Realty Check

Ch-Ch-Changes
Matthew Breitenbach, has left the Corcoran Group to join Douglas Elliman’s Bridgehampton office. At Elliman, he will target properties in the $10 million-and-up range, as well as tap into its new sports and entertainment division. Matt’s real estate lineage harks back to his mother, Susan, a high-flying Corcoran broker with over $3 billion in sales under her belt, and father, Stephen, a builder of high-end luxury homes.

Also in the news, John A. Healey, a broker with over 17 years of experience in Hamptons luxury real estate, has joined Sotheby’s International Realty in their Bridgehampton office, as an independent sales associate and Senior Global Real Estate Advisor. At Town and Country, the Hamptons largest independent brokerage, Healey was a top producer for most of his tenure.

Photo Opp
Jonathan Oringer, the billionaire founder of Shutterstock, the online stock photography, video and music site, has paid $40 million for a two-acre Bridgehampton oceanfront property on Mid Ocean Drive. The seller, David Susser, had purchased the property for $11.45 only three years before, making it one of 2011’s top sales.

Art History
A cottage and artist studio, rumored to have been Lee Krasner’s studio, is on the market for $650,000. According to the New York Post, the property wasn’t, after all, used by Jackson Pollock’s wife. Krasner’s biographer, Gail Levin, claims it was owned by Elaine de Kooning, Willem’s wife and a celebrated Abstract Expressionist in her own right. Listed by Corcoran’s Bryan Midlam, the two-bedroom, two-bath house on Sandra Road is only 1,500 square feet, but boasts 18-foot ceilings.

Coffee Table Must Reads
Photographer Chris Foster, known in the Hamptons for his images of high-end properties for architects, designers, builders and top brokers, was commissioned by iconic shoe and apparel designer Vince Camuto (who died in January) and his wife, Louise, to photograph their two Hamptons estates: Villa Maria, a historic jazz-age manor in Water Mill and Wooldon Manor, an elaborate Tudor-style beach house in Southampton. These legendary homes are among the places and people featured in the 300-page, $250 autobiographical tome, Life of Style, from luxury culture publisher Assouline.

Design in the Hamptons, published by the Monacelli Press, contains over 300 full-page images of the interiors and exteriors of 19 East End homes. Author, Anthony Iannacci, curated his selections based on “authenticity” as opposed to grandeur. Among the residences portrayed is that of architect Tom Flynn who hired landscape designer Edwina von Gal to create a tableau that made the structure appear as if it had always been there. No artifice was needed for James Topping’s cottage, which really has been in East Hampton forever, or at least since 1847. Don’t miss the photos of his lush 20-acre garden. The Shelter Island abode of style mavens Simon Doonan and Jonathan Adler, with its panoramic views of Gardiners Bay and Orient Point, offers a modernist counterpoint.

Pricey Spec House
As reported in the Wall Street Journal, a house being built by J. Bialsky across the street from Lake Agawam in Southampton’s estate section will be finished by the summer of 2016. The 22 Gin Lane Property with deeded ocean beach access is listed with Bespoke Real Estate for $22.995 million. The 14,181-square-foot ‘modern farmhouse’ will be one of several constructed by the uber high-end builder. “Each home stays true to the architectural vernacular of Southampton,” reads the listing. Each will also feature screened porches, several fireplaces, and expansive rear gardens with custom pool, pool house (including gym and spa), sunken tennis court, and landscapes by Water Mill’s LaGuardia Designs.

Price Chopper
Cherridune, the quaintly named estate in the Georgica section of East Hampton, listed by Brown Harris Stevens broker Martha Gundersen, has had a series of price reductions since being listed early last year. “This 4 story home is of a bygone era. You will never see anything this elegant built again, especially in a prime location by the Ocean.” Its original price of $10.5 million has been slashed to $7.45 million, even lower that the $8.5 million the owners paid for it in 2007. Built in 1901, the property is landscaped with specimen trees, shrubs, and intertwined with stonewalls and brick walkways. The 7,400-square-foot main house boasts six bedrooms, two with sleeping porches. There is also a three-bedroom guesthouse.

Significant Rental
“A piece of American folklore can be yours for a summer or even a year when you rent East Hampton’s fabled “Grey Gardens.” So begins Corcoran broker Gary DePersia’s listing of the fabled East Hampton property. For those newbies who don’t know, “Little Edie” Beale, Jackie Kennedy Onassis’s first cousin, sold the ramshackle property in which she and her mother were famously portrayed living in squalor (among dozens of cats) by filmmakers Albert and David Maysles in 1979. The buyers were media power couple Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn who restored the 1897 home to its original splendor. With Bradlee’s passing last year, the property is available for the first time to rent for the entire summer ($250,000) or year round ($295,000). The “ode to another era” features “gracious common rooms” along with 10 bedrooms, a heated Gunite pool, Har-Tru tennis court and, of course, the legendary gardens, whose proximity to ocean mists give them their world-renowned moniker.