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The New York Supreme Court has opted not to enact injunctions against
two Hamptons homes that residents say are party houses, the
Southampton Patch reported. Both houses have numerous code enforcement
violations that need to be addressed by the end of the week, said Tiffany Scarlato, an attorney for the town. The first home is at 1432 Scuttle Hole
Road in Bridgehampton, and was reportedly rented by Gilt City for
parties, classes and other events for which the company would charge admission. The second house is at 2136 Deerfield Road in Noyac, and has also
received numerous complaints from neighbors and visits from code
enforcement. Gilt City was prevented from moving into East Hampton
Village by the village board. Resident Mark Humphrey, who lives across
the street from the Deerfield Road property, said he has called the
police at least seven times this summer in the middle of the night to
complain about noise from large parties.“One time I couldn’t even find
my driveway,” he said. Scarlato said that in spite of the injunction,
the town would continue to monitor the houses. [Patch] [more]

Real estate billionaire Tamir Sapir has rented a waterfront Southampton compound for the summer, the New York Post reported. The estate — two homes on a bluff with stairs to the beach — includes a pool, two spas overlooking the bay, a tennis court, two cabanas and a generator. The main house has 10 bedrooms and seven and a half bathrooms. The property was formerly owned by investor Andrew Farkas and was listed for $260,000 from Memorial Day through Labor Day. [more]

New attractions and a rezoning are on deck for the village of Southampton as the community vies for the kind of foot traffic its rival Hamptons towns enjoy, according to the Wall Street Journal. The village was hit with two major setbacks recently as the Saks Fifth Avenue store shuttered and the Parrish Art Museum announced it would move to the neighboring village of Water Mill.  But new plans are calling for a rezoning of Southampton’s business district and a transformation of the Parrish building into a mixed-use cultural center. [more]

The Shinnecock Indian tribe could be one step closer to opening a casino near its Long Island territory and reaping other economic opportunities, after receiving formal recognition from the federal government, according to the Associated Press. Only indian tribes that have been officially recognized by the U.S. government are permitted to own and operate a casino. The announcement today comes after a decades-long effort on the part of the tribe to gain official status from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The tribe first attempted to open a Southampton casino in 2003 on land within its territory. Shinnecock officials say that no casino location has been selected yet. [Crain's]

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Robert Simonson of Corcoran and Sagaponack mansion

A wine cellar that holds 5,000 bottles was this year’s addition to a mansion on the market for a summer rental in Sagaponack, in Southampton, the Wall Street Journal reported. Each year, the owner adds something new to lure renters and increase the value of his property, an 8,300-square-foot home on 1.3 acres of land.
The house has eight bedrooms, nine bathrooms, four fireplaces, a two-car garage and an infinity pool. Other amenities include a sauna, gameroom and media room with theater seating. The home also features a growing collection of artwork from 18th to 20th century artists. The rent is $500,000 from Memorial Day to July, $160,000 for July alone or $400,000 for July and September. The house was built in 2004, and the owner has been renting it out for several years, sometimes to celebrities, though listing agent, Robert Simonson from the Corcoran Group won’t reveal who. [WSJ]

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A war of words has broken out between tenant and landlord at a $14 million Southampton summer rental, according to the New York Daily News. After Keith Rubenstein, head of private equity firm Somerset Partners, filed a suit claiming his six-week, $195,000 summer rental home was a “potential death trap” and had numerous aesthetic deficiencies, the home’s owner, a company called Mid-Summer Dream, filed a countersuit calling the claims bogus. [more]

With summer imminent, renters and buyers are starting to set the tone in some of the East End’s most frequented vacation towns, determining which areas are hot — and which are still reeling from the recession. Montauk is top dog, according to New York magazine, with buyers and renters flocking to the hamlet once preferred by Bernie Madoff, whose home there sold to Vornado exec Steven Roth for a cool $9.4 million last year. While bargain basement prices aren’t endemic to the region, some areas — like Southampton, Water Mill and Sag Harbor — could still offer some relatively good deals, according to brokers in the region.

From left: 88 Peconic Hill Drive and 7 Hannahs Court

Two new summer rental properties have been added to Bid on the City’s inaugural Hampton’s property auction, set for March 26. The Southampton properties, a 2,585-square-foot house with a pool and fireplace at 88 Peconic Hill Drive, and a 5,800-square-foot house with a pool and hot tub at 7 Hannahs Court, have starting bids of $60,000 and $135,000 per summer, respectively. The auction, which was originally set for March 20, will include nine other properties (click here to see slide show of the properties). The rental auction will be structured differently from the site’s Manhattan events, opting for a so-called “Dutch auction” rather than the more traditional approach. “Unlike traditional bidding in which the price goes up and bidders have an opportunity to increase their bids, the Dutch auction has incremental decreases [from a higher starting price] until the first bid comes in,” according to Bid on the City. A second Hamptons auction event, featuring 10 properties, is slated for April 9. TRD [more]

Historic Southampton mansion Village Latch Inn is on the market for $24.75 million, according to Curbed, featuring 67 rooms and an approximately 100-year history. The building, which was renovated and refurbished in the 1970s, includes tennis courts and private villas. The highlight of its century-long tenure in the Hamptons, naturally, was the wedding of NBC star Matt Lauer, who used the spot for his nuptials.

The family that divorces together, upgrades together. Following in the footsteps of his ex-wife, famed clothing designer Tory Burch, with whom he separated in 2006, venture capitalist Chris Burch is looking to upgrade his Southampton digs. The details of the planned refurbishing are still sketchy, but Southampton architecture expert Sally Spanburgh has already panned the project, according to Cityfile. “The existing house is not so special and so there is an opportunity here to improve upon that, but I guess, like his ex-wife, Mr. Burch doesn’t have the greatest design sensibility when it comes to architecture,” Spanburgh said. Meanwhile, Tory Burch is looking to trade in her Southampton oceanfront contemporary home, now on the market for $17.9 million.