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Realty Check

Hot Sales & Listings…With A Dollop Of Gossip by Zoe Langstrom

Designer Digs

Following a fabulous summer yard sale, Betsey Johnson, designer of outrageous fashions, is selling the East Hampton house she has shared with her daughter, Lulu. More shabby chic than glam rock (reflecting Lulu’s taste), the 1986-built house on 1.65 acres has all the hallmarks of a typical Hamptons cottage including a marble fireplace in the living room. Listed with Sotheby’s for $1.995 million, Johnson who first visited the Hamptons in the 60s with Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground, says she’s downsizing from the 2,900-square-foot house and will be spending more time in Malibu with Lulu and her two children.

Party Like It’s 1999

David and Gia Walsh, a couple whose Further Lane house was foreclosed on in May 2014 and sold to the mortgage lender for $8 million in April, stayed in the house all summer partying as if it was 1999, the year in which they bought the property for $2.7 million. “It was their last hurrah in the lavish home after receiving an eviction notice in mid-August,” according to the New York Post. Some speculated that if they’d had to rent it, it would have cost them up to $500,000 for the 1.8-acre beachfront estate. In early October the sheriff carted out what the couple left behind including three 50-inch flat screen TV screens and a pool table.

Ocean Views…Not

You might recall last spring’s squabble among Sagaponack neighbors, which came to a head when the owners of a 43-acre oceanfront property – Marc Goldman, Michael Hirtenstein, and Milton Berlinski – planted a Christmas tree farm, whose evergreen inhabitants will eventually block the farm and ocean views of nearby landowners – apparently payback for being denied an application to build a 12,000-square-foot house. While many thought that the move violated their agreement with the Peconic Land Trust to preserve views, the trees are apparently in compliance. “As long as what they are doing is basically agricultural in nature, they can put trees on there,” said the trust’s president John Halsey said in October. “We take the position as an organization that agriculture is scenic.”

Noise Pollution

A word of warning to DJs (and those who would hire them): after a summer of noisy parties, the Sagaponack Village Board instituted two laws to ban loudspeakers from being set up on properties. It seems that residents want only to hear the sound of waves crashing, and who can blame them?

Bigger is Better

After hedge funder David Tepper bought the 6,165 square-foot oceanfront Sagaponack home that had once belonged to his former Goldman Sachs’ boss and subsequent business partner Jon Corzine in 2010, he proceeded to tear down the $43.5 million abode. He purchased the home (at the time the most expensive property in the Hamptons) from Corzine’s ex-wife. Five years later the billionaire has finally finished its mammoth replacement, an 11,268-square-foot mansion nearly twice the size of the former.

Nouveau Pauvre

Being filmed in September, Blue Blood & Broke is based on a summer that screenwriter/director Philip Embury spent in East Hampton in his family’s 1690s’ farmhouse, last renovated in the ‘20s. The coming of age/romantic comedy, about a young man who inherits a dilapidated mansion, pokes fun at nearby A-Listers’ mansions and bemoans the current reality where “ten year-old houses are labeled as ‘outdated’ and ‘tear downs,’” Embury has said. “People don’t see significance, they see square footage.” One of the goals of this film is to encourage the audience to judge the value of people, places, and things on more than just money. A Kickstarter campaign to raise $25,000 failed in March.

Old Meets New

Affectionately known as “Congress Hall,” because its original owner David B. Mulford spewed political diatribes, the antique house on Main Street in East Hampton – built in 1680 it’s one of the oldest on the South Fork – has been completely modernized and put on the market. While the owners, fashion photographer Don Ashby and his wife Kathy, a designer – followed landmark regulations and preserved its street-side façade, they added windowed additions in the back that hug a pool. The listing by Yorgos Tsibiridis of Elliman is asking $3.995 million.

Compass is Coming

Compass, the newish real estate portal that has some local agents shivering in their Jimmy Choos, has just raised $50 million (bringing total funding to $123 million) – the better to expand from markets such as New York, DC, and Miami even farther into Boston, LA, Chicago, Seattle…and the Hamptons. Currently valued at $800 million, the company now handles $1 billion in listings. According to TechCrunch, the company founders, Ori Allon (an engineer who has built and sold search technology to Google, Twitter and Microsoft) and ex-banker Robert Reffkin, believe their hyperlocal platform can “revolutionize the real estate market with big data and cutting edge algorithms that provide the most accurate pricing for homes and the most efficient route to selling at the highest price.” The firm is planning to open an office in the former Corcoran space at 2405 Main Street in Bridgehampton.

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