Size does matter after all.
That’s the message buyers have been sending with their recent purchases in Amagansett North. Here, in the spread-out, wooded area north of Route 27, Hamptonization has arrived for the estate-sized lots in an area that was once the all-but-forgotten stepchild of the ocean-side Amagansett Lanes. Buyers here seek acreage, brokers say, which may also help their properties solidify their value amid a zoning change conditioning home size to lot size.
In 2024, six homes traded for $10 million or more in the stretch of land between the bay and the East Hampton Golf Club that runs just a few miles north of the highway, according to Zillow. In 2023, just one home sold for eight figures or more.
This year, 172 Cranberry Hole Road went into contract after asking $12.5 million in a deal that exemplifies the growing appeal of the area that co-listing agent Martha Gundersen of Douglas Elliman calls “more of a flip-flop community than an expensive-stores-and-purse community.”
The modern estate, made up of four boxy structures surrounding a 42-foot-long infinity pool and travertine patio, may feel more Ferragamo than flip-flop, but its seclusion and sprawling 7-acre lot are staples of the homes recently built and sold in the area. A makeshift sandy “beach” surrounding the pool attempts to give buyers a nice-but-not-quite waterfront feel that they’re still bound to be missing in the woods.
“This area of Amagansett is unique in that there are many large estates, completely hidden and separate from each other, and it has not been overbuilt like the Lanes or the Amagansett Dunes,” designer Lindy Woolcott said in a promotional interview last year.
Castles in the woods
The Amagansett Lanes are a tight grid or streets between the highway and the beach that usually command the area’s top prices, with their easy beach access and see-and-be-seen quality.
But those who go north get more for their money, according to the Agency’s Tyler Whitman, who shared the Cranberry Hole listing with Gundersen.
“A $10 million house south of the highway, you would drive by and be like, ‘Oh, what a pretty house,’” he said, “versus these north-of-the-highway houses you’re like, ‘Oh, look at that castle.’”
One of the “castles” sold last year was the 12,400-square-foot 91 Abrahams Landing Road, which Gundersen admitted might have been “too big,” but came with “all the bells and whistles” including a 50-foot-long gunite pool on its 1.3-acre lot.
The home, which has nine bedrooms and full bathrooms, sold for $11.8 million last June. It typifies the type of mammoth offerings that have come on the market in the last few years.
Many of the homes come with gyms, a spa, swimming pools, hot tubs and even second kitchens, like the 10,000-square-foot home at 39 Timber Trail, which sold for $11 million last fall and is back on the market asking $11.8 million. (Compass’ Karen Benvenuto said the seller had bought a restaurant on Shelter Island and needed to sell the Amagansett home.)
While areas north of the highway in other villages and hamlets have also seen prices surge, Amagansett North has a benefit over them. Here, the island narrows, and areas north of the highway aren’t so far to the beach.
“You are so close to the ocean you can hear it and see it,” as Whitman’s listing for 6 Golf Club Drive, which sold for $10.5 million last summer, put it.
Bespoke Real Estate president and co-founder Cody Vichinsky said escalating land prices everywhere and an erosion of snobbishness has brought the neighborhood into the conversation.
“If I didn’t really understand the nuances of the Hamptons, I would be scratching my head,” he said of the price differences on either side of the highway.
“People are becoming more and more comfortable being north of the highway and just getting more bang for buck,” he said.
Vichinsky’s firm only sells above an eight-figure threshold, so the new normal could put homes here on his map too.
Entering a new zone
Regulatory shifts have already pushed values higher, at least for now.
The East Hampton town board passed a change last year halving the maximum allowable house size to 10,000 square feet, from 20,000 square feet; the rule went into effect March 1.
Three of the six eight-figure sales last year were for homes above the new threshold, so they now stand to be among the largest mansions here for the foreseeable future.
“All the preexisting houses that are larger than what is going to be allowed now by the zoning code are going to become that much more valuable because they’re larger,” Romer Debbas partner Robert Connelly said. Connelly joined the firm after serving as the town attorney in East Hampton for roughly two years.
The town board also approved a new zoning law that drops the gross floor area allowed to 7 percent of a lot size plus 1,500 square feet from 10 percent of the lot size plus 1,600 square feet. This is likely to reduce new home square footage by roughly 30 percent and goes into effect this summer.
That means that a small lot where once a builder could put up a seven-bedroom home may now only accommodate five bedrooms — yet at the same sale price, of about eight figures if it’s near the beach.
Homeowners or builders in the Lanes, surrounded by beach vegetation, are also more likely to face permitting requirements than up north, where there’s more space to redevelop or build away from environmentally protected areas, Connelly said.
“It makes a big difference on what you can build in the Lanes, or on something under a half acre,” Gundersen said. “That’s why people are going north, where the lot sizes are more like 1 acre-plus up to 7 acres.”