Real LI

He may be a hotshot cable news host, but FOX News' Bill Hemmer's favorite spot in the Hamptons is his own Sag Harbor home. "The Hamptons can be whatever you want it to be," Hemmer says. "If you want to go to the beach, go to the beach. You want to stroll through town, you can stroll through town. But I love my home."

Public records show that "America’s Newsroom" host purchased the home in 2005 for $1.75 million. The single-family home was built in 1995, and is on 2-1/2 wooded acres.

Hemmer credits the home’s backyard for selling him on the property. "I just stood in the backyard and I thought to myself, Well, this would be a nice place to live. Who wouldn’t want to live here?"

Hemmer says he had never owned a house before. "I’ve learned an awful lot, and it’s taught me an awful lot about home and how to make one," he says. "You buy a house, but you make it a home."

While Hemmer won’t label the house a fixer-upper, he does admit it needed some work. "It’s been a project," he says. "It’s been a labor of love and I’ve mostly enjoyed it. But there is a tremendous sucking sound of money that leaves you when you’re paying for your projects."

Whenever he’s got a free weekend, Hemmer tries to make it out East, even in the winter. "It’s just desolate and you cannot see a single car all weekend," he says. "Some people might think that’s something out of 'The Shining.' But when you’re surrounded by the concrete and the steel of New York, it’s a great getaway."

— TIERNEY BRICKER

Lace up your skates and head over to Cliff Drive in Sag Harbor if you want a peek at hockey great Rod Gilbert’s four-bedroom, three-bath home, which has been listed for $2.395 million. There's an open house from from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday.

Gilbert played right wing for the New York Rangers for nearly 20 years and was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1982.

Records show that he purchased the .21-acre property in 2007 for $650,000. The 3,000-square-foot home was built in 2008, and comes with a master bedroom with a Jacuzzi and waterside deck, fireplace and pool with waterfall. The home has views over Noyac Bay.

The listing agents are Richard Kudlak and Linda Casinover of Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

If you’re not looking to buy, you may want to rent the home for the summer, from Memorial Day to Labor Day, for $79,000.

- LAURA MANN

Here's the latest shelter scuttlebutt on the new season of "The Real Housewives of New York City," which starts Feb. 17 on Bravo: The show will be back in the Hamptons.

Star reports that chef Bethenny Frankel will stay with Jill Zarin at her summer home on the East End. Zarin says her house is in the Sag Harbor-Water Mill area. It’s the same home featured in the first season of the hit show.

Public records show that Ramona Singer and Countess LuAnn de Lesseps also have places on the East End -- Singer in Southampton and de Lesseps in Bridgehampton. Alex McCord and husband, Simon van Kempen, tell Newsday that they rented a house in East Hampton over Memorial Day weekend and another in Southampton for the July 4 weekend. Other weekends, they stayed with friends in Water Mill, they say.

And where does new cast member Kelly Killoren Bensimon likes to hang her tennis racket when she’s out East? In East Hampton, where, she tells Newsday, she owns a house she built.

Sag Harbor resident Libby Langdon has some advice for anyone who lives in a small space: Use color on your walls, go for well-proportioned furniture and look for big accessories. These are just some of the tips she offers in her forthcoming book "Libby Langdon's Small Space Solutions" (Knack, $24.99).

Langdon -- who has decorated homes from Southampton to Sagaponack -- appears regularly on HGTV's "Small Space, Big Style."

It took a while, but the three-bedroom, 2 ½-bath home in Sag Harbor owned by Arlene Alda, wife of actor Alan Alda, has finally been sold.

Public records show that the Noyac Road Colonial sold for $550,000. The sale closed Jan. 6. The .57-acre property originally went on the market in the summer of 2007 for a reported $799,000.

The Aldas still own plenty of property in the Hamptons, including more than 25 acres on Olivers Cove Lane in Water Mill and nearly eight acres on Blank Lane in Water Mill. The home they just sold reportedly was used to house the Alda family’s domestic employees for years.

There are open houses and then there are open houses. We're talking one with a little fanfare, such as a wine and cheese pairing and a fine art photography installation, which is actually scheduled to take place next week in Sag Harbor.

