With the countdown to 2025 on, we are looking back at some of the past year’s biggest stories. This year’s most-read stories online prove once again that it’s not always the biggest sales that garner readers’ attention. Here are the most-read stories in Hamptons real estate in 2024:
1) Dwyane Wade, Gabrielle Union Are Now North Forkers?
In November, news broke that retired NBA star Dwyane Wade and his actress wife Gabrielle Union had purchased a home on the East End — and it was our biggest story of the year.
While the Hamptons are where most celebrity couples flock, Wade and Union instead purchased a $2.6 million home in the less ritzy Jamesport, though their home is overlooking the Long Island Sound.
The modern home, which has been featured in the magazines Domino and Dwell, was sold in an off-market deal. Sheri Winter Parker of The Corcoran Group was involved in the sale, but Corcoran declined to comment.
Behind The Hedges was able to figure out the home’s location in Riverhead Town. The 0.47-acre lot was originally home to a 1940s cabin that former owners Julie Satow, a best-selling author, and Stuart Elliott, the CEO and editor-in-chief of the Real Deal, purchased in 2016 for $600,000, according to property records.
2) Exclusive: Bethenny Frankel Buys Hamptons ‘Hidden Treasure’
Just as the unofficial start to summer got underway, Hedges exclusively reported that the Skinnygirl mogul Bethenny Frankel had purchased a new summer home, on the Shinnecock Bay, in the Hamptons. An avid paddleboard enthusiast, Frankel was elated by her very own sandy beach.
Behind The Hedges revealed that she bought a Southampton home for $5.45 million back in October 2023. The sale went under the radar because she purchased it under a limited liability company.
She credited Garrett Pike of the Pike-Counihan Team at the Corcoran Group with representing her in what she called “a deal,” and also his helping with the renovation project.
“While she still owns her home in Bridgehampton, we had been on a search to find something on the ‘sand’ for a long time,” Pike exclusively told Hedges at the time. “This came on the market and we both knew this was the one. As she describes it, ‘It’s a hidden treasure.’”
3) Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ Hosted His Once Iconic White Party at This Hamptons Home
When Sean “Diddy” Combs was arrested in September on a federal indictment involving sex trafficking earlier, many in the Hamptons immediately harkened back to the days of his iconic White Party bashes at East Hampton home.
Celebrities flocked to the waterfront house for the annual party that, for a time, became a rite of summer passage. Decked in white from head to toe, party-goers reveled at the hip-hop mogul’s contemporary-style house overlooking Gardiner’s Bay in the late 1990s and early 2000s — while others jockeyed to get on the list next to Paris Hilton, Mariah Carey, Howard Stern, Leonardo DiCaprio, rocker Tommy Lee and more.
Though there is nothing in the indictment that points to the Hamptons parties, it wasn’t long before rumors swirled about his alleged “freak off” parties having been held in the Hamptons decades ago.
4) Star-Studded Bash at Michael Rubin’s $50M Hamptons Home
The July Fourth holiday weekend started with a bang — Michael Rubin hosted his annual White Party in Bridgehampton, bringing an influx of celebrities to the Hamptons and leaving anyone following the fête asking where the party of the summer was held.
It’s no wonder why it was among our most-read of the year.
Rubin, the founder and CEO of Fanatics, a global digital sports platform, and his wife, the model Camille Fishel, host the blowout bash at their 8,000-square-foot oceanfront home on Dune Road. Hedgerow Exclusive Properties represented Rubin in an off-market transaction in 2020 for a whopping $50.15 million.
5) The 10 Most Expensive Hamptons Home Sales of 2023
Our annual story about the priciest home sales in the Hamptons always seems to attract plenty of eyeballs. Everyone is interested in knowing how big the biggest sales were over the past year. If you’re curious about our 2024 list, it’s already available. Click here.
6) Alec Baldwin’s Hamptons Property, Back on the Market, Boasts Expansion Opportunities
In early January 2024, Alec Baldwin’s Hamptons house returned to the market, touting the rarity that the five-acre property in Amagansett’s Estate Section can accommodate two large residences.
The new price was $18.995 million.
Along with the new listing is a new video that features the actor speaking about the place he has called home in the Hamptons since 1995. A year after purchasing it, he put an addition on the eastern side of the house and, in 2014, after starting a family with his wife, Hilaria, they expanded the western side.
The Baldwins’ 10,000-square-foot modern farmhouse has plans for further expansion and the opportunity to build a second dwelling. The existing five-bedroom home has approvals to add two more bedrooms, a formal dining room, a sunroom, a large screened-in porch and a study.
Unfortunately, it has still yet to sell and was taken off the market in July.
7) Cutchogue Home, Once One of the Highest Priced on North Fork, Up for Auction
In May of 2024, a Cutchogue house, previously listed at $7.8 million, became available through a private luxury auction. Paramount Realty USA set the reserve, or minimum bid price, substantially lower at $4.95 million for the modern, newly-built house at 15105 Oregon Road.
It is the second time the 7,000-square-foot house on a 5.8-acre property has gone to auction. In 2022, it was offered in a Paramount Realty auction with a reserve price of $5.8 million.
8) Final Figure: What Gosman’s Dock in Montauk Lured in at Closing
In October, word spread quickly that Gosman’s, a prime spread of commercial real estate along Montauk Harbor that has long been the epicenter of the Montauk fishing industry, had sold. We didn’t know the sales price until November, though.
Suffolk County deed transfers finally revealed that the nine parcels involved in the sale, totaling nearly 12 acres, closed Oct. 21 for a total of $33,082,868.
It has been reported that the buyer was Stephen Deckoff, a billionaire who founded private equity firm Black Diamond Capital Management, which manages $10 billion in assets, according to Forbes. He is a U.S. Virgin Islands resident and real estate investor, owning multi-million dollar properties in New York City, Colorado and Beverly Hills. He also made news last year when he bought Caribbean islands Great St. James and Little St. James, which had belonged to Jeffrey Epstein, for $60 million.
9) Sands Motel in Montauk Has Been Sold
The Sands Motel in downtown Montauk, which hit the market last summer for $28 million, sold ahead of the summer 2024 season.
A prominent hospitality group, made the purchase, according to Hal Zwick and Jeff Sztorc at Compass Commercial in the Hamptons, who exclusively represented this prime piece of commercial real estate.
The deal closed on March 21. The final purchase price, revealed in June, was $23.5 million.
With more than 250 feet of frontage on Montauk Highway, the property offers 360-degree water views of the Atlantic Ocean and Fort Pond and is located across the street from the ocean beach. There are 43 keