Real Estate

Michele L’Hommedieu Hofmann had no idea until retiring last fall and starting to research her family history how prominent a role her great-great-grandfather James H. L’Hommedieu had played in Long Island’s late-19th-century architecture. On a trip to New York that included a stop at an East Hampton house he designed for Robert Southgate Bowne, a founder of the Maidstone Club and first president of the Long Island Rail Road, she and her family got a crash course in L’Hommedieu’s work.

The developer Harry Macklowe listed his Georgica Pond house last week for $38 million. Despite the legal costs Mr. Macklowe has accrued since 2019, when East Hampton Village first hit him with a stop-work order citing illegal clearing and improvements, he stands to make a tidy profit if he gets close to that number, having bought the property in 2017 for $10.35 million.

Three of the buildings that comprise Adam Potter's 11 Bridge Street Limited Liability Company in Sag Harbor — 23 Bridge Street, 12 Rose Street, and 8 Rose Street — hit the real estate market this week, raising the question of whether his plan for a large, mixed-use building there is dead.

When the word “suffered” ends up in a year-end real estate home-sales report, you know it can’t be good. And while Judi Desiderio, the C.E.O. and president of Town and Country Real Estate, said “the worst is yet to come,” the rental market is showing strength, and the stock market is hitting new highs.

“It’s a record price per square foot for any commercial real estate transaction in the Hamptons, ever,” said Jeremey Tahari of Tahari Capital, whose father, Elie Tahari, sold the building at 1 Main Street in East Hampton for $22 million to Bernard Arnault, named by Forbes last week as the world’s richest person.

Lacking the kind of synergy between restaurants and retail that might draw more off-season shoppers, Amagansett's Main Street on a winter weekday can feel in need of a bit of revival. That will all change when the high season arrives, but what has people talking now is the news last month of the sale of the Main Street Tavern building and how a restaurant in that spot could boost morale on Main Street.

Praise the mozzarella sticks and pass the pool cue! The Sail Inn in Montauk’s dock area has been sold to the mother-son team of Colleen Croft and Luca Guaitolini, who also own the upscale Upper East Side restaurant Elio’s, but the new owners say they are not planning to go luxe on the longtime locals’ joint on West Lake Drive when it reopens in the spring.

It’s been nearly six weeks since a malware infestation crippled Suffolk County’s computer systems, and while the county has adopted numerous workarounds to address the ransomware attack since Sept. 8 — there’s a long way to go before it’s business as usual, especially when it comes to real estate transactions.

A development on Handy Lane that has riled neighbors is a familiar story in East Hampton Town and across the South Fork: along with teardowns and rebuilds, spec houses that, with seemingly few exceptions, take allowable lot coverage and floor area to their absolute limit.

It’s the kind of real estate transaction that often flies under the radar: A high-end property never hits the market publicly but captures people’s attention once its address appears in the county’s recorded deed transfers — usually with an eye-popping price and limited-liability corporations listed as buyer, seller, or both.

The East End real estate boom brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic is experiencing a shift thanks to historically low inventory, but the market is still feeding historically high prices, competitive conditions, a near-total lack of available rental properties, and faster turnaround of deals as a result.

For a luxury Montauk rental, it sounds too good to be true. Six bedrooms, 7,300 square feet, ocean view, heated saltwater pool with waterfall edge, and top-of-the-line kitchen appliances listed for $2,500 a night on Airbnb. The catch, says the homeowner: It's a scam offered by "hosts" who've used the legitimate real estate photos to dupe unsuspecting vacationers.