Long Island Developments

[NYC4Life]

From: Newsday

Canon's new HQ to be LI's largest green project

http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bzcan015747960jul01,0,1561175.story


BY ELLEN YAN | ellen.yan@newsday.com (ellen.yan@newsday.com&subject=Canon's%20new%20HQ%20to%20be%20LI's%20larg est%20green%20project)

July 1, 2008
http://www.newsday.com/media/photo/2008-07/40592667.jpg

This artist's concept shows an aerial view of the new Canon building proposed for farmland near the Long Island Expressway (http://www.newsday.com/topic/travel/commuting/long-island-expressway-PLTRA0000132.topic) in Melville. (Handout / July 1, 2008)



Canon USA is expected to file building plans Tuesday for its new headquarters in Melville (http://www.newsday.com/topic/us/new-york/suffolk-county-%28new-york%29/huntington/melville-PLGEO0000712NY.topic), a five-story, 690,000-square-foot facility that would be Long Island (http://www.newsday.com/topic/travel/long-island-PLTRA000031.topic)'s biggest green project.

In the plans, what was once 52 acres of farmland would largely resemble a park, with the buildings taking up a third of the land, two reflecting pools to collect runoff water, walking paths among the trees, plus drought-resistant vegetation and energy-efficient building material.

The main building, to be located on Walt Whitman (http://www.newsday.com/topic/arts-culture/walt-whitman-PEHST002107.topic) Road south of the Long Island Expressway (http://www.newsday.com/topic/travel/commuting/long-island-expressway-PLTRA0000132.topic), would have a large interior courtyard to maximize natural light in the office building.

Canon is trying to garner at least a silver standard from the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Under new Huntington Town rules, a rating of silver and above would lift some code restrictions for developers, including allowing Canon's two parking garages and two additional stories, design elements that free up land to create a park setting.

If built to natioal treen building standards, the Canon project would be the fourth such commercial building on Long Island.

"We wanted a campus-style headquarters," Seymour Liebman, Canon's executive vice president and chief administrative officer, said Monday at the company's Lake Success headquarters. "All people have here is blacktop and parking lot."

Huntington Town Supervisor Frank Petrone said the Canon site shows how green can work for the developers who have been thinking of renovating their properties along Route 110. "We don't want it to turn into White Plains," he said of the built-up Westchester business corridor.

Petrone, Rep. Steve Israel (http://www.newsday.com/topic/politics/steve-israel-PEPLT003176.topic) (D-Huntington), Canon officials and other government leaders met Monday afternoon to discuss some of the biggest challenges to the project: traffic and federal and state funding for infrastructure improvements.

Canon said its current 1,000-plus employees in Lake Success will eventually grow to 2,500 at the new site, one of three global headquarters for the company. Canon said it expects the building to be completed by the end of 2010.

The LIE overpass on Walt Whitman Road will have to be widened from one to two lanes each way, Petrone said, while the state Department of Transportation might redesign access to the Canon complex from the South Service Road.

The national green standard was created eight years ago, but it was not until last November that a 130,000-square foot office building in Garden City became the first on Long Island to get a LEED rating.

Long Island officials and developers say green building, despite added costs of up to 25 percent, has been gaining popularity partly because of concern about the environment and to help company brands stand out.

But it's not easy trying to register for a LEED rating.

"There are thousands of people registered, but not many people cross the finish line," said Thomas Chartier, project manager of Garden City-based Albanese Organization, which built Long Island's first LEED offices.

He said getting a LEED standard is still an "afterthought" to many developers: "It's kind of a lower priority than actually finishing the building."

The second local LEED building is Sea Tow Services International in Southold while the other is a commercial building whose owners told the LEED organization they wanted to remain unidentified.
(http://www.newsday.com/services/newspaper/printedition/tuesday/business/ny-bzcan015747960jul01,0,6635005.story)

[dtolman]

Route 110 (the road servicing the building) is already over capacity - I shudder to think what that road is going to be like in a few years once the building opens.

[snapperhead]

that first right off the Amityville exit from 495 is Old Walt Whitman road that thing takes a beating now out to the 110 at the little white church.needs a good repaving...it rocks and rolls

[NYC4Life]

Huge Riverhead resort project gets going

http://s3.amazonaws.com/trd_three/images/46383/riverheadresorts_articlebox.jpg

Riverhead Resorts, a resort and convention center that will span over 755 acres on Long Island's East End, has moved ahead with a $2 million payment to the town of Riverhead. The $2 billion project will include a 350-foot indoor ski mountain, water park, four hotels and 500 timeshares. The $2 million will launch an in-depth environmental, engineering, energy, market and financial analysis of the project as it moves into the formal permit review phase. If approved, the complex is expected to open late 2012. TRD

[NYC4Life]

Newsday

Median price for single-family homes on LI dips 2.8%

Ellen Yan August 15, 2008 Median prices for single-family homes on Long Island (http://www.newsday.com/topic/travel/long-island-PLTRA000031.topic) slipped 2.8 percent in the second quarter, compared with the same time last year, the National Association of Realtors said yesterday in releasing prices for 150 cities.

Second-quarter median prices slipped 7.6 percent nationally from a year ago and 9.6 percent for the Northeast.

Foreclosures distorted the median prices, said association president Richard Gaylord. Only 35 cities saw price increases from a year ago, compared with 48 in the first quarter, according to the association.

"In many areas with large concentrations of foreclosure sales, homes are being purchased below replacement-cost values," Gaylord said.

On Long Island, the second-quarter median price for single-family homes was $466,600; it was $479,800 a year ago.

Manhattan (http://www.newsday.com/topic/us/new-york/new-york-city/manhattan-PLGEO100100804010000.topic)-based appraiser Jonathan Miller (http://www.newsday.com/topic/entertainment/jonathan-miller-PECLB003222.topic) said the "modest" drop shows a "malaise" in the Long Island market and that the rate of price decline has been tempered by several factors.

"You didn't really see heavy speculation, and new development was always tough on Long Island," he said. "There was not much land to do it on, whereas if you're in Phoenix, you can just keep going."

[NYC4Life]

North Fork sharper than South Fork?

Area sees boost in sales, but brokers experience slowdown


http://s3.amazonaws.com/trd_three/images/45167/north_fork_articlebox.jpg (http://ny.therealdeal.com/assets/45167)
This Southold house at 1425 Pine Neck Road was purchased by investors for the discount price of $725,000.



By Christopher Faherty

While much of the fuss this season in East End real estate has zeroed in on the slowdown in the tony Hamptons, its lower-profile neighbor to the north is on a similar real estate rollercoaster. Brokers said that while Long Island's North Fork was taking off a few years ago, the momentum on the residential side has taken a hit since the economy turned.

But after a rocky first quarter — which was marked by a nearly 38 percent drop in sales compared to the same time last year and a nearly 45 percent increase in the number of days homes were staying on the market — the North Fork seems to have rebounded somewhat in the second quarter.

New numbers, which were released late last month by appraisal firm Miller Samuel and brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman, show that the median sale price on the North Fork was up 13.1 percent to $605,000 from last year and that the number of sales shot up by 28.6 percent to 189. While the vineyard-dotted North Fork saw more of an uptick than the more swanky Hamptons market did (numbers there were down across the board), not all of the figures were positive. Listing inventory was up 12.7 percent, and discounts between final listing prices and sales prices also saw a spike.

"There are contradictions in the numbers because inventory is trending up, but at the same time, sales activity has increased," Jonathan Miller, president and CEO of Miller Samuel, said.

Miller said that while the North Fork sales and price increases were the most positive part of the East End report, they might be a "statistical anomaly" based on data timing and a well-performing high-end market. He also noted that the North Fork market is far smaller than the South Fork market and is therefore more easily skewed.

"It doesn't match my expectations," he said. "On the front lines, I don't think there is any expectation that prices are rising on the North Fork."

Indeed, brokers on the North Fork — which stretches from Riverhead to Orient — said discerning investors and bargain-hunting homebuyers are increasingly scouring the area for deals because of the economic slump. And while they are seeing a sluggish residential market, they said there are bright spots on the commercial side and in summer rentals.

This month, The Real Deal set out to examine the state of the market on the North Fork beyond the numbers to see how it's holding up compared to the Hamptons, and to see which buyers and sellers are taking chances there.

While brokers said that prices of coveted waterfront properties on the North Fork have risen, or at least stayed flat since last year, they noted that inland homes are seriously hurting.

The CEO of Town & Country, Judi Desiderio, said inland properties on the North Fork, which have dipped in price between 20 to 25 percent since 2005, are still far harder to sell than their waterfront counterparts. She said the bulk of the price drop has occurred since the slowdown hit last year.

As the economy has worsened, many investors who had hoped to capitalize on the North Fork's heyday by flipping homes for a profit are instead selling at a low point, brokers said.

One broker described a "beautiful creek-front home" in Southold that first went on the market for $1.5 million after being built in 2006. A deal is currently being worked out for $599,000. The broker asked not to be identified because the sale hasn't closed yet.

Others said that the market has indisputably taken a hit, but that many sellers are still asking for the prices their neighbors got during the boom times, a factor that has slowed sales.

"You can't think like in the days of 2005 and 2006. It used to be that people could just throw out prices. Buyers are a bit more savvy, so sellers need to be savvier as well," a senior vice president for the Corcoran Group, Sheri Winter Clarry, said.

Looking for deals

Some are looking to the North Fork for investment opportunities.

In a phenomenon that heated up about two years ago when prices first began to dip, a growing number of twenty- and thirtysomething Manhattanites are buying starter homes in the under-$500,000 range while continuing to rent in the city.

