Judi Desiderio, Town & Country CEO, and images of the Montauk waterfront

East End brokerage Town & Country Real Estate is opening a new Montauk office and expanding its Bridgehampton digs to a larger space, the company announced today. Town & Country CEO and Founder Judi Desiderio said she hopes to open the new Montauk outpost, located in a storefront at 764 Main Street, in time for St. Patrick’s Day. The 1,000-square-foot space, formerly occupied by an antiques store, brings Town & Country’s total to eight offices in the Hamptons and North Fork, she said. “It’s a perfect time for us to grow,” she said. “We’ve had terrific agents in Montauk working out of East Hampton, but Montauk is really its own market. People who want Montauk will not accept anything but Montauk.” The picturesque ocean-side fishing and surfing village has made waves recently as the site of Ponzi-schemer Bernard Madoff’s former summer home, which now belongs to Steven Roth, chairman of Vornado Realty Trust. [more]

Click chart for larger version (source: Prudential Douglas Elliman)

Cozy beach cottages are so 2001. Over the past decade, East End homes have gotten bigger, more elaborate and more expensive, according to a 10-year market report released today by Prudential Douglas Elliman. In 2009, the average sales price of a home in the Hamptons was $1.52 million, up 152 percent from $607,014 in 2000. The median sales price jumped 124 percent to $825,000 from $367,250 in 2000, the report shows. The increase reflects the addition of larger homes to the housing stock, said appraiser Jonathan Miller, president and CEO of Miller Samuel and the preparer of the report. (For a story on the East End residential market in the fourth quarter, click here.) “People were seeking larger homes in the country on larger pieces of property, and that became the new image of the Hamptons,” Miller said. Judi Desiderio, CEO of East End brokerage Town & Country Real Estate, said she began to notice the shift towards larger homes in the Hamptons around eight years ago. “Ten years ago, they weren’t buying McMansions,” she said. “They were buying a reasonable home, maybe around 3,000 square feet, which they could enjoy with their family and friends. Then all of a sudden, people started to build bigger. Bigger was better.” [more]

Images of a seven-bedroom ocean front home in Sagaponack, listed by Town & Country for $11.5 million, that is now in contract

Homes sales on the East End of Long Island saw a stunning leap in the fourth quarter of 2009, according to a market report released today by Prudential Douglas Elliman. The number of sales on the East End, which includes the Hamptons and North Fork, jumped 55.4 percent in the fourth quarter to 564, from 363 in the same quarter of 2008 and 22.9 percent from 459 in the third quarter, the report determined. In the Hamptons area of Long Island’s South Fork, sales skyrocketed 59 percent in the fourth quarter to 409 from 257 in the prior-year quarter, and 20.6 percent from 339 in the third quarter. Median sales prices rose 4.9 percent to $917,900 in the fourth quarter from $875,000 in the same period of 2008, and increased 13.3 percent from $810,000 in the third quarter. However, the average price of a Hamptons home — $1.59 million — dipped 12.3 percent from the prior-year quarter. [more]

From the December issue: Times are tough, but don’t skimp on the tip. That’s the message from
Judi Desiderio, CEO of Town & Country Real Estate on the East End
of Long Island, to her brokers.
“We will still be sending gift bags to all our ancillary service
providers,” she said. That means people who open lobby doors and
deliver the mail.
But tips from New York brokers were certainly more plentiful during the boom.
“Tips for the 2009 holiday season will be in modified form,” said
Halstead Property broker Jill Sloane. “However, the doormen and
superintendents really appreciate gifts, so it’s important to keep up
with tips even though you may have made less money this year,” she
added.

Judi Desiderio, founder of Town & Country Realty

A Hamptons housing report released today shows progress in some markets, while sales volume in certain areas is still slipping. The number of home sales in the Hamptons in the third quarter was only down 2.5 percent from the same period a year ago, according to a report released today by Town & Country Real Estate, a more modest drop than other markets are experiencing, particularly in the luxury sector. There were 251 sales transactions in third-quarter 2009 versus 257 in the same three months last year, the third-quarter East End market report shows (see the full report after the jump). Judi Desiderio, founder of Town & Country, which has nine offices on the East End, said that she had predicted that the market would stabilize that quarter and that the report proves her right. Even so, six markets on the East End saw sales drop.
[more]

The number of home sales in the Hamptons dropped 58 percent year-over-year as the recession continued to decrease demand for second homes, according to a market report released yesterday by Town & Country Real Estate. The Hamptons real estate company’s report uses first-quarter closing data from the Long Island Real Estate Report, a company that tracks Long Island real estate deals. The Hamptons median home price dropped 4.4 percent to $950,000 from the first quarter of last year, the report shows. Sales in the $1 million to $2 million range dropped 66 percent from the first three months of 2008. There were only 12 properties sold in the more than $5 million range between January and March from 31, a 61 percent change. The data only covers the first three months of the year “due to the time it takes from making a deal to recording the closing information,” said Desiderio. She says the numbers indicate that the Hamptons market has finally reached its bottom, and her next market report will show a much rosier picture. Meanwhile, on the rental front this season, Jonathan Miller, the president of Miller Samuel, told The Real Deal in an article in the July issue, that rental prices are off roughly 20 percent this season.  TRD

Judi Desiderio and one of her listings, a five-bedroom home in Bridgehampton

Sales in the Hamptons plummeted 67 percent during the first quarter of
the year, compared to a year earlier, the biggest percentage drop since 1982, according to Town & Country Real Estate. The
median price in the Hamptons fell 28 percent from the same time last
year to $698,461, mostly due to a decline in sales of $5 million or
more, Town & Country said. As prices fall, buyers are searching for
deals and sellers are offering discounts, according to Judi Desiderio,
president of Town & Country in East Hampton. “The sellers are
keenly aware that if they haven’t sold in a better market, they really
need to adjust their prices,” Desiderio said. [more]