‘Real Housewife’ Jill Zarin plugs Hamptons

Corcoran agent

11:16 AM By Valerie Kellogg

“The Real Housewives of New York City” gave a shout-out last night to The Corcoran Group’s Susan Breitenbach.

It took place when Jill Zarin and her husband, Bobby, were giving their daughter, Ally, a driving lesson in the Hamptons. “This is a great piece of land,” Zarin says looking out the window. “Susan Breitenbach. I should call Susan.”

Zarin sold her Sag Harbor home, shown here, in 2007, but worked out a deal to stay at the house for part of the summer for two years. Last summer, when last night’s episode was taped, she stayed at Countess LuAnn de Lesseps’ Bridgehampton house. “Can you imagine if we lived down the street from LuAnn?” Zarin asks as they drive around.

Asked about the scene, Breitenbach says Zarin gave her a heads up about it several days ago. Breitenbach says she sold Zarin’s house to her in 2003 and later was the co-exclusive listing agent on the property when Zarin put it on the market.

So is Zarin working with Breitenbach to find a new place? “She’s always looking,” was all Breitenbach would say.

http://www.newsday.com/classifieds/real-estate/real-li-1.812034/real-housewife-jill-zarin-plugs-hamptons-corcoran-agent-1.1807883

Jan. 28 (Bloomberg) — Home sales in the Hamptons, the New York vacation getaway for dealmaker Stephen Schwarzman and movie star Sarah Jessica Parker, surged 59 percent in the fourth quarter as two years of declining prices lured buyers.

Transactions climbed to 409 from 257 a year earlier, the biggest increase in seven years of recordkeeping, New York-based appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and broker Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate said in a report today. Competition for properties pushed the median price up 4.9 percent to $917,900, the first year-over-year gain since the beginning of 2008.

“This is all very good news, better than expected, but I still think we’re not through this yet,” Miller Samuel President Jonathan Miller said in an interview. “The surge in activity to more normal levels, a large portion of that is a release of pent-up demand.”

The median Hamptons home price dropped 31 percent since 2007 as financial firms recorded $1.74 trillion in global losses and asset writedowns tied to sour U.S. home loans. Wall Street executives drive Hampton’s property sales.

Part-time residents have included Schwarzman, chairman and chief executive officer of Blackstone Group LP, and billionaire Ronald Perelman. Hamptons sales slumped in 2008 and the beginning of 2009 as the financial industry cut 26,300 New York City jobs in 12 months, the state Labor Department said Jan. 21.

New York City’s unemployment rate jumped to 10.6 percent in December, the highest level since 1993.

“We have two macro issues, unemployment and credit, that are not expected to change significantly in 2010 from where we are now,” Miller said. “It’s more the second half of the year that I’m concerned about.”

Price Cuts

Hamptons home sellers cut an average of 14 percent from their asking prices to attract buyers in the fourth quarter, compared with discounts of 16 percent a year earlier, Miller said.

Peter and Annette Smergut found a buyer for their East Hampton ranch-style house after agreeing to sell it for $815,000, a 19 percent discount from their original asking price.

The 1,800 square-foot home includes a pool, pond and private beach access.

The sellers got a deal of their own, purchasing a new place in East Hampton for $715,000, 28 percent less than the asking price 10 months earlier, said Peter Smergut.

“It was a hit for us and a hit for them,” he said.

Two other real estate brokers issued Hamptons sales reports this month. The Corcoran Group, based in Manhattan, said annual home sales tumbled 22 percent in 2009 and the median price dropped 4 percent to $830,000.

Broker Views

Town & Country Real Estate said the median price across 11 towns and villages that comprise the Hamptons fell 2.5 percent to $905,000 in 2009, while the number of properties changing hands climbed 4.9 percent to 1,045.

Each brokerage report draws data from different sources.

“The fourth quarter was the saving grace for all of 2009,” said Judi Desidario, president and chief executive officer of Town and Country Real Estate.

Luxury sales throughout the Hamptons and Long Island’s North Fork climbed to 55 properties, a 53 percent increase in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, according to Miller Samuel and Prudential Douglas Elliman.

The median luxury price dropped 3.4 percent to $4.5 million. Miller defines the luxury market as the top 10 percent of sales, which in the fourth quarter included properties sold for $3 million or more.

High-end sellers cut their price by an average of 17 percent compared with 9 percent a year earlier, Miller said.

Southampton - Twenty years ago, the roads of the Hamptons in winter were rolled up, and everything seem to shut down. Many restaurants were closed and the only saving grace was that the movie theaters stayed open.