A North Fork broker for Prudential Douglas Elliman, Gayle Marriner-Smith, described the buyers as young professionals who cannot afford to buy in Manhattan, and so are instead turning to the North Fork to make their first real estate purchases. She said a drop in asking prices has actually prompted more of those young buyers to look to the North Fork than ever before.

Meanwhile, with the stock market in flux, some local agents said the North Fork is also attracting a growing number of investors interested in high-end properties, which can be found at significantly more affordable prices than in the Hamptons. And, in fact, the second quarter report shows that the top fifth of the market on the North Fork saw a 6.8 percent jump in price.

"I've been working with several investors who are pulling their money out of the stock market. They see they can buy beautiful waterfront properties and wait for the market to turn around in five to seven years," Marriner-Smith said.

Marriner-Smith described one wealthy couple from Manhattan, who she said has divested much of its stock portfolio and purchased three properties in the $1 to $2 million range — sound-front, bay-front and creek-front homes. The couple is now mulling over a fourth plot on a saltwater pond. However, they are more of the exception than the rule.

The North Fork's waterfront properties are drawing the eye of European investors, several brokers said. Desiderio said she is privately showing a $12 million sound-front property on the eastern end of the fork — a property which would run between $40 and $50 million in the Hamptons — almost exclusively to Europeans.

She declined to identify the exact location of the property at the owner's request.

Rentals and commercial

Brokers say that while the rental market has changed, it is generally seeing a boost.

Carol Tintle, a senior vice president at Daniel Gale Sotheby's International Realty, said the North Fork's lower prices have attracted a growing number of renters who would otherwise stay in the Hamptons. She said a three-bedroom home near the beach in the Hamptons would rent for roughly $80,000 a season, while a similar property on the North Fork costs about $20,000 for the same stretch of time.

"A lot of people are scaling down," she said. "They felt like they could get a whole season here for the price of two weeks in East Hampton."

Desiderio said the North Fork's rental market is the strongest she's seen it in 15 years.

Nonetheless, some brokers said they have seen old-time North Fork renters go for weekly and monthly rentals. Marriner-Smith said several of her clients, who normally rent homes for the season, downgraded this year.

As for the commercial side of things on the North Fork, brokers said the market is surprisingly strong, largely because it is catching up with the residential growth that's already taken place.

Chase Bank is building two new locations, one in Mattituck and another in Southold, according to Thomas McCarthy, who is the president of a self-named real estate firm in Southold. McCarthy recently brokered a roughly $585,000 deal for an old real estate office on Main Street in Southold that is slated to become a hardware store.

Kristopher Pilles, managing partner of North Fork Commercial, a company that specializes in commercial real estate and investments, said that Hudson City Bank is building a new location in Mattituck and that an old firehouse in Greenport is under contract to become a microbrewery.

But the highest-profile commercial transaction on the North Fork occurred several months ago when Nello Balan, the restaurateur behind fashionable eateries on the Upper East Side and in Southampton, reportedly purchased two rundown buildings on Main Street in Greenport, with plans to open a restaurant and a boutique hotel.

[NYC4Life]

Newsday

Foreign tourists bring hot summer to East End

With euros to spend they join stay-cation locals in creating robust returns for businesses
BY CARRIE MASON-DRAFFEN AND GARY DYMSKI
| carrie.mason-draffen@newsday.com, gary.dymski@newsday.com September 4, 2008


For some East End business owners, this is the summer of their content.

Despite a weak economy, businesses ranging from bed and breakfast operations, to retailers to health-food stores are reporting more robust sales because of a greater influx of foreign tourists -- particularly those carrying euros -- and because of locals who vacationed closer to home.

"It's been a really good summer for us," said Jacquie Gettling, assistant manager of the upscale clothing store Eileen Fisher in East Hampton. "We have had a large amount of Europeans coming through."

At the five-room Quintessentials Bed & Breakfast and Spa in East Marion, European tourists perked up business, said owner Sylvia Daley. "During the week, the Europeans have definitely added to the revenue," she said.

Daley estimates that European tourists accounted for 20 percent of her revenue this season -- double the amount they accounted for last year. The travelers who visit Quintessentials typically hail from western European countries, including Germany and the U.K., Daley said. Many are families and book for at least three nights.

"The wonderful thing about the Europeans is that many of them stay during the week and go to the city on the weekends," said Marina Van, executive director of the East Hampton Chamber of Commerce.

The longer stays have benefited revenue at the Hedges Inn, an East Hampton bed-and-breakfast, where rooms run from $575 to $700 a night.

"Last year compared with this, we are up by a considerable amount," said general manager Carol Schnittlich, who declined to elaborate. "And I will definitely tell you that it is due to the foreign influx."

She said a wedding party of 65 from Switzerland booked all 12 rooms for a three-day weekend in late August.

Emily Clark, managing director of the North Fork (http://www.newsday.com/topic/travel/north-fork-PLTRA000053.topic) Promotion Council, which represents about 11 business groups and more than 500 East End businesses, said feedback from bed-and-breakfasts indicates that high weekend traffic - and sales - will continue for the next few months.

