“It goes a long way to paying our taxes locally,” said Mr. Stoecker, a senior vice president of Town and Country Real Estate in East Hampton, “and it’s a positive experience all the way around.”
So goes life as summer approaches in the Hamptons. Happy for a windfall, homeowners are cleaning out kitchens and closets in anticipation of paying guests. The homeowners then decamp for less pricey accommodations or take vacations with their bounty. In some cases investors are sprucing up their well-appointed houses, enticing renters willing to pay $15,000 or $50,000 or $100,000 for a month — or more than $600,000 for a Memorial Day to Labor Day stay (and that’s not including the maid, the pool boy, the gardener or the electric bill).
“We have very few hotels,” said Gary DePersia, a senior vice president of the Corcoran Group in East Hampton. “Renting a house has become a convention out here.” It is also something of a race for the most suitable property, with “people in a frenzy trying to find the right house,” whether that’s a $35,000-a-month rental, or a $300,000-a-season rental. “Each renter has their own idea of what their Hamptons experience should be, have a location in mind, a bedroom count in mind and a price in mind,” Mr. DePersia said.
From Westhampton to Montauk, Shelter Island or the North Fork, there are 5,000 to 7,000 rental listings on the market at any given time, Mr. DePersia said, but “in any location, there are only a finite number of good houses.” With prices higher than last year’s and places renting at a faster pace, he said, the winners are houses with amenities like flat-screen televisions, DVD players, wireless Internet access and fresh-looking furnishings. “People expect the same amenities out here as when they stay in a fine hotel,” he said.
Fifteen years ago, he recalled, most Hamptons rentals were taken for the entire summer. As the economy dipped in recent years, the two-week rental became more popular, as well as options to rent for August only, or for July through Labor Day, to coordinate with children’s day-camp schedules. People “are not going to downsize the house,” so instead they book a shorter stay, he said.
Lawrence Citarelli Jr., the president of First Hampton International Realty, has a $395,000 listing for anyone interested in spending July in a 12-bedroom 12-and-a-half-bath mansion on six acres — with pool, tennis and eight fireplaces (in case it gets chilly).
Mr. Stoecker and Jennifer Wilson, who work as a team for Town and Country, have an inventory of 93 homes for sale and 785 summer rentals. So far, Ms. Wilson estimated, about 60 percent of rentals have been scooped up, and more than last year are being rented for the whole season.
Indeed, Mr. Stoecker said, this season seems more like the days before the market took a nose dive — with renters who started shopping on Thanksgiving weekend and trudged through the ice and snow, then “pulled the trigger” in January. He also said that houses south of Route 27 usually rented first and that communities “with the most inventory are the woodsy sections of East Hampton, Amagansett and Sag Harbor.”
But despite Mr. Stoecker’s enthusiasm, perusals of sites like Craigslist turn up a wealth of options for single-week stays, or even long weekends. One recent example is a historic house on a Peconic Bay inlet in Sag Harbor with “lots of lounging areas,” according to the advertisement. Weeks in May and September are $3,200, in June and July $3,800. Cleaning and utilities are included. (When stays are longer, utilities, housekeepers, swimming coaches, landscapers and pool cleaning services can add 15 percent or more to a tenant’s bill, brokers say.)
One of Mr. Stoecker’s properties, a 3,000-square-foot North Haven house on two acres with a waterfront pool and a private beach on Sag Harbor Bay, belongs to Shannon Such and Howard Deutsch. It is listed for $295,000 for the summer. For the last 25 years it has been rented out for the summer — for 23 of them to the same family.
Ms. Such, a lawyer in Manhattan, says that in the fall, winter and spring her husband spends most of the time enjoying the “almost spiritual” water views at the “light and airy and informal but fun” cottage, while she comes out to the East End on weekends.
Summer is “a beautiful time, but it is a crowded time,” Ms. Such said. “It gives us an opportunity to travel” — this summer to Peru — and the presence of tenants easily covers the annual cost of maintaining the house. “It is a bit of an annuity.”
Dee Kerrigan Perfido, a broker-owner of First Hampton International Realty in Westhampton Beach, said she had seen a “nice uptick” in rentals for the first time in three years. Waterfront homes for rent are “going very quickly,” partly because many that sat out the downturn as rentals have now sold. Former tenants are among the buyers. “Renters have decided they liked it here and they’ve bought,” Ms. Kerrigan Perfido said.
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