Then, the Hamptons Film Festival came along to help enliven the beautiful fall here. After the horrendous 9/11 disaster in 2001, people began moving out here in the winter to feel safer.

Today, the Hamptons are vibrant in the winter, with more restaurants open, a lively arts scene active year-round, and, thanks to global warming, the weather is moderate often through December.

And so the Hamptons have become a great destination in the winter, and that means opportunities for winter rentals.

“The Hamptons seem to be becoming a winter destination as well as a summer destination,” said Matthew Breitenbach, associate broker for the Corcoran Group. “Christmas and holiday times are a draw, the restaurants have great prix fixes. It’s a lot of fun out here in the winter and it’s good for people to get away.”

Winter rentals in the Hamptons range from $1,500 to $5,000 a month for a moderately-sized house with three bedrooms and two baths, he said. “You get more for your money in the winter,” he added.

Robert Westfall, of East Hampton, is marketing his two-bedroom, one-bath house overlooking Three Mile Harbor as a winter getaway. The winter price, from now through April is $1,600 a month. “It’s really the type of place where one would come and be alone and have a knockout view any time. You can see land, bluffs, water, rare birds, deer. It’s like an ever-changing landscape in the winter. When you come here it almost like taking a pill, you just go ‘ahhh’.”

Westfall said he hasn’t done anything special to the house to make it winter-ready. “I didn’t have to do anything. As soon as you enter the house, it just feels warm. It has a new heating system, new roof, new paint and carpeting. This house would be an ideal winter spot for a writer. Last year, I rented it to an artist - a painter.” The house, at the end of Harborview Lane, off Three-Mile Harbor Road, is listed on hamptonsrentals.com, and the identification number is 295.

The most popular winter rentals are on the water, according to Tom MacNiven, senior managing director of sales, East Hampton Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate. “The second [most popular] would be village ‘walk to everything’ homes,” he said. The attraction of winter rentals are the peace and quiet of the Hamptons in the winter. Though there are many things to do, the roads are quieter and the crowds in town minimal. “I’m sure many a novel or screenplay gets written here off-season,” MacNiven said.

If you want to rent your house out in the winter, and market it as a get-a-way, there are many things you can do to get it rented, says Christine Karpinski, director of Owner Community for HomeAway.com (the online vacation home rental marketplace) and author of “How to Rent Vacation Properties by Owner, 2nd Edition: The Complete Guide to Buy, Manage, Furnish, Rent, Maintain and Advertise Your Vacation Rental Investment.”

“Obviously, more people vacation during peak season,” says Karpinski. “But there are still plenty of people who prefer to travel during the cooler months. Maybe they want to avoid the crowds, maybe they want to take advantage of the lower rates, or maybe they just want a break in the February doldrums. Your mission is to make your vacation home stand out from the many others that are available to potential renters. It’s that simple. You have to go the proverbial extra mile.”

Here are some of Karpinski’s tips for making your vacation property in winter climates appealing:

• First, “winterize” your marketing. It won’t matter how perfect your place is for a mid-winter getaway if people don’t know about it. If you’re like many vacation property owners, you’re already listed on at least one “rent by owner” website like HomeAway.com. Make the most of it. Play up features like hot tubs and fireplaces. Add a few “off-season” photos of your property to your website. Photos of the home framed in brilliant autumn leaves or dusted with snow will speak louder than a thousand poetic words.

• Consider off-season specials. Everyone loves a bargain, and in the winter, they expect one. “My favorite off-season booking magnet is ‘rent three nights and get one free,’” says Karpinski. “Or, when you get a call from someone looking to book for next spring or summer, offer them a winter special-say, half-price off a weekend stay - so they can come and check out the place early. That would be tough to resist.”

• Plan for snow! If guests should happen to get snowed in at your home, you want to make the experience as pleasant as possible. Make sure to have a snow shovel, ice melt, and a windshield ice scraper on the premises. The possibility of inclement weather is a good reason to have a selection of nonperishable foods on hand, as well as movies and books. You certainly don’t want a houseful of hungry, stir-crazy, cranky renters who are cursing their vacation experience (and by association, you)!

• Make your home baby and toddler-friendly. Appeal to people with children by including baby and toddler paraphernalia. A high chair and a portable crib should cost less than $150 combined, and can drastically increase your off-season bookings.

• Accept pets. Vacation properties that accept pets increase their occupancy by 10 percent to 50 percent.

By: Katy Gurly

When you accept pets, it’s okay to take an additional $20 to $25/night or $140 to $175/week. This extra (which pet owners would have to spend anyway on boarding fees) is enough to pay for any carpet cleaning that needs to be done.

Not sold on winter renting? Consider it “damage insurance.” Winter renting can ward off property damage. “I’ve heard stories of locked-up properties that have been ransacked by families of raccoons, and of broken furnaces that have led to burst pipes,” she says. “Houses that are empty for long stretches of time, especially in freezing weather, tend to have problems. If renters had periodically visited such homes, these issues could have been avoided or at least discovered early, before things worsened.”

When I propose to my customers that “now is a great time to buy even when the economic forecast is dark and gloomy with more chances of snow,” they look at me like I am crazy and ask “why?”

“Well it really is!” I respond.

Listen. I know the economy is scaring the living daylights out of everyone. Even a man like myself who is a broker in one of the most successful real estate markets in the country has had seeds of doubt. The Hamptons real estate market hasn’t seen a time like this in many moons. The exceptional growth and strength of the Hamptons real estate market has been proficiently heading upward at amazing leaps and bounds throughout the last decade. The most shocking figure to me is that even since 2006 that Hamptons real estate market was still growing. While the rest of the country was starting to catch a cold economically, the Hamptons still boomed along. Even in the later parts of 2007 and throughout the first half of 2008, the Hamptons market was still far from cooling. As recent national economic figures have stated, the economy has been in a recession since last December and during this time the Hamptons market has grown not detracted. It did not just grow slowly either, it set records in upper tier sales and the 2008 rental season was the best in history. The Hamptons real estate market does not have a glass chin. The Hamptons real estate market is like Muhammed Ali in his prime. The Hamptons market like Ali could take punch after punch and not go down. An investment in the Hamptons has the best chance of rapid appreciation no matter the economic climate.

Right now is one of the best times to buy in the Hamptons within the last decade. There are just incredible deals and values that people haven’t seen in years. You just have to find them.

Many sellers in the Hamptons have enough funds to weather this economic catastrophe. Many Hamptons sellers are smart investors and very successful in whatever profession they were in or still are in. They do not need to flex there price or drop their asking rapidly because they simply probably don’t need the money. Because the Hamptons has so many of these “type A” sellers who don’t really have to sell is why you are not seeing a huge decrease in prices in the Hamptons. Why many buyers think, “why not wait until prices deflate and drop?” I strongly believe that is the wrong approach. Why wait for something that may never happen? The Hamptons have lowered slightly and may lower a little more so, but at the end of the day the Hamptons is the Hamptons.

There are great deals out there and sellers who need to sell. You just have to look. The best deals I am seeing are in “new construction.” Many builders kept building throughout the last two years because the Hamptons real estate market seemed to be weathering any economic report or any economic doom and gloom that was sweeping the nation. The Hamptons stood strong and kept taking everything on the chin. The builders kept building deep into 2007 and even into 2008.

It took a catastrophic collapse on Wall St. to slow the Hamptons real estate market. I strongly believe that the Hamptons real estate market has only got the wind knocked of it. It’s going down to it’s knees to get it’s breath. It’s then going to rise to it’s feet and be stronger then ever. That’s why now you can really find something incredible at an incredible price before the market rebounds. The best deals are the new construction spec houses. Right now there are amazing homes south of the highway, some of even pondfront like this home below that you can get for way under what the market value for the home was 6 to 12 months ago. When the market recovers you’ll be sitting pretty. You would have scored an amazing deal.

*This Newly Constructed Spec House listed with Susan Breitenbach overlooks gorgeous Sagaponack Pond. The home is located deep in Sagaponack south, close to ocean beaches. It  was originally $9.995.000 and is now available for $5.995.000. A new construction spec house of similar qualities and characteristics traded down the street last summer for $19 million.

As my father always told me,

“Buy into the teeth of the market not the meat.”

A lot of builders overextended themselves and bought into a meaty and healthy market. Now with the financial markets in turmoil and not as many Hamptons buyers, these once sitting pretty builders are now overextended and are more negotiable then ever. These builders want out. And like many hard learned lessons, I don’t think these builders will make these mistakes again. Next time they build, they will make sure not to get too ambitious. They won’t overextend. They will do spot projects and make sure they get their asking price. When a builder has two or three houses just sitting on the market, not to mention a tough market and dreary economic stats, you get a high chance of negotiability. The probability of getting an amazing deal on a newly constructed Hampton home has went through the roof. If you are in the market for new construction, now is the time to buy.

-Matthew Breitenbach