"Most of them were booked solid every weekend in the summer, and they are saying they're booked for weekends in the fall, too," she said.

Travel statistics for New York (http://www.newsday.com/topic/us/new-york-PLGEO100100800000000.topic) State reflect a huge jump in the number of foreign tourists in the past year. Their numbers rose to 7.9 million in 2007, or 23 percent, compared with the year before, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.

The businesses interviewed declined to disclose revenues, but the leisure and hospitality sector, which includes hotels and restaurants, has emerged as one of the fastest-growing job categories on Long Island (http://www.newsday.com/topic/travel/long-island-PLTRA000031.topic) this year. In this category, the number of jobs rose to 112,500 in July, compared with 111,300 a year earlier, according to the state Labor Department.

Carolyn Papetti, general manager at East Hampton restaurant Cittanuova, estimates that sales are up between 18 percent and 20 percent from last season because higher fuel prices have prompted many to vacation closer to home.

"More people in Manhattan (http://www.newsday.com/topic/us/new-york/new-york-city/manhattan-%28new-york-city%29-PLGEO100100804010000.topic), who usually go on vacation, spent more time in the Hamptons, at either their summer homes or at the summer homes of friends," she said.

Stephanie Tekulsky, owner of Steph's Stuff, an East Hampton gift store that sells novelties and memorabilia, also noticed a larger number of Europeans. She estimated sales are up between 10 percent and 20 percent over last year as a result.

"One week it was a big group of French-speaking tourists," she said. "Then the next it would be a group from Denmark, then Sweden. ... There were a lot of German-speaking tourists, too."

Not every business is crowing about this summer season, though.

At Hildredth's, a Hamptons department store founded in 1842, sales so far for the year are slightly down, compared with last year, said Henry Hildreth, fifth-generation president of the company. "Retail is not easy today," Hildreth said.

But Van of the East Hampton chamber said that the only thing wrong with the season is that it's not long enough.

"I only wish we had a couple more months of it," she said.

[NYC4Life]

NY Post

It costs a Fordune

It's not all doom and gloom out there in the high-end market.

In fact, Hamptons brokers are already gearing up for what they hope will be a robust rental market by the time the Panic of '08 subsides.

One of the Hamptons' premier properties, Fordune, will be listed for rent, probably for the first time since Henry Ford II owned the 42-acre oceanfront Southampton estate.

And it's going to cost a cool $600,000 to use it from August through Labor Day next year. If you throw in July, that's an extra $400,000.

Featuring 33,000 square feet of space, the renovated mansion has 12 bedrooms, 12 bathrooms, a game room, a library, a large formal dining room, staff rooms and a commercial kitchen. The extensive grounds include a 60-foot pool with a Jacuzzi, a tennis court, three ponds and more than 1,000 feet of beachfront.

Tim Davis of the Corcoran Group has the exclusive listing.


Copyright 2008 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

[NYC4Life]

NY Times

Standing Firm in the Hamptons

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/10/24/travel/24hamptons_600.jpg
Gordon M. Grant for The New York Times
FALLBACK PLAN Gerry Logue, like many people in the Hamptons, isn’t panicking. While he lowered his price for his 1892 Sag Harbor house 8 percent, to $1,795,000, he says “renting it is an option.”

By SUSAN STELLIN
Published: October 24, 2008

TAKE a drive around the Hamptons (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/classifieds/realestate/locations/newyork/longisland/hamptons/index.html?inline=nyt-geo) and all the For Sale signs littering the landscaped lawns might suggest that the East End of Long Island is finally joining the rest of the country in a real estate slump. But there is one important distinction:

While there are a lot more homes “for sale” in the Hamptons (about 1,500 versus 1,100 a year ago), they are not exactly “on sale.” At least, not yet.

The main factor protecting this exclusive enclave from a downward spiral in prices is that owners can still rent their houses for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for the summer rather than accept a low offer to sell.

And by most accounts, last summer was still a strong rental season, although one when more people opted to rent for shorter periods, causing some owners to hustle for three monthly rentals rather than one seasonal tenant.

That has created something of a stand-off between buyers and sellers, a situation exacerbated by the economic turmoil rattling Wall Street, the credit markets and consumers’ nerves.

“The events of the last few weeks have caused everyone to pause, take a deep breath and adopt a wait-and-see attitude,” said John Gicking, a senior vice president with Sotheby’s International Realty in East Hampton. “As a result, it’s quiet here, and I think it will be that way in the near future.”

Typically, fall is the second-busiest time for real estate in the Hamptons, that tony set of towns that includes East Hampton, Southampton, Sag Harbor, Bridgehampton, Amagansett and Montauk. Only an early spring flurry of activity is busier — so deals can close before summer.

But this year, the uptick in activity some agents reported seeing before Labor Day (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/l/labor_day/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) came to a halt as the economy swerved off the rails. On the last weekend of September, open houses and real estate offices saw little traffic as rain dampened already tentative moods about the market.

“The current trend is going to be wait and see pretty much until after the election or maybe the end of the year,” said Joan Hegner, a senior vice president with the Corcoran Group in Montauk, who gave a tour of one of her prime properties, the Startop Estates, a 10-acre-plus horse farm on a hill with views that include the Montauk Lighthouse. Several parcels of the property are for sale, including one with a 1957 ranch home on four acres for $5.3 million.

“The buyers are there,” Ms. Hegner said. “They’re ready. But they want to see if there are going to be any adjustments in prices.”

In recent years, though, the number of sales in the Hamptons has dropped significantly and steadily: from 2,528 in 2005, to 1,952 in 2006 and to 1,917 in 2007. It was 2,959 in 1999, the peak of activity in the last decade.

“We’re not seeing a big drop in prices, we’re seeing a big drop in volume,” said Diane Saatchi, a senior vice president with the Corcoran Group in East Hampton, attributing the stalemate in part to the area’s robust rental market, where homes in prime areas can command more than $100,000 for the summer.

“This is a resort discretionary luxury market, so it doesn’t look and behave too much like the regular primary residential market,” she said. “Buyers don’t have to buy and sellers don’t have to sell. As a result of those two things you get a flat market, not necessarily a depressed market.”

Another factor is the extraordinary wealth of the people who flock to the Hamptons every summer, including foreigners, celebrities and moguls whose fortunes have held up.

As Ms. Saatchi noted, “With bad times in this market, people are less rich as opposed to impoverished.”

And so, sellers like Gerry Logue are resisting dropping their asking prices too much. Mr. Logue, an entertainment consultant, bought an 1892 three-bedroom home in Sag Harbor in February, renovated it with modern amenities like a pool house and a Sub-zero refrigerator and restored original details like the fixtures, banisters and hardwood floors. After listing the home in July for $1,950,000, Mr. Logue lowered the price to $1,795,000 in mid-October.

“I’m reducing it really to be consistent with the market,” Mr. Logue said, though he feels it now represents a very good value. “My overall goal is to sell it, but at the same time, renting it is an option.”

So far, other sellers seem to share Mr. Logue’s perspective. In the first half of 2008, prices in the Hamptons held steady, declined modestly or in some cases even rose slightly, depending on the town or segment of the market.

While the real estate research company Miller Samuel reported a median sale price of $970,000 in the Hamptons in the second quarter of 2008 — down nearly 12 percent from last year — it’s difficult to pinpoint trends using averages because of the wide range of inventory in the region.

Roughly half of the vacation homes in the Hamptons and Montauk sell for $1 million to $5 million, yet waterfront mansions that cost tens of millions of dollars can skew the data, as can lots of activity in the under-$1 million segment of the market, which includes primary homes more sensitive to economic conditions.

Also, because it takes months for deals to close and data to be reported, the latest available figures do not reflect what is currently going on in the market, which most industry observers agree is a softening trend.

“What’s been happening in the past year is that prices have generally been moving sideways,” said Jonathan Miller, the chief executive of Miller Samuel. “What we’re seeing is a flat-to-modest erosion of prices out there, which is not unlike what we’re seeing in the city.”

In fact, the real estate markets in Manhattan and the Hamptons tend to follow similar patterns, Mr. Miller said, both fueled in large part by Wall Street’s fortunes.

Or as Eric Ellenbogen, who is trying to sell a home in the Georgica neighborhood of East Hampton for $5,695,000, put it: “When Wall Street sneezes, the Hamptons gets a cold. I remember seeing the same thing out there in 1989 and 1990, when the market went into a complete standstill.”

Mr. Ellenbogen, an entertainment industry executive, recently added two bedrooms and two bathrooms to his midcentury modern home, betting that a five-bedroom house would be easier to sell.

“I don’t view it as an A.T.M. — I’m only looking for a reasonable return,” he said, explaining that he will rent the house next summer if necessary but feels he has priced it to sell. “As the market defrosts, which it will, I just want to make sure that my house is among the very first to be sold — and I think that the way to do that is to be very reasonably priced.”
But what buyers consider a reasonable price may be undergoing a tectonic shift that has not yet shown up in any sales data.

If you look at the dramatic escalation of prices in the Hamptons over the last decade, particularly against the backdrop of the economy’s collapse, it is understandable why buyers have been hesitant to sign contracts.

According to a report on 10-year price trends in the Hamptons compiled by Miller Samuel, the median sales price jumped from $244,000 in 1998 to $975,000 in 2007 — a 300 percent increase. That is a bigger increase than even Manhattan experienced — roughly a 225 percent jump — during the same 10-year period.

Using a proprietary method of calculating home values, the Web site Zillow.com pegged the median value of a Hamptons home at $1,228,061 as of August, compared with $287,859 10 years ago, a 327 percent increase.

