The Hamptons heatwave is over for summer rentals, real estate agents told On The Money.
The number of accessible apartments for rent in the elegant enclave of Long Island to the east is growing though demand for full-season rentals has fallen – and the market is in a slump, Susan Breitenbach, a broker at Corcoran Group, told On The Money.
“The market has been crazy over the past few years – people have been offering $100,000 greater than the asking price for a summer rental,” said Breitenbach.
“Now half my days persons are calling me asking me to lower the price of renting a house.”
Breitenbach suggests that now that the WHO and CDC have declared the COVID-19 pandemic over, the summer months will likely be about the Old World, not the East End.
This is applicable to each homeowners and tenants, he adds.
“People have been in the Hamptons for 3 or 4 years and now they’re traveling again this 12 months,” said Breitenbach.
“This 12 months, everyone I do know, including myself, goes to Europe.”
At the same time, people have been buying homes during the pandemic, so more real estate is accessible.
As people migrated back to the city due to the reintroduced office attendance requirements, owning two properties has been an excessive amount of for a lot of pandemic-era purchases – and so they want to offset the costs one way or the other.
While many rents have fallen to pre-pandemic levels, others have been cut by as much as 50%, Breitenbach adds.
Some tenants are unwilling or unable to put up the money they made during the pandemic – when much of the city was closed and traveling east was an escape route.
Wall Street’s bonuses have fallen 26% this 12 months, while layoffs in the tech and financial industries are tightening belts.
Real estate agents rent summer properties for tens of hundreds to tens of millions of dollars. For $30,000 you’ll be able to buy a one-bedroom house in Westhampton, $250,000 for a 6-bedroom pool house in Southampton, and $2 million for a 6-bedroom oceanfront house in Amagansett.
In fact, some brokers note that this is just an inevitable correction from ridiculous pandemic prices.
“The pandemic has been a price tag we have never seen before,” said David Mazujian, a licensed real estate salesman at the Corcoran Group.
“But rents are alive and lively, landlords are realistic and deals are being made.”
Some locals are optimistic that this could mean the crowds will likely be a bit less this 12 months.
“Last summer I used to be stuck in traffic for 20 minutes driving down the primary street,” said one local.
“Possibly this 12 months I’ll finally find a way to book a table at a restaurant for Saturday night.”