Stop the presses! Beachfront property in Hamptons is expensive!
No news flash here.
I just came across this listing for a Hamptons beach house for just under $14 million, thought to myself, that’s a bargain! I’m no East End real estate expert but I looked at enough houses that to know that actual beach front real estate prices are insane.
But the $14 million house, just a few miles down the beach facing the same ocean as one in East Hampton is in Quogue.
A little history of the area and different communities. REALLY rich people with THAT much money, generally want to be in “Prime Hamptons”; Southhampton, Watermill, Bridgehamton, Sagaponack, Wainscott, East Hampton, Amagansett or Montauk.
It’s perfectly beautiful in Shinnecock Hills, Sag Harbor, Northwest Woods, Northwest Harbor, the Springs, and even West Hampton, Hampton Bays or Quogue where properties are still in the millions for a regular suburban house, but they are less than half the price of waterfront East Hampton properties.
In the late nineteenth century the area changed from a farming community to a popular destination for artists and the wealthy escaping NYC summers. In 1893 The New York Times wrote,
The beautiful villages clustering around old Southampton, including Quohue, Good Ground, the rest of the Hamptons, and the incomparable Shinnecock Hills combine to make as close an approach to Eden as can be found in a long journey. Exclusive—in the best sense of the word—society is here represented during the summer by its choicest spirits. Well-bred men and women find a congenial atmosphere, refined attractions in plenty, and innumerable charms about these quaint old villages
Without much searching, I came across house in East Hampton that was more than double the price (nearly triple) of the Quogue property with about the same lot size, because let’s face it, most of the millions go to the land, not the cost of construction. Even though contractors in the Hamptons DO drive Range Rovers.
So here are two properties to compare and contrast. The one in Quogue is actually a grander house on a larger lot. The other in East Hampton has a guest house on one of the fanciest streets in town and costs around $25 million more.
Quogue, NY $13.75 million
- Built in 1910
- 4,000 square feet,
- 6 bedrooms
- 8 bathrooms
- 2.6 acres
- 275 feet of beachfront
Built in the English/French country mashup style popular at the time, the 100-plus-year-old home is for sale for the first time in more than 50 years. The large living room offers ocean views with formal dining room, off the kitchen is a large porch with sunroom with a wet bar leads out to an ocean-view deck.
The estate’s grounds include a gunite pool, tennis court, outdoor kitchen, vegetable garden, bocce court, and a grandfathered deck near the ocean that could not be legally built today.
East Hampton, NY $39.5 million
- 12 bedrooms
- 7 Full baths, 2 half
- 5,000 square ft
- 160 ft of ocean frontage
- 2.08 acres
This house sits right in between the ocean and Georgica Pond on THE most prestigious lane in East Hampton Village (just a stone’s throw from the famous Grey Gardens.) This 9 bedroom shingled classic has a 3 bedroom guest house, private pool area, and dune-top sunset viewing deck.
In the same family for three generations, this classic Hamptons beach house is on one of very few oceanfront properties on West End Road located outside of the FEMA flood zone, which allowing for significant expansion.
(Translation, nice house but for this price you’re buying the land and it will very likely be torn down.)