However, some brokers say that there are signs that prices are either being adjusted or becoming more negotiable, a trend that could accelerate if year-end bonuses are dismal.

“Sellers are pricing more realistically,” said Cynthia Barrett, a vice president with Prudential Douglas Elliman in Bridgehampton. “But buyers still feel like they should get another 25 percent off” because they assume prices may drop even more.

But many sellers are resisting that level of discounting. Gerald Madigan, a financial professional, put his five-bedroom East Hampton home on the market for $2 million last spring, when he purchased a house in nearby Water Mill. Late in the summer, he lowered the price to $1.75 million, but he plans to rent the property rather than accept a rock-bottom offer.

“If I wanted to price it at a giveaway price, I could get rid of it,” he said. “My intent right now is to ride it out.”

In that sense, he’s taking a long-term view rather than expecting a turnaround in a few months.

“I’m thinking I’ll own it for a couple years because that’s how long I think it will take for this credit crisis to run through,” Mr. Madigan said.

He brought up another factor sellers believe will protect the fundamental value of their Hamptons homes: “There’s a finite amount of land out there — and they’re not moving the ocean anytime soon.”

But it remains to be seen how much people will pay to be near the ocean, either as buyers or renters, next summer.

“The East End is in a good position relative to other second-home markets,” Mr. Miller said, “but over the next year or two there are some significant issues.” He cited the difficulty of obtaining financing, the loss of jobs on Wall Street, declining bonus compensation and a possible softening of demand from foreigners as factors that will likely cast a shadow over the real estate market in the Hamptons.

“The positive attributes for that market — which are the geography, the wealth that the area already has and attracts — may not be enough to offset these other elements in the near term,” he said. “It has an optimistic future, but in the near term it’s very likely to have difficulties.”


Copyright 2008 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[NYC4Life]

Updated On 10/24/08 at 02:51PM
Trump trumps state in Jones Beach

http://s3.amazonaws.com/trd_three/images/54358/trump_rendering_articlebox.jpg (http://ny.therealdeal.com/assets/54358)
Trump on the Ocean rendering


Donald Trump is moving forward with his restaurant and catering facility, Trump on the Ocean, in Jones Beach on Long Island, after winning a lawsuit against New York State this week. Part of the lawsuit stated that Trump's plan to include a basement of offices and kitchens on site was a safety hazard, but State Supreme Court Justice Ira Warshawsky said the review board "lacked a rational basis." Trump is suing the state for damages. TRD

[NYC4Life]

Updated On 10/30/08 at 10:23AM
Hamptons sees another round of price drops

By Candace Taylor

Home prices on Long Island's East End have continued their stomach-churning descent from last year's record highs, according to a third-quarter market report released today by Prudential Douglas Elliman.

Average sales prices for all homes in the Hamptons and the North Fork tumbled 26.8 percent to $1.32 million in the third quarter, down from $1.8 million in the same period last year, according to the report, which was prepared by real estate appraisal firm Miller Samuel. Median sale prices slid 17.3 percent to $729,000 from $882,000.

Perhaps most striking was the disparity in price changes between the Hamptons, a popular beach vacation spot for Wall Street's elite, and the winery-laden North Fork, which is becoming more popular with vacationers but is still predominantly a primary residential market.

While the North Fork saw a 10 percent increase in median sales price from the third quarter of 2007, the Hamptons saw jarring price cuts. Average sales prices on the South Fork plummeted 23.3 percent to $1.53 million from $2 million in the prior year quarter. Median sales prices in the Hamptons slipped 19 percent from $1.03 million last year to $830,000.

Meanwhile, the number of sales on the South Fork stalled, dropping 28.8 percent from the third quarter of 2007 and 27 percent from last quarter. As a result, listing inventory jumped 9.8 percent year-on-year.

In part, the precipitous slide in prices is due to 2007's record high prices in the Hamptons, explained Jonathan Miller, president of Miller-Samuel, who prepared the report.

The median sales price for the East End was 1.6 percent higher than the same period two years ago.

"Our market has shifted and we've seen some negative impact because of the financial markets," said Rick Hoffman, the Corcoran Group's regional senior vice president for the East End.

The hard economic times are being worsened by a "standoff" between buyers and sellers, Hoffman said. Sellers are reluctant to lower prices so soon after home prices reached astronomical highs, and buyers expect negotiability as the country heads towards recession. As a result, fewer deals are getting done.

Miller said that effect is exacerbated in the very high end of the Hamptons market, where sellers felt very little pressure to unload homes quickly. In the top 10 percent of the East End market, listing inventory increased 45.6 percent year on year from 351 homes to 511, the report said, while listing discount a nearly doubled from 7.5 percent to 13.8 percent year-on-year.

"Luxury sellers are even slower to react to changing conditions than the general market," Miller said. "Homes are being priced as though the market is still on the rise."

On the North Fork, by contrast, sales are more often motivated by life decisions, like moving or giving birth.