This open house, to be hosted by Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate, is set to take place at a new home at 63 Ferry Rd. from from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Nov. 14 . It’s the second time the agency has hosted this type of event. “It should be quite an extravaganza,” says Pricilla Garston. Garston, who is marketing the house, says she expects hundreds of people to show, based on the success of the last one.

The wine and cheese are being presented by Cavanolia’s Cheese Shop and Wine Cellar in Sag Harbor, while the photography installation is being featured by the Robin Rice Gallery in the West Village.

The house, which is on the market for $2,995 million, offers a high-end kitchen designed by Chef Francis DeVilliers. Other highlights include five fireplaces and two luxury master bedroom suites, one of which is on the main level. There are three other bedrooms and 5 1/2 bathrooms. The finished basement boasts a media room.

The outdoor environment is quite nice too. Surrounded by area estates, the 1.5-acre parcel is landscape with a heated gunite pool and a spa with a waterfall. A four-car garage/pool house mirrors the finish of the main house with paneling, French doors and skylights.

An Art & Crafts home on Sag Harbor's historic Main Street is listed with Gioia DiPaolo of Prudential Douglas Elliman for $3.995 million. The five-bedroom, four-bath home was built circa 1920, and sits on .63 acres on a stretch that locals calls “Captain’s Row.” It is said to be one of a handful of village homes that have a "candlestick" fence.

The 3,000-square-foot house has a fireplace, a two-car garage, a heated gunite pool and a cabana. The home was completely renovated in 2004 by Bob Tortora, and featured later in a spread in Hamptons Cottages & Gardens magazine. Tortora also worked on late actor Roy Scheider's Sag Harbor house, which Scheider moved into after selling his Sagaponack property to Billy Joel.

After famously declaring that she will never marry again, Christie Brinkley tells New York magazine that she plans to move to her Sag Harbor house if, and when, she sells Tower Hill. (The Bridgehampton property is on the market for $30 million.) She bought the Sag Harbor house in 2003. "I just want to be here," she told the magazine. "I mean, look at this. I just want to be here." Brinkley gave the interview at another house, across the street. She bought that one last year for $10 million for her parents. They never moved in; now it's Brinkley's office. Catch up on all her properties here.

For the second year in a row, Eugene Remm and Mark Birnbaum, owners of the Manhattan hot spot Tenjune, have opened up The EMM Group Estate on Noyac Path in Noyac to a retinue of celebrity guests.

On July 18, the manse was host to the annual VH1 Summer Of Soul Concert, which benefits the VH1 Save the Music Foundation. On hand for the festivities were performers Ne-Yo and Solange Knowles, and partygoers included Aretha Franklin, who is reportedly renting in Westhampton for a few weeks, Russell Simmons of East Hampton and Bridgehampton’s Lorraine Bracco. NBA star Grant Hill was also there with his wife, R&B singer/songwriter Tamia Hill.

The Estate is a $5 million, 8-acre spread owned by Remm and Birnbaum. The 10,000 square-foot home has seven bedrooms, 8 ½ baths, six fireplaces, tennis court, Jacuzzi, and an Olympic sized swimming pool with an elaborate fountain system.

Other guests this summer have included Ryan Seacrest, Molly Sims, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Chace Crawford and Mary Kate Olsen.

Ex-spouses Christie Brinkley and Billy Joel spent part of the July 4 weekend, along with daughter Alexa and a group of family and friends, eating barbecue and “blowing off some steam” at Joel’s harborfront home in Sag Harbor, according to People.com.

Joel purchased the home in 2001 for nearly $8 million according to published reports.
The once-married couple have quite a collection of Long Island houses in their seperate portfolios, including Brinkley’s Bridgehampton estate, Tower Hill, currently on the market for $30 million, and Joel’s Centre Island estate, Middlesea, listed for sale at $32.5 million.

Joel also owns two adjacent homes in Sagaponack for which he paid a total of about $30 million. Brinkley listed another Water Mill cabin for sale last year for $7.9 million before changing her mind and pulling the property off the market.

Real estate developer and author R. Donahue Peebles, who purchased a 10.1-acre Bridgehampton compound last year for $5.39 million, has just added another East End home to his collection.

