Realty Check – Latest Hamptons Real Estate News

By Zoe Langstrom

Reasonable Adjustment
The question these days, is: have prices gone down or are owners asking too much? In that frame of mind let’s see if SiriusXM and Virgin media director James Mooney will get his current ask of $29M for his oceanfront Water Mill manse. When he originally listed it in the heydays of 2014, the price for the 5 bedroom, 5 bath house on 3.3 acres in the dunes of Fowler Beach was $35M. Is a $6 million reduction just the ticket? Listed by Douglas Elliman’s Erica Grossman, Raymond Smith, James Alesi and Hayley Vecchio.

Novel Deal
Manhattan lawyer Scott Landau and his wife, Melissa Wilson, have purchased the Sag Harbor summer home of late novelist E.L. Doctorow, who died last year at 84. The 1880 house on John Street with views of Sag Harbor Cove went for $2.5M. The “Ragtime” author and his family had spent summers and weekends there for decades.

Glass House
Easily three times the price of any nearby house, this new steel and glass structure on East Hampton’s Neck Path has serious architectural cred. Designed by Jeff Smilow, structural engineer of NYC’s Freedom Tower, its façade is almost entirely made of glass. Other touches include two master bedrooms featuring skylights and baths made entirely of natural stones and white quartz, a kitchen custom made in Italy by Scavolini and a basement accessible by tunnel. If you live here you won’t throw stones. Listed by Lori MacGarva of Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

Everyman Hotel
Developer and restaurateur Jon Krasner, who owns Montauk’s Saltbox and Shagwong Tavern, has purchased Oceanside Resort, a 30-room property also in that hamlet. The off-market deal netted $40M for owner Ken Walles, who had never actually listed the property. “It’s bittersweet,” Walles told the East Hampton Star. “It’s something you don’t want to do, but when you have all this money flying around, how long are you going to hold out?” Krasner plans to upgrade the property, making it into “a hotel for everybody.” The deal’s broker, Jack Botero – principal of real estate investment firm BlackBrick – has observed a new kind of Montauk investor that is fed up with the partying demographic.

Lucky Number
Despite filing for bankruptcy in February, music entrepreneur Robert Sillerman has sold yet another property on Southampton’s tony Meadow Lane for circa $38M. It all started when he sold his 3.6 acre parcel at number 1116 for $37.5M. Then last January he sold his 2.4 acre estate at number 1100 for precisely $38M. Fast forward to November when he sold number 1080 for… you guessed it… $38 million. The 4.5 acre parcel features an 8,300 square-foot oceanfront residence and three-hole golf course. Sillerman, a former chancellor of Southampton College, sold SFX Entertainment for $4.4 billion in 2000, and later bought majority rights to Graceland, Elvis Presley’s estate. Bankruptcy just ain’t what it used to be.

Architectural Cred
It seems that each year East Hampton’s Bates Masi + Architects receives a bevy of design awards. This year the hosannas amounted to 14. Some of the firm’s projects to merit recognition were Sag Harbor Sanctuary, Amagansett Dunesand Tessa NYC, a Manhattan restaurant. The firm’s monograph, Bespoke Home, with an introduction by Paul Goldberger, was published by ORO Editions earlier this year and is available in bookstores now. A gift for your favorite architecture geek, perhaps?

Constructive Masterpiece
Vanity Fair scribe Marie Brenner and her financier husband, Ernest H. Pomerantz, have purchased a house in the heart of East Hampton Village for $4.25M. The “architectural gem” on Mill Hill Road features a formal dining room with a wood-burning fireplace, media room and porch while the outdoor space boasts a clutch of patios and outdoor fireplace. Previously listed with Sharon Stern of Sotheby’s International Realty.

Safe and Secure
In case you’re afraid the end of the world is nigh, an Amagansett house comes replete with a World War II bunker. Built in 1944 as a US Coast Guard “cottage type” fire control station, the 3-story tower-like bunker on Whaler’s Lane in the Dunes has been renovated and built out into a 4,000 sf oceanfront contemporary. (The original building was designed to appear as a cottage in order to fool the enemy.) Set on 1.4 acres with a 228-foot beach with adjacent 2.6 acre reserve, the house boasts a state of the art chef’s kitchen and an upstairs deck with dazzling views. But the bunker with its heavy metal doors, is still very much in evidence. And ready to withstand rising seas. $9.5M Listed by Tania Deighton and Terry Thompson of Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

He’s Serious
Former tennis bad boy John McEnroe has sliced $2M off the price of his Southampton home. Originally listed in May for $14.5 million, the 2.2 acre compound on appropriately named Squabble Lane is now asking $12.5 million. The 8 bedroom, 8 bath house with beach access and, of course, a tennis court is listed by Kathy Konzet of Sotheby’s International Realty.

Star Crossed
“Stargazer,” the iconic sculpture of a deer head looking skyward that greets motorists en route to the Hamptons in a Manorville farm field, is in dire need of repair after being hit by lightning last year. The red 50-foot piece by artist Linda Scott, who died in 2015, requires a completely new wood frame and plywood “skin” over the existing steel frame and concrete substructure, a fix that will cost about $100,000. Scott’s longtime partner, David Morris, and her son, Morgan Pitts, are leading the renovation project and seeking funds from local businesses. (Hampton Jitney has been a supporter in the past.) If they can raise the capital, they say the welcoming sight could last 50 years. If they can’t, the public legacy won’t last much beyond the 25 years it has reigned.