Mala Sander Discusses East End Pricing Trends
June 18, 2013
Mala Sander, a senior vice president at The Corcoran Group.
Increasingly, sellers are saving time and tumult by appropriately pricing their homes from the start. “The trend is for properties to be more properly priced than they have been in the past,” says Corcoran Group SVP Mala Sander. “The sellers who are putting their houses on the market right now are not taking a flyer, if you will. They’re serious about selling.”
Proper pricing is reflective of sellers’ attention to key factors. “When setting a price, it’s really important to look at what’s actually traded, not what’s on the market,” explains Sander. “What your neighbor is asking and what the person down the street is asking doesn’t matter. What really matters is what things actually traded for. Everything else is wishful thinking.”
She advises: “Compare apples to apples if you can.” Those in the market should take an unbiased look at comparable sales, known as comps. She recommends comparing homes with corresponding features, such as those in the same village or with similar square footage or lot size, and quality and characteristics of particular neighborhoods.
Ultimately, though, there remains a trifle of the intangible. “It is an art, so there is a little bit of subjectiveness that goes into it,” Sander says. “You have to be really careful about how much subjectiveness you’re putting into it and how much reality you’re putting into it.” 155 Madison St., Sag Harbor, 899-0108
Gioia DiPaolo Examines Sag Harbor's Revival
June 17, 2013 | by katy b. olson
Gioia DiPaolo, Douglas Elliman Real Estate managing director.
“Sag Harbor is very hot right now,” reports Gioia DiPaolo, managing director at Douglas Elliman Real Estate. Attributing the area’s rejuvenated popularity to an appealing abundance of recently debuted restaurants and condominium projects—plus a veritable It List of incoming residents and visitors— DiPaolo points out certain telltale trends in the area. “Renovation projects, especially sites that can accommodate a large house, pool, and pool house, are selling,” she notes. “And trophy properties upward of $3 million are selling.” >>Read More
3 Historical Hamptons Golf Courses
June 14, 2013
National Golf Links opened in 1911 and hosted the inaugural Walker Cup in 1922.
Recognized as the nation’s first great course when it opened in Southampton in 1911, the National Golf Links of America was designed by Charles Blair Macdonald, who attended university in Scotland in the 1870s and returned with strong opinions about golf design. He set out to improve the holes at the National, which sprawls across tumbling land due east of Sebonack. While the replicas of famous Scottish holes are superb, the finest and most strategic holes at the National are original creations suggested by the terrain.
From September 6–8, this superb course will host the Walker Cup matches, pitting the top US amateurs against their counterparts from Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, the National hosted the inaugural Walker Cup, named for George Herbert Walker, former president George H.W. Bush’s grandfather. Not every club pauses for 91 years between major competitions, but the hiatus seems about right for this bastion of tradition.
The National keeps its membership rolls under tight wraps. And a sampling of the club’s founding members reads like a Who’s Who of early American power brokers: J. Horace Harding, William D. Sloane, Harry Payne Whitney, the Harrimans and Hunts, Abraham Lincoln’s son Robert, William K. Vanderbilt, and Charles H. Sabin, on whose land Sebonack was built. 325 Sebonac Inlet Road, Southampton, 283-0410
Shinnecock Hills Golf Club is one of the USGA's five founding members and dates to 1891.
For the accomplished player, Southampton mainstay Shinnecock Hills Golf Club is the US's most complete course. One of the USGA’s five founding members, Shinnecock dates to 1891 (the club’s current links were completed on a newer parcel of land in 1931). Stretched below a Stanford White–designed clubhouse that commands a hilltop overlooking Peconic Bay on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other, the links is often described as a hilly version of Muirfield in Scotland, rated the purest test of golf on the (British) Open Championship rota.
Straightforward and fair, the holes at Shinnecock angle to all directions and rely on the sea breeze to provide challenge and strategy. From day to day (and often hour to hour), the character of each hole changes depending on the direction and velocity of the wind, especially on the par-4 holes that are the backbone of this course, which has hosted three US Opens (in 1986, 1995, and 2004) and will welcome a fourth in 2018.
Unlike Sebonack, Shinnecock rambles across hills and valleys, its slim fairways flanked by brambles and tall native grasses. More than 150 bunkers, many gouged from mounds and hillocks, signpost the holes.
Shinnecock is a family-oriented club, with different generations often teeing off together. The club also has produced many women champions, and it was the nation's first to establish a waiting list based on its desirability. 200 Tuckahoe Road, Southampton, 283-1310
Montauk Downs debuted in 1968.
Montauk Downs State Park Golf Course, designed by Robert Trent Jones, debuted in 1968 in Montauk just a few miles inland from the distinctive white lighthouse that was commissioned by George Washington in 1790. The course is a redesign of a facility built in 1927 by developer Carl Fisher, who had envisioned creating a northern version of Miami Beach for the Montauk area. His plans were dashed by the Depression.
Remodeled five years ago by Rees Jones, son of the course’s architect, Montauk Downs is a modern classic with elevated tees, sizable greens, and cloverleaf bunkers. The well-groomed fairways are generously wide, but an offline shot will disappear into dense thickets of trees. Golfers can see Block Island Sound and the Connecticut shore from high points on the course.
The strength of the 6,976-yard course is its collection of par-5 holes, which present heroic options to better players. Ever-shifting breezes off the ocean and bay ensure that the challenge never stales. While the park’s amenities may be sparse, the golf experience is well worth the drive. 50 S. Fairview Ave., Montauk, 668-5000
Corcoran's Michael Schultz on Market Bounce-Back
May 23, 2013 | by christina pellegrini
Michael Schultz, The Corcoran Group SVP and associate real estate broker.
Those with an eye fixated on East End real estate know that the market has been depressed since the end of 2008. Since then the covetable properties have been snatched up at record-low prices. But there’s good news for Hamptons homeowners in the seller’s arena: The Corcoran Group SVP and associate real estate broker Michael Schultz says that this year’s sales numbers are swiftly approaching figures similar to 2007, a milestone year that peaked Hamptons real estate market trends. “I now see a lot of things have sold, particularly within 2012,” Schultz says. “Inventory is at the lowest level that it’s been since the crash in 2008.”
>>Read MoreMid-Priced Homes Trend in Sagaponack
May 23, 2013
Harald Grant, Sotheby’s International Realty SVP and associate broker
As 2013 ushers in a powerful upturn in the real estate market in the Hamptons, higher sales prices and lower inventory across the board set the stage for this season’s market wars. According to Sotheby’s International Realty SVP and associate broker Harald Grant, homes in Sagaponack in the mid-price sector of $6 million to $19 million are in the highest demand. And much of this land in Sagaponack is being purchased by builders who are putting up houses with modern interiors, he says. “The traditional home out here has been cloned,” says Grant. “It’s nice to see something different and that people are starting that trend.”
>>Read More
