Grand sale or grand rumor?

Bertha Coombs Reporter • Profile

EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. - In a neighborhood where tear-downs go for seven figures, a modest three-bedroom, three-bathroom farmhouse on the ocean just down the road from comedian Jerry Seinfeld has reportedly been sold for $90 million — a new record for a residential property in the United States.

A 40-acre estate in the Hamptons — the Long Island summer retreat of New York’s rich and famous — was bought by a Swedish industrialist who has rented the estate for the past few summer seasons and made owner Adelaide de Menil Carpenter, a professional photographer and heiress to the Schlumberger oil-company fortune, an offer she couldn’t refuse reports the New York Post.

The old New York record for a residential property sale was an all-cash deal worth $45 million for a 25-acre waterfront property in East Hampton three months ago, but this new purchase has reportedly pushed the envelope to nearly nine figures.

Still, the recent sale may be nothing more than a rumor.

Representatives of the property’s owner tell CNBC that the home has not been sold. However, the apparent eye-popping cost of a home located on real estate that’s about as prime as it gets is still the talk of the town, says Dan Ritter, publisher of Hamptons lifestyle publication Dan’s Papers in nearby Bridgehampton, N.Y.

The very rich are just like the rest of us, he says — they are obsessed with real estate.

“I’m finding it hard to write about anything else,” Ritter said. “It’s just like major league baseball for 98 percent of population — everyone wants to know how much higher it will go.”

Tom Fitzmaurice, an East Hampton real estate specialist with the Corcoran Group, says he would not be surprised if the property sale were true. With a cost of $2.2 million an acre, the math isn’t altogether out of line he notes.

“A smaller lot could go for a higher price per acre, and as this is only one huge home site, so if this was a lot of home sites the value would be even higher,” Fitzmaurice said.

In a way, it’s a bargain, he said.

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