Dismal as the numbers may be, the worst is far from over. The third quarter numbers don't reflect Wall Street's wild swings in October-- and the ensuing layoffs and bonuses reductions expected to follow.

"The real extent of the impact will be in the first half of next year," Miller said. "That's when the reality of the bonus situation will hit."

[NYC4Life]

NY Times

Un-Supersizing for Tomorrow

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Phil Marino for The New York Times

DIMENSION, PROPORTION Oyster Bay may cap square footage in upper stories. Town officials say that under the proposed rules, these houses in Jericho, above, and Massapequa would not be so large.


By MARCELLE S. FISCHLER (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=MARCELLE S. FISCHLER&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=MARCELLE S. FISCHLER&inline=nyt-per)
Published: October 31, 2008

THE economic downturn may have slowed the number of applicants picking up building permits in this Nassau County (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/classifieds/realestate/locations/newyork/longisland/?inline=nyt-geo) enclave, but it hasn’t done much to ease discontent with what the town has already allowed in the way of construction: an impressive number of neoclassical trophy homes and supersized colonials on relatively small lots.

With longtime residents increasingly complaining that new two-story homes loom over their older houses and change the character of their streets, a proposal to limit the floor area ratio of one-family homes is now pending before the Oyster Bay Town Board.

According to Jack Libert, Oyster Bay’s commissioner of planning and development, officials have traditionally regulated home size by setting a maximum percentage of each lot that could be covered by a structure. If 20 percent coverage was allowed on a 10,000-square-foot lot, for instance, the “footprint” of a dwelling could be 2,000 square feet.

The new proposal goes a step further. The town is looking beyond the house’s basic footprint on the lot, to rein in the square footage in its upper floors.

Again taking the example of the 10,000-square-foot lot, Mr. Libert explained, the new rules would still dictate that the house’s footprint — its ground floor — be 2,000 square feet, but the developer “could only build 1,300 square feet above that.”

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/10/31/realestate/02lizo-2-650.jpg

Phil Marino for The New York Times

“By using floor area as well as the ground coverage” in the calculation, he added, officials can effectively respond to “what most people might feel is overbuilding.”

Bob Preston, a residential home builder with 30 years’ experience in the area, said he felt squeezed by these plans. With what homeowners are demanding of houses today, he said, “you can’t build a four-bedroom house” with such restrictions. He is also resistant to the proposed reduction in maximum roof height, to 26 feet from 28.

What can be built under the proposed code “prohibits the value of the property and the design function,” Mr. Preston said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

He added that the measures were ill timed. Those who do want to build, “let them afford to have the house they want,” Mr. Preston said. “Why would a town in this economic crisis try to put another nail in the housing market?”

But while the timing of Oyster Bay’s proposed restrictions may not dovetail effectively with a newly timid market for new homes, the call for such restrictions has been a long time coming — fueled by years of redevelopment.

A year and a half ago, after activists in the historic area of the hamlet of Oyster Bay enlisted town officials to adopt stronger restrictions and halt the replacement of 19th- and early-20th-century homes with “big square boxy houses,” homeowners in Hicksville and Massapequa — which fall within the overall town of Oyster Bay — jumped on the bandwagon, complaining that new houses were “dwarfing” older homes.

Mr. Libert was asked to study the problem throughout the town.

It was particularly troublesome in Massapequa, where “the real estate was so valuable it paid people to buy a house even for $1 million, tear it down and build a $3 million house on it,” he said, adding that longtime residents “found these new buildings objectionable.”

Kevin Kobs, president of the old Harbor Green Civic Association, a community of 420 homes built in the 1930s south of Merrick Road in Massapequa, said that in recent years builders had clear-cut properties, torn down trees and put up homes that towered over others.

“It is not to say that they are not nice,” Mr. Kobs said. “They just don’t fit in.”

A moratorium was put in place last year. Now Mr. Kobs is supporting the proposed zoning restrictions, to “strike a balance” and “try to protect the uniqueness and character of our community.”

Over the summer, the town of Easthampton in Suffolk County pursued similar changes, said Don Sharkey, the chief building inspector. Under its old code, an 8,000-square-foot house could be built on a half-acre lot.

“They can get pretty looming and massive,” Mr. Sharkey said. The Town Board reduced the limit on a half-acre lot to 4,200 square feet.

Bill Fowkes, an Easthampton builder, objected to this, pointing out that “smaller houses can be just as ugly as big ones.”

“The rhythm of a neighborhood” — how cohesive it looks to someone walking down the street — “is more of a function of setbacks, height restrictions, site plans and how the house is orientated on the lot,” Mr. Fowkes said, suggesting a “design review board” instead.

But Mr. Sharkey demurred. “It is still a big house by any standards,” he said, “but not a McMansion,” because it occupies about 15 percent of the lot.

As for Oyster Bay, Mr. Libert denied that its goal was to prevent the construction of big houses.

