Once Upon A Dune
Follow Your Bliss and Shelter Your Assets
Maslow’s five levels of human needs are: physiological needs, safety and security, belongingness and love, esteem and self-actualization come into play with respect to understanding motivation and action with respect to real estate and housing at all levels. Real estate itself can be treated as an emotional experience and/or logical product of life-stage choices that meet one or more of these criteria.
There are many ways to treat the real estate market from an analytical or theoretical position:
The real estate market can be treated as a vacancy chain.
The real estate market can be treated as a social network.
The real estate market can be treated as a life-stage process.
The real estate market can be treated as symbolic, status and personality driven.
The real estate market can be treated as commoditization of money-wealth.
Properties in these Hampton communities are typically high value and price varies by degree of proximity to the water, with the highest priced homes on the ocean, then the bay, then mainland bay front, mainland canal front, water view etc. in addition to usual variables such as acreage, architecture, size, amenities, schools, accessibility, etc. and unusual such as uniqueness, rarity or past celebrity ownership.
There is a great deal of broker/agent competition for scarce resources among buyers and sellers, more so as prices climb (i.e., there is a short list of people who can purchase a $20,000,000 home). There are numerous brokerage firms in the Hampton markets. They range from small independent boutique operations, regional franchises, super-regional networks to massive Nationally-Branded One-Stop Operations and publicly-traded holding corporations with multiple brokerages. In fact, in the Greater Westhampton Beach market, Real Estate represents the largest proportion of businesses in town. Here, there are over 50 brokerages and over 750 – 1,000 agents competing for share in this market footprint. Greater Westhampton Beach is becoming more and more attractive for many reasons. We offer much to many - Learn More. New construction, major renovation and new sub-divisions have revitalized this community.
I learned New Millennium Real Estate basics in 2006 at a boutique Hampton brokerage catering to high-end clientele and customers known for salesmanship and showmanship. Some 30 years ago, I worked as an onsite manager and in-house sales person for spec builders in the Greater Brookville market in the early 1970s. Homes selling for $500 thousand are now selling for over $15 million. A box ad in the New York Times Sunday Edition would bring in a buyer with deep pockets to the Gold Coast. I would show a property (somewhere in the process of completion), effect closure and move on to the next.
Real estate advertising and marketing has rapidly morphed into a huge business of global importance employing multiple delivery channels and requiring more effort on the part of the salesperson and/or brokerage to reach targeted customers. While it is relatively easier to show and sell a $25 million or $50 million dollar property as it is a $2.5 million or $5 million dollar or a $250 thousand or $500 thousand in the overall scheme of things.
It is access to and affinity with customers with this purchasing power that will make or break the agent targeting the affluent.
Tracking down wealth (high end properties and high end buyers) is an important component to understand how to attract and retain the business of the affluent. This is especially important to the broker/brands with high-end properties that target the ultra-rich. All of this requires strategy with respect to marketing and advertising.
Land is most precious in the Hamptons, waterfront more so. There are a number of all Hampton properties listed as “raw land” that stretch from East Hampton through Remsenburg and are priced from $55 million down. A typical price for a wooded, level one-acre “South of the Highway” parcel is a “near million”, while a property one-third that size, a teardown built in 1950-something with a “right of way” to oceanfront on Dune Road might command at least $2,500,000.
Development and gentrification are critical to understanding the market direction and dynamics. This is the cost of building. Construction costs typically vary in the Hamptons. $225 and $350 per square foot are minimal expectations for building and remodeling. More upscale Hampton Mansions and Cottages are known to have cost $750 or more per square foot.