The Hamptons Luxury Housing Market Is Staging a Comeback for the Ages
In the Hamptons, New York’s affluent beach-vacation destination, the luxury real-estate market has come roaring back.
The number of homes sales above $10 million on Long Island’s East End has surged to unprecedented levels, even topping the area’s pandemic boom. The uptick comes even as Florida and other locales have replaced New York City as a primary home for many billionaires.
“The Hamptons is, for lack of a better term, kicking ass at the very high end of the market,” said real-estate appraiser Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel.
The Numbers
The high-end Hamptons market was in the doldrums before Covid. Home sales of $10 million or more plummeted from 58 in 2015 to 30 in 2019, as the ritzy area faced increased competition from areas such as Nantucket and the Hudson Valley. Along with many other rural vacation destinations, the area rebounded during the pandemic home-buying spree, but was floundering again by 2023 due to high interest rates and a scarcity of listings, real-estate agents said.
Since then, however, the luxury market has rebounded. As of early October, the region had notched 74 home sales of $10 million or more and was projected to see at least 94 by the end of the year—the highest since Miller started tracking the market more than two decades ago. Even 2021’s Covid-era buying frenzy produced only 54 such deals.
Meanwhile, about 20 homes have sold for $20 million or more since the beginning of the year, with more contracts signed for listings at that price point, according to analysis by The Wall Street Journal.
The Drivers
Several factors are fueling the comeback. Lower interest rates have brought buyers off the sidelines, said real-estate agent Kyle Rosko of Douglas Elliman. While most home buyers in this price range don’t rely on mortgages, their fortunes are often tied to businesses that are sensitive to rates, he noted.
Miller also pointed to strength on Wall Street. Firms from Morgan Stanley to Bank of America have reported surging revenue from trading and investment banking, driving industrywide profits, according to New York state data. Compensation expenses also jumped roughly 10% in the first half of this year, signaling fatter bonus pools and renewed optimism across trading floors.
One reason the Hamptons market slowed after the pandemic surge is that a number of wealthy New Yorkers—traditionally the core demographic of Hamptons homeowners—moved to Florida amid the rise of remote work. While Miami and Palm Beach, Fla., are now considered primary home markets for many billionaires, the Hamptons remains primarily a vacation-home market, said Rosko. That means Hamptons buyers are more likely to take their time looking for just the right house. “It’s a nonnecessity luxury asset,” Rosko said.
Perhaps as a result of this shift, the Hamptons—and New York City—have lagged behind other markets in nine-figure deals. There has been only one home sale of $100 million or more so far this year in the Hamptons: former Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel’s sale of a $115 million estate in East Hampton. By contrast, there have been at least four in South Florida and two in California.
Before the Semel deal, the last nine-figure deal in the Hamptons was in 2023, when the historic Mylestone estate on Meadow Lane in Southampton traded for $112.5 million, according to Miller.
Still, Miller said he wouldn’t read too much into the lack of $100 million deals. “That’s a one-off market that goes in waves,” he said, while the $10 million-to-$50 million market is a more sustainable indicator of market strength.
Meanwhile, much of the demand for Hamptons homes is coming from former New Yorkers who have resettled in Florida, Rosko said. Now that they have established themselves there, they want a place in the Hamptons because Florida is “way too hot in the summer months,” he said.
Other buyers are coming from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Nashville, Tenn., and Houston, as well as New York City. “A lot of new folks have entered the picture,” said real-estate agent Adam Hofer of Douglas Elliman.
Turn-Key Premium
Local agent Cody Vichinsky of Bespoke Real Estate said he currently has more potential buyers than he can find homes for. In part, that’s because the Hamptons has a limited inventory of the houses most of his clients want: move-in ready properties that don’t require significant renovation. “The turn-key stuff is flying off the shelf,” he said.
For instance, Shutterstock founder Jonathan Oringer sold his newly built oceanfront house in Bridgehampton for $57 million earlier this month. He bought the property for $40 million in 2014, property records show, and had shopped it for only a couple of weeks off-market before finding a buyer.
“They said, ‘If we don’t buy it furnished, it will take us months to get everything in the house—knives, forks, pillows, whatever—and we want to use it right away,’” Little said.
Florida-based developer Todd Michael Glaser also paid a premium for instant gratification, spending $16.25 million on a newly renovated Victorian in Sag Harbor. Glaser said he and his wife plan to spend summers in the home.
“We knew that it was expensive,” he said. “People were shocked at the price we paid. But I couldn’t help myself. It was once in a lifetime.”
Big Discounts
With demand picking up, properties that have been on the market for years—sometimes at ultrahigh price points—are finally selling. But homes that require renovation are often heavily discounted. In Southampton, for example, a Moroccan style-estate that had been left abandoned since 2018 finally sold this year for $40 million, less than half of its original asking price.
In February, Judy Little sold her circa-1990s East Hampton estate for $70 million after moving to California during the pandemic. The buyers opted to purchase it fully furnished, down to the dishes in the kitchen cabinets.
One challenge for older homes, Vichinsky said, is that the permitting process in the Hamptons now takes longer than in previous years. Buyers aren’t willing to wait. “It’s discouraging for a lot of folks,” he said.
Before Covid, many of Vichinsky’s clients worked in Manhattan and spent summers and weekends in the Hamptons. Now, many of them are living a more flexible lifestyle, spending part of their summer in Europe or Aspen, Colo., and don’t want to dedicate time to overseeing a major construction project.
In cases where a home requires work, it can take time for owners to accept that they have to sell for a lower price. “It can be a lengthy process, sometimes taking years for a seller to land at a price buyers are willing to pay,” said Preston Kaye, co-founder of Hedgerow Exclusive Properties.
Still, that doesn’t mean they are selling at bargain basement prices, Kaye said, noting that in many cases, the asking prices were unreasonable to start.
