Some coveted Hamptons beach houses, which typically rent for as much as $18,000 a week, are languishing this summer. This could be the flip side of the red-hot housing market of the past two years,
CNBC reports.
This is causing some Southampton, Westhampton and East Hampton, New York, landlords to slash their asking prices by as much as 30%.
"There is a tremendous amount of inventory, and people are not renting it," Douglas Elliman's Enzo Morabito says. "And it's across all segments, from the very low to the very top of the market."
One waterfront rental listing of Morabito's was asking $70,000 a month, but a potential taker offered just $45,000.
"It's a different market right now," Morabito says.
Brokers say many of their weathier clientele, who hunkered down in the Hamptons during the pandemic, are traveling to European and other countries, as COVID recedes.
With the Hamptons popular among the Wall Street crowd, the recent decline in the markets could be giving some of them pause, realtors add.
Sotheby's International Realty's Harald Grant puts it thus: "There are a lot of uncertainties in the air — about the economy, both locally and nationally. It all affects the market."
As recently as May, however, median rents were up 46% from May 2019. The average sales price in the Hamptons was $2.6 million in the first quarter of 2022, up 25% from a year earlier.
"The assumption that rents would be sustainable at these elevated levels has been proven to be false."Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel, says.
Morabito adds: "The buyers removed themselves from the rental market, and all of a sudden, the renters aren't there, so you have this huge surplus."
On the bright side, those who have it are still spending it. One example is an ultra-modern, $300,000-a-week Bridgehampton rental on Surfside Drive with nine bedrooms, pool house, outdoor pavillion, gym, media room, Gunite pool and spa. Corcoran has rented it for a week in June at full price.