New Yorkers swarming to the Hamptons pushed home sales to their highest level in almost 16 years. Buyers also set records for their willingness to overpay.
The Long Island resort towns saw 803 completed deals in the fourth quarter, the most for any three-month period in data going back to early 2005, according to a report Thursday by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate.
Buyers eager for a pandemic retreat favored larger, more expensive homes, sending the median price of all purchases to $1.4 million, also a record. Bidding wars jumped, with 19% of properties trading above the seller’s asking price, up from 4.6% a year earlier and the biggest share in data going back to 2016, the firms said.
Covid-19 sparked an exodus from New York City, as workers freed from office commutes sought larger homes in quieter locales such as the Hamptons. Families who began as renters in the summer vacation towns have committed to living there full time, enrolling their kids in local schools while continuing to do their jobs remotely — even possibly after the public health crisis ends.
“We’ve really had a shift in the people who have come out to stay permanently,” said Todd Bourgard, who oversees sales in the Hamptons for Douglas Elliman. “Our sidewalks are full at a time of year when that is generally not the case.”
Sales surged in almost all of the Hamptons’ largest towns. In the area of Sag Harbor and North Haven, deals doubled from a year earlier to 88, Corcoran Group said in its own report.
In Southampton Village, there were 51 purchases, up from 20 in the fourth quarter of 2019. The combined dollar value of those transactions soared more than fourfold to $297.1 million, the brokerage said.
Sales of vacant land also jumped. There were 85 lot sales in the fourth quarter, compared with 46 a year earlier, according to Corcoran.
“Everybody adjusted so quickly to working from home and once they did that, they realized it’s about quality of life,” Bourgard said. “They’ve geared themselves to stay for the long term.”
The priciest deal in the quarter was the $61 million purchase of 15 West Dune Lane in East Hampton, a 8,000-square-foot (743-square-meter) oceanfront home with a pool on 2.4 acres (1 hectare), according to Miller Samuel and Douglas Elliman.