Florida-based Peebles will close next week on a $1.91 million, three-bedroom waterfront home in Sag Harbor, just minutes away from his current property. He acquired the house in an estate trust auction. Peebles plans to keep both homes, using the Sag Harbor place as a cabana and guest house, says Lori Barbaria of Prudential Douglas Elliman, who represented Peebles in the purchase of both his Long Island homes. He also owns homes in Coral Gables, Fla., and Washington, D.C.

Of the new property, Barbaria says, “It’s very hard to get a house in that location … They rarely hit the market.” Barbaria says that the house is perched high, affording panoramic views across to Shelter Island and Connecticut. “It’s on the only Sag Harbor waterfront that has a real beach in front of it.”

Peebles is the chairman and chief executive of the Peebles Corporation, a Miami real estate development firm. He is currently developing a $2 billion, 13-acre property near the Las Vegas Strip.

Peebles recently raised more than $300,000 in Miami for Barack Obama's presidential campaign. A source tells REAL LI that there has been talk of a possibility that Peebles will host another Obama fundraiser at his Bridgehampton home.

This darling two-story white clapboard house is so Sag Harbor. It was built in 1840 by Captain Bisgood and has been in the same family ever since. Wood floors, original moldings and four period fireplaces lend to its charm.

The staircase is immediately visible from the entrance foyer, which leads to the front and rear parlors — each with a fireplace. The 1,600-square-foot house also contains a formal dining room, an eat-in kitchen, an alcove den, three bedrooms and two bathrooms. There’s space for laundry and a partial basement.

The house, listed for $1.385 million, occupies a .19-acre parcel. Taxes are $6,176. Robert Lohman of Agawam Alertson’s Southampton office is handling the sale.

Even if you’ve just spent millions of dollars on a new vacation home, you’ll never really fit in out East until you understand the local lingo and the ways of the uber rich. Thankfully, just in time for summer, two new guides are here to help.

Last year, Miles Jaffe, son of reknowned architect Norman Jaffe, self-published his satirical "Hamptons Dictionary: The Essential Guide to Class Warfare". Now he’s back with an expanded and upgraded "platinum" edition published by The Disinformation Company ($17.95).

Whether you’re in BriHa (Bridgehampton), EaHa (East Hampton), SoHa (Southampton), NoHi (North of Montauk Hightway) or SoHi (South of Montauk Highway), it’s all “unreal estate” in the Hamptons. Renting a share for the summer? Then you’re a “hampster” or a “grouper,” or better yet, a “bottom feeder." Saw a Hamptons home listed for sale for less than $1 million? That’s called “affordable housing.” Don’t know what to call your neighbor’s newly built 10,000-square-foot house? It’s a “McMansion” or “megacottage” and your neighbor is a “McMoron” living in a “rich man’s Levittown.”

If you’re still perplexed about the ways of the truly rich, The Official Filthy Rich Handbook" (Workman Publishing, $11.95). will help. The new title pokes fun at the way the rich dress, shop, party and vacation. Summer hotspots include the Hamptons, of course, where Amagansett, Springs and Sag Harbor are “hippie-luxe”; East Hampton is a refuge for “WASPs”, and Southampton has become somewhat “flash.”

The book also has practical advice for anyone in the new-money set, like a list of star-worthy decorators that includes Hamptonites Campion Platt, Jamie Drake and Victoria Hagan. There's even a primer on staffing your new house, making sure to keep straight the pecking order and duties of a housekeeper, a nanny, a chauffer, a valet, a maid and a chef. And if you're looking for a place to network, skip the Maidstone Club unless you're a true blue-blood, and check the listings on The Atlantic Golf Club or The Bridge, both in Bridgehampton, or the Sebonack Golf Club in Southampton.

For those not interested in the Hamptons scene, the Handbook also gives a nod to Long Island's North Shore with an entry on Locust Valley, where $18 million will get you a waterfront Mediterranean-style mansion and neighbors like Nelson Doubleday Jr.

As people start to open up their pools for the season, architect Laszlo Kiss has other plans in mind. His prototype for an eco-friendly modular house in Sag Harbor will heat a pool on the property with sunlight. According to an article in today's Newsday, black rubber mats on the roof will trap the warmth. "So I take my pool water, run it up to these rubber mats, they absorb the heat, and when the water goes back in the pool, it's 85 degrees."

