sales, the median sales price and the amount of inventory were all up, according to three different reports issued by area real estate firms. For the first time, the median sales price on the South Fork reached $2 million.
The Elliman Report found that the $1 million to $5 million range dominated the Hamptons market, with sales nearly doubling. Across all price points, it was the sixth consecutive quarter of annual sales gains, and the number of sales was 85.5 percent higher than what it had been in the first quarter of 2024.
“Luxury sales are on fire, and I think we’re seeing more and more inventory coming on every day,” said Todd Bourgard, Douglas Elliman’s CEO of brokerage for the Long Island, Hamptons and North Fork regions.
He said people have been waiting on the sidelines for quite some time, and now that some real quality homes are coming on the market, people are seeing homes they like and making the move.
When inventory was low, choices were few and far between, he pointed out.
“During COVID, they were willing to take whatever they could get and make it theirs, and after everything settled back into some normalcy here, they just weren’t finding what they wanted,” he said. “Most people don’t want to come in and do a total gut renovation. They want to come in and live in their home. So that’s what they’re able to find now.”
The Corcoran Report found that the number of single-family homes sales in the first quarter of 2025 was up 28 percent year-over-year. It was the most sales closed in a quarter since the third quarter of 2023 and the second consecutive quarter with an annual increase in sales, a streak that hasn’t been seen since the third quarter of 2021, according to Corcoran.
Ernie Cervi, Corcoran’s regional senior vice president for the East End, said there were strong gains all around.
“Everything was up: median price, volume, average price,” he said.
He credited the robust gains to people jumping in who had been waiting to see what would happen.
“In 2024, there was some pause,” Cervi said. “Every time there’s an election year, you do see a slowdown of activity.”
He noted that interest rates had not jumped, up or down, and prices had stayed about the same. What did change, he said, is that inventory was up, and more availability of properties for purchase made a difference.
Across 14 submarkets that Corcoran monitors, all but two were up in terms of number of sales. Westhampton Beach was flat, with 18 sales, and Southampton Village’s recorded sales were down 14 percent, to 18, even as the median price of sold homes in that village rose 38 percent to $4.2 million.
The $2 million to $5 million range has been the most active, according to The Corcoran Report. Cervi said part of the reason for that is there is a lot of new construction in that price range.
“There aren’t many properties under a million, that’s for sure,” he added.
The most expensive sale of the quarter, according to Corcoran, was a 10,000-square-foot compound with 220 feet of direct ocean frontage at 370 & 372 Further Lane in Amagansett for $70 million.
The South Fork condo market was up 91 percent year over year, to 44 sales, which Corcoran reported is owing to closings commencing at Watermill Crossing, a new development in Water Mill. And the most expensive condo sale was a four-bedroom unit at The Watchcase in Sag Harbor, closing for $3.9 million.
Vacant land sales were likewise up, spiking 30 percent to reach 60 parcels sold with a median price of $1.1 million, an 8 percent increase.
Cervi noted that often builders buy houses, tear them down and build new. He attributed the increase in vacant land transactions to land that was not as desirable in the past becoming more desirable.
Of the 60 land sales, Corcoran found that 10 of them were Community Preservation Fund purchases, which means they won’t be developed. They ranged in price from $265,000 to $56 million for 66 Wainscott Main Street in Wainscott.
Corcoran also found that the inventory of East End homes for sale at the end of March was 1,919, which is 7 percent higher than it had been 12 months prior.
“It was the fifth consecutive quarter of increase. So there was more availability, more choice, more diversity,” Cervi said.
Each firm uses a different methodology and geography in its report, which explains variations between each report. But the trends are clear across all reports.
William Raveis, the firm that absorbed Town & Country Real Estate last year, reported that total home sales dollar volume was up 32 percent in the first quarter to $1.47 billion and the number of home sales rose 26 percent. The price range that saw the most growth was between $3.5 million and $4.99 million, which was up 63 percent to 49 sales.
Looking at the state of the market today and what’s ahead, Cervi proposed two ways of looking at the effects of increased tariffs and the uncertainty around them.
“At the high end, I think people are taking a look at what’s going on and assessing what they want to do,” he said. “For example, you can have people that are in the market and say, ‘You know what, let me pull my money out and put it in the dirt. It’s safe there.’ And then you have people that say, ‘I don’t want to pull it out, because then I’ve lost money that I have to regain somewhere else.’ So it’s a mix.”
As for the viability of investing in Hamptons real estate, he said the numbers speak for themselves.
“It’s always an investment that you can use, you can rent, and you can sit on for appreciation,” he said. “So it’s something to have fun, make money and look at long-term gain.”
