BOTTOM FISHING: Ugly Houses, Stunning Views

CAN YOU GET A WATER VIEW in the Hamptons under or around 500K?

Yes, you can! The house won’t be much to look at, though.

Take the view of Amagansett’s Napeague Bay, top, for example. Here’s the house that goes with it, below. At 195 square feet on 1/12 of an acre, it’s barely one step up from a trailer. They’re asking 515K for it, too. But it’s a breathtaking view in an unspoiled area, and the so-called house is right smack on the water.

The beauty of a crummy house is that you can do anything you want with it. No historic detail to worry about. Where is Domino magazine when we need it? Those clever editors could have taken one of these ugly ducks and transformed it into a stylish swan in a weekend.

Have a look at this barn-like structure in the Sag Harbor area, below, on the market for 475K. It’s on .70 acre, with woods in back, water in front.

Awkward on the outside, the interior is more appealing:

And the view, below, is sensational (unless the listing is misleading, which is always possible – I haven’t seen it).

My main aesthetic complaint with these places is the windows. Swapping out aluminum sliders for multi-paned windows and French doors would go a long way toward making these properties more attractive. As for landscaping: think ornamental grasses.

This one, below, is near me, in the Springs area of East Hampton. It’s little more than a shoebox. Asking 425K, the brown-paneled interior cries out for buckets of white paint.

Dig them motorized awnings. They’re to mitigate the glare of the sunsets over Three Mile Harbor (don’t go by that terrible picture, below, from the realtor’s site – it’s more beautiful than that).

A water view, be it ocean, bay, or harbor, is what the East End of Long Island is about, after all.

[Click on live links in this post for more info]

Bottom-Fishing on the East End

I’VE BEEN GETTING FED UP with house prices here in the Humptons. Yesterday my friend Debre and I stumbled upon an old farmhouse with a ‘For Sale’ sign on Old Stone Highway in Springs, below, found the door open (!) and the realtor’s flyers conveniently stacked on the kitchen counter. I was hoping it was under $1mil. In fact, they’re asking $2.5mil.

Turns out that’s for two houses — a barn-like 7BR place built at the back of the property in 2001, plus the renovated 4BR 19th century house, above, nearer the road (suggested in the literature as a guest house), both on 1.5 acres. Still, that’s a big number, and this blog is supposed to be about affordable real estate.

So I decided to troll the listings to see what’s new on the low end of the scale here on the East End of Long Island, and turned up these three older properties — one in the Sag Harbor area on the South Fork and two in Greenport on the North Fork — for much more agreeable prices. (Click on the live links below for more details.)

I love the look of this 2BR Craftsman-style bungalow in Greenport, below, asking 365K. Said to be in excellent condition, with a couple of outbuildings, and well-located near the harbor.

These have always intrigued me: Breezy Shores is a bayfront community in Greenport made up of classic 1940s beach cottages, below, with a shared beach and marina. No heat, unfortunately, so their use is limited, and prices have gone up since I last looked. There are two available, asking 349K for each.

See how great it could look here.

This nondescript cottage, below, is really cheap for the South Fork: asking 299K. Not having seen it, I make no representations. It’s on Noyack Avenue in Pine Neck, near the water, with mooring rights and gas heat. Maybe it could be charmed up? I’m sure a team of editors from Domino magazine could have done it.

With summer ending, houses languishing on the market, and interest rates still low, this could be a very good time to look.

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Now Domino is Falling!

DOMINO MAGAZINE IS FOLDING, and I am devastated.  Hard on the heels of Cottage Living, my other favorite magazine is ceasing to publish.  Why why why why WHY??!!!???

As if it wasn’t enough to lose Cottage Living, Country Living, O at Home, the infant Blueprint — not to mention HG — now this lively, original, and inspiring magazine, that just made you want to go re-arrange furniture and paint a wall pink, is no more.

I never subscribed, because I just couldn’t wait to receive it in the mail if there was any chance of finding it at a newsstand a day or two earlier.

Domino was fun and and unpretentious — they never shied from IKEA furniture, if it was used well — and they featured mostly old houses, often in Brooklyn. In the February ’09 issue (March ’09 will be the last), there’s a 1930s brick row house in Brussels, Belgium; a gingerbread Victorian in New Orleans; and a couple of L.A. bungalows.

A few months back, irresistibly, they featured Chase Booth’s three-week makeover of a dank ’70s ranch with an acoustical tile ceiling in Columbia County, and made it look GREAT.

Is the economy really THAT bad?

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From today’s mediabistro.com: Conde Nast to Fold Domino (UnBeige)
Conde Nast is folding Domino, the young “Shopping Magazine for Your Home” launched in April of 2005. A final March issue will be published, and Dominomag.com will be shuttered. “This decision … is driven entirely by the economy,” said Conde Nast president and CEO Charles Townsend. BusinessWeek: Domino and the folly of the magazine spin-off. NYO: A spokeswoman said Domino editor Deborah Needleman and publisher Beth Brenner would both leave the company, but that some staff would be given new jobs at Conde Nast. NYP: Though the upscale shelter magazine was a money loser, Newhouse’s decision caught insiders and outsiders by surprise.