Newsday photo / Daniel Goodrich

Rocker Billy Joel put his Centre Island estate on the market because the village gave him grief over repairing the dock at the 14-acre waterfront spread, writes legendary publisher Dan Rattiner in his memoir to be released next month.

“I thought I could put one of my boats there and speedboat to Manhattan in twenty minutes when I needed to go,” Joel tells Rattiner, “…in the end, they wouldn’t let me do it…so I just gave up on it…the house is for sale.” Joel’s estate has been on the market since 2006. The current asking price is $32.5 million for the home where he and wife, Katie Lee, married in 2004.

Rattiner’s book, "In the Hamptons: My Fifty Years with Farmers, Fisherman, Artists, Billionaires, and Celebrities" (Harmony Books; $24.95), is full of reminiscences of Hamptons icons, including artists Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, authors John Steinbeck and Spalding Gray, and his longtime friend Joel, who also owns a home in Sag Harbor and two in Sagaponack.

Over dinner at the American Hotel in Sag Harbor, Rattiner writes, Joel explained what brought him out to the Hamptons in the first place, and what keeps him there. “I’m a Long Island boy, born and raised,” Joel says, “but I’m from the working man’s Long Island, Levittown. Massapequa. The working men and women live out east. And I want to be among them.”

The next Hamptons Cottages and Gardens Idea House will be green, thanks to Peter Sabbeth. He and wife, decorator Melissa Green, own Sag Harbor-based Modern Green Home, which they started almost two years ago, according to an article in the East Hampton Star. The Sagaponack farmhouse was built in 1860, and is being completely renovated with “a very, very modern addition onto the back of it.” The house was once owned by author James Jones, who wrote “From Here to Eternity.” “It’s going to be the first ecologically friendly designer showhouse in the Northeast,” Sabbeth said. When done, the house will be 6,300 square feet, with a 2,700-square-foot finished basement.

The East Hampton Star photo by Carissa Katz

While visiting friends in the Hamptons, Malibu-based interior designer Michael Lee found himself drawn to the colorful architecture of Sag Harbor, and one building in particular -- an 1865 Second-Empire style house on Main Street.

Originally built as a one-family dwelling by clockmaker Benjamin Hope, the house had suffered through various incarnations over its 150-year history. When Lee found the home, it had been carved into three separate apartments and needed a complete gut and renovation to bring it back to its original grandeur. “It was a dump, but you could walk in and see what it had been,” Lee says.

The restored house is featured in a glossy spread in the March 2008 issue of Architectural Digest. Lee co-owns the town house with his Malibu friends Alex (owner of a private equity firm) and Susan Glasscock (an organic farmer). Lee worked with AML Architecture in Southampton and Manhattan and Palm Beach-based landscaper Mario Nievera. Sag Harbor antiques dealers Michael and Elfi Eicke supplied many of the furnishings.

In a nod to the West Coast roots of the home’s owners, the third floor has been transformed into an informal theater for movie screenings and live performances by musicians and singer-songwriters that Lee and the Glasscocks know.

Actor Roy Scheider, who died Sunday, spoke to Newsday last year about his decision to sell his Sagaponack home to Billy Joel. Here is the interview with Ellen Yan, which appeared June 5, 2007:

BY ELLEN YAN
yan@newsday.com

Actor Roy Scheider's home went for more than a song; it went to songman Billy Joel.

"Jaws" icon Scheider is expected to close today on the Sagaponack house he built between the ocean and some farms in 1994, said sources close to the deal.

"I'm so happy that Billy Joel is buying it, because it's the perfect house for him," said Scheider, 74. "He can put his piano on the second floor, overlook the beach and the farmland and write beautiful music for all of us. Maybe he'll write an ocean's album."

Agents involved are mum on the sale price for the five-bedroom, five-bath, four-fireplace home with porches and decks galore.

But the 1-acre property was last listed at $18.75 million. Scheider said the price was "close."

Joel's agents confirmed the deal, but declined to comment further.