“We are just trying to keep the size of the house in proportion with the lot it is being built on and the homes surrounding it,” he said. “On a two-acre lot you can build an almost 10,000-square-foot house — and on two acres it will look fine.”


Copyright 2008 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[Merry]

‘Transit’ Housing Back on Track

By MARCELLE S. FISCHLER

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A grand opening at the Village Park town house project, just a block from the train station, is set for this weekend

BABYLON VILLAGE

FOR the last few years, the drumbeat of interest in remaking downtowns with higher-density, multifamily dwellings close to rail and bus lines has been more or less incessant. But concrete progress has been more elusive.

Now, after having been mired in local approval processes and thwarted by the economic downturn, developments are moving forward not only here in Babylon, but also in Amityville, West Hempstead, Hempstead Village and Rockville Centre. New condominiums and rental apartments, accessible to employment, shopping and cultural activities and transportation routes, are starting to become a reality.

A grand opening is set this weekend for the first 3 of 14 two- and three-bedroom town house condominiums at Village Park, a Victorian-style project being developed by Blair Mathies and his two brothers on a 1.4-acre site a block from the Long Island Rail Road station in the Village of Babylon. The development is within walking distance of schools, Argyle Lake Park, shopping and many of the village’s 35 restaurants, on property that required a zoning change from retail.
“You can get anywhere in the world from here on public transportation,” Mr. Mathies said, citing the 55-minute express train ride to Manhattan or Kennedy Airport, or the boat ride to Fire Island across the nearby Great South Bay.

In an e-mail message, Eric Alexander, the executive director of Vision Long Island, a “smart growth” planning organization, said that “after years of planning for transit-oriented development, projects of small and medium scale are getting built in our downtowns near transit stops.” He added, “These developments will satisfy a market niche that has been vastly underserved given the interest of Gen Xers, millennials and aging baby boomers in living near transit in downtowns.”

Two-bedroom town houses are $559,000, and three-bedrooms are $599,000; each has a $250 monthly maintenance fee, said Georgia Westcott, the broker-owner of the Westcott Group, which is representing the property. Property taxes will be about $7,200 a year. Each condominium has three full baths, a kitchen outfitted with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops, a deck off the master bedroom, a porch, bay windows and a bonus room on the first level by the garage.

Mr. Mathies bought the property from another developer two years ago. Although others shied away from building during the worst of times, he was convinced that this was a “very sensible project,” and that by the time he received approvals and got “all the ducks in a row and was ready to start construction, things would turn around a little bit.”

In Amityville this month, the first residents are expected to start moving into Wellington Park Villas, a 60-unit condominium adjacent to Peterkin Park in the village. On the cleaned-up site of a former waste transfer station two blocks from the Long Island Rail Road station and a block from downtown, it is priced starting at $279,000, and half of its units are restricted to buyers 55 and older.

Gary Passavia, the developer, said he had taken over the property from another developer in December 2007 and built through the downturn. The condominium has a clubhouse; its five buildings are up and the grounds are “complete cosmetically,” he said. Twenty percent of units have sold, and interior finishing work is being done as sales occur.

The pace of building “was measured with an eye on the economy,” Mr. Passavia said, adding that the development was “one of those projects that everybody has been clamoring for.”

In West Hempstead, construction is set to start this summer on 150 one-, two- and three-bedroom upscale rental apartments at the Alexan at West Hempstead Station, a four-and-a-half-story structure built around a central podium, according to Maria R. Rigopoulos, a vice president for development of Trammel Crow Residential, the developer.

“The last year of hiccups has been more from the financial markets,” she said. But the money problems followed 15 years of efforts to transform the site; among the highlights of that period were petitions by a local civic association and eminent-domain proceedings that shut down the 1960s Courtesy Hotel, long a symbol of downtown blight.
Amenities for the new complex include a swimming pool, a cafe, a theater room and a clubhouse with a gym.

“It is happening,” Ms. Rigopoulos said.

And she said the same for the Alexan on Main in Hempstead Village, which is to start construction at the end of the summer, after a two-year approval process and financial woes that temporarily stalled progress. The 166-unit five-story rental building is within walking distance of both the Hempstead Village and Garden City downtowns and train stations.

In Rockville Centre, construction didn’t begin until March on multifamily housing planned since 2001 for a site near the train station; the process had been mired in a lawsuit. Two years ago AvalonBay took over the seven-acre property, a former brownfield site on Banks Avenue, working with the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the village on plans for Avalon Rockville Centre, a 349-unit rental community with a pool and garage parking.

Matthew B. Whalen, the vice president for development of AvalonBay, said he expected progress to be well advanced by the end of the year, with one-bedroom one-bath units available for occupancy the middle of next year and the entire $100 million community ready by mid-2012.

“These are very difficult times for the development community to invest,” Mr. Whalen said. But that has not altered his expectations for “a beautiful asset that will both address the need for our young professionals and residences close to mass transit — the future of Long Island."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/realestate/13lizo.html?ref=realestate