Breitenbach Real Estate

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.”

As a broker at Corcoran, I usually see most of our rental inventory rented by April. At that point, you see some late lookers hoping to get a nice, clean, and well priced summer rental. This is year is obviously different from most. Thanks to some movement in the Hampton’s sales market (three high end marquee properties were rumored to be in contract last week), the rental market has gradually started to pick up. There is some hope. More and more rental properties rented each week. Unfortunately though, the weather prediction for this years rental market is that instead of April being the month where we all prepare for the upcoming summer it will be the month where the renters and brokers are scrambling. All the renters that usually are active in the market in November, December and into Januaruy and Feburary are most likely waiting. Waiting for those landlords to start to lose it, to get nervous, to realize this might be the first year in many that they may not rent their summer home. It could be that a California gold rush for rentals is about to happen in April and May. It could be that the renters aren’t coming, but I can’t imagine too many New Yorkers skewering and sizzling in the city during a plus 80 August saturday.

What we do know is that The Corcoran Group held a rental expo last Thursday March 19 in New York City. The event was a huge success and the amount of interest the expo drew could only be positive. The conclusion - that even though the statistics are down, there are many renters still interested in the Hampton’s this summer no matter the economic down turn.

I attended this event as well as a strong contingent of Corcoran’s top east end brokers. The event was a huge success and did help bring some positivity to what has a been a bleak and depressing rental season so far. The people came in droves. The end tally was 500 plus. Lookers and landlords alike all showed up to talk to the brokers. Everybody that came through the doors wanted to get a sense of what was going on a hundred miles to the east. The positivity came from their interest. No matter the market. The Hampton’s real estate market is always intriguing and for some reason people always want to be here for the summer. I found myself in these type of conversations often at the rental expo. Positive feelings were radiated and a sense of hope for the 2009 summer season seemed more within reach then ever before.

Overall, the expo was a great success. There was a fantastic media buzz. The people came out in force. Even in these economic uncertain times and with the Hampton’s real estate market with more question marks then ever, we were all able to gather in a location, have a few glasses of wine, and talk person to person about not the media driven rumors about half priced sales and rentals in the Hampton’s, but talk about the great values of the present Hampton’s, especially in the rental market.

The conclusion - no matter what the media says, people will be summering in the Hampton’s in 2009 once again.

-Matthew Breitenbach

The rental market has begun to heat up and I don’t recommend running to the phone to call your real estate broker. I am not a proprietor of such drastic measures. I do recommend that you consider starting to get your summer ‘09 plans in order because the Hamptons rental market has finally started to breathe again.

Some recent rentals done by Susan and Matt Breitenbach:

*Rented for the Year Last Month

*Rented for Summer ‘09 Last Week

*Rented for Year Over the Presidents Day Weekend

Last year’s rental market began with a bang. Brokers were busy in early November working with rental customers. The sales market was hiccuping, but the rental market picked up the slack as the inventory of good rentals were gone by January and February. Last year you were nuts if you waited until spring to look for a rental. People began coming out to the Hamptons for all sorts of times and time lengths. There were rentals and houses for everybody. Corcoran ended up renting almost 100% of their inventory. This year is a different story being written and very silent and solemn tone has crept over the entire rental market. This tone though has started to change.

Last year brokers were singing this tune, “sales are down but the rental market is strong.” When sales continued to slump and the economy continued to worsen over the coarse of the year this phrase became old news. November ‘08 was a much different month then November ‘09 in the Hamptons rental world. The Hamptons rental market was dead quite at the tale end of ‘08 and even into January ‘09. It was not until the tale end of January until the rental market started to take in air again and breathe. February has started to see rental action and last week’s President Day’s weekend was an extremely busy weekend in the world of Hampton’s rentals. So there is hope at least for now and if I was someone considering renting in the Hamptons this summer, I would start to get the wheels moving on my plans. I would maybe think about getting on the horse and going for a ride.

-Matthew Breitenbach