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]