The singer, 58, has his own real estate for sale. His Centre Island waterside property has five bedrooms, but at $32.5 million, it's stacked with amenities - a tennis court, a music room, a wine cellar and a four-car garage. He also owns a waterfront house in nearby Sag Harbor.

But in a little bit of down-to-earth reality, both stars have felt the pinch of the softer real estate market.

They've had to do what the small guys have done - price chopping. Joel originally asked for $37.5 million last September, when he put his home on the market. Scheider originally asked for $20 million in April 2006 and went down by $1.25million last March.

Scheider and his family are waiting for a new home to be built, not far from their temporary quarters at Sag Harbor's The American Hotel, an 1846 landmark that could belong in a Currier and Ives lithograph. Scheider bought the house when it was half-built and got the chance to put in his own architectural marks.

This time, Scheider's four-bedroom house will be landlocked. That means no more piling sandbags outside the house, like he did in 2005 just before a nor'easter. The house was safe, but the storm bit away more beach. "People who live there have to restore the beach occasionally," Scheider said. "He knows that," he said, referring to Joel.

Scheider said his new home, expected to be livable in August, is "modest." He's like a lot of other Long Islanders who have outgrown their longtime homes.

"It really was fine for its time, but the kids are grown up now," he said. "They're going away and we're downsizing, and I'm doing more work in Europe than I am here."

Hamptons.com reports on the latest discussion over affordable housing at what will become a luxury condo complex at the former Bulova watch factory in Sag Harbor.

Artist Eric Fischl "finally paints in peace," reports Art+Auction in its January issue on the ARTINFO Web site. "No longer distracted by blaring sirens, rumbling trucks and taxi drivers beeping their car horns outside his SoHo loft, Fischl now works in a spacious, airy studio deep in the woods near Sag Harbor, on Long Island." There, writes the magazine, he and wife, artist April Gornik, living and work as "birds chirp in trees and light creates dappled patterns across a well-tended garden." Fischl, who grew up on Long Island, bought the 4.8-acre property in 1997 for $300,000. According to property records, it is now worth an estimated $4.6 million.

Art+Auction / ARTINFO photo

In the Hamptons, the founder of Dan's Papers is known for his trademark hoaxes, from lions set loose to control North Haven's deer population to butchers donating meat dropped from police helicopters to sharks, right before "Jaws" debuted.

But it was a fake news account about abandoned real estate that really got Dan Rattiner's hoaxes noticed.

Decades ago, when reclusive billionaire businessman Howard Hughes left his Las Vegas penthouse, no one knew where he was. Rattiner put him in Montauk. Hughes' new whereabouts, the newsman wrote, was the "penthouse" of a long-abandoned, seven-story office building in Montauk. The story got tourists and locals staring at the building.

"That was some hoax," Rattiner said. "People believed he was up there, and they were taking pictures."

Continue reading "Dan's Papers founder knows his Hamptons real estate" »

Bob and Susan Fisher's Sag Harbor cottage is the subject of an 11-page spread in the December issue of Cottage Living, which hits newsstands Nov. 26. The cottage has been "one-room-wide" until Sag Harbor builder Michael Kelley and East Hampton designer Peter Price came in to "reconfigure the interior, gutting the kitchen and baths and converting the pool house into guest quarters." Sag Harbor interior designer John Bjørnen worked on the living room, with its calm and cool feeling, despite the chartreuse couch. The couple owns nearby Fishers Home Furnishings, which sells new and restored furniture. They had owned a larger house, but after their children moved away, decided to downsize.

Photographer Tria Giovan for Cottage Living

There are campy houses and there are camp houses, and one renovated Sag Harbor dwelling is the latter.

The December 2007 issue of House Beautiful, which comes out Tuesday, features designer Amanda Kyser’s circa-1929 home, which once was part of a summer camp near the beach. Kyser tells the magazine that when she first saw the place, it reminded her of Sleeping Beauty’s cottage, “all covered in vines and hidden in a cedar forest….a shack with a turret.” Luckily, Kyser and her husband, a journalist, enjoyed renovating.

Kyser’s renovation plan was to keep it “very, very simple…we kept the original floors …and didn’t touch the stairwell…” The designer even retained the nicked wall with initials carved into it by decades of campers. She had the wall remilled in North Carolina and put it in the kitchen and in alcove in the guestroom.

The home is decorated with Asian antiques, like a cast-bronze Northern Thai rain drum that is now used as a coffee table in the living room. The horn chair that sits beside the coffee table is said to have belonged to abstract painter Jackson Pollack, who lived in Springs.

The home’s yellow dining room curtains are made of silk purchased in Paris, lined with with cream-colored blanket wool. The curtains help keep the chill out of this former camp house turned year-round-retreat.

On Nov. 4, author E. L. Doctorow will receive a lifetime achievement award when he accepts the 2007 Chicago Tribune Literary Prize. What many people don’t know is that the author of "Ragtime" and "World’s Fair" does much of his writing in the home he shares with his wife Helen in Sag Harbor.

Doctorow is profiled in Sunday's edition of the Tribune, which describes the home as, “A modest frame house near Upper Sag Harbor Cove” in which the author has lived for three decades.

Public records show that the home on John Street, listed in Helen’s name, sits on an 8,700 square foot lot.

The couple also have an apartment in Manhattan, where Doctorow says he fulfills his “human need to walk among strangers.” As for Sag Harbor, he tells the paper, "After a while, all this peace and quiet drives you crazy”.

Doctorow is among an impressive group of literary giants who have lived in the town, including John Steinbeck, James Fenimore Cooper and Truman Capote.

Photo, New York State Writers Institute

Billy Joel, inside a building at his Centre Island estate, with two model boats he owns

Billy Joel may not have to wait anymore. Shawn Elliott, president of Shawn Elliott Luxury Homes and Estates, says, "I have a customer for his house."

"He loves the water," says Elliot of his client, a businessman. "He's all about the water."

Joel has been trying to sell his Centre Island estate for more than a year. The 14-acre waterfront property went on the market for $37.5 million in September 2006. He bought the house for $22.5 million in 2002. Sources have told Newsday that his main reason for wanting to leave is frustration over not being able to build a dock for his three boats. Since putting the house on the market, he has purchased two homes in Sagaponack. He also has a house in Sag Harbor.

Last month, he let his listing with Daniel Gale Sotheby's International Realty for the 14,000-square-foot mansion expire. Bonnie Williamson, who has represented the property for Daniel Gale, declined to comment today. She told Newsday this month that although the home is not listed on the firm's Web site, it is still for sale and the price remains a reduced $32.5 million.

Elliott says it's in his client's ballpark. "There's not a lot of inventory in the $10-million-plus open-listing market," he says. His client is "looking to trade up," but doesn't want to wait a year for a new house to be built for him on the North Shore.

"He really wants to look at the house," Elliott says.

Newsday Photo / Ken Spencer

It's hard to believe, but the controversial Morpurgo house actually sold today at auction, for $1.46 million. Read all about it here.

Newsday Photo / Alan Raia

Francisco D'Agostino has filed a lawsuit in Manhattan against a Sag Harbor homeowner for what the suit claims were subpar living conditions for the $3,600-a-day rental.

D'Agostino, who has homes in Manhattan and Venezuela, claims that when he brought his family to stay at the home on Maple Lane, he was greeted with a foul stench, and bedsheets and towels soaked in urine. The D'Agostinos quickly found other digs.

The Daily News reports that D'Agostino is seeking damages of $100,000 in the breach of contract suit against homeowner Walter Schupfer over the rental gone awry.

Alexa Ray Joel will perform next weekend at a benefit for Save Sag Harbor, a community organization working to keep chain stores from spoiling the historic character of the village. Joel, featured in a video interview on Hamptons.com, says, “I’ll always have a place in my heart for all of Long Island, but who am I kidding, I favor Sag Harbor …it’s the one place that hasn’t changed.”

Joel's parents own at least $100 million in Long Island real estate between them. Her mother is supermodel and real estate maven Christie Brinkley whose Bridgehampton estate, Tower Hill, is on the market for $30 million. Her father is musician Billy Joel, who recently purchased Roy Scheider’s Sagaponack home for almost $17 million and whose Centre Island estate had been on the market for the past year for $32.5 million. The listing expired this week, although his former listing agent says he'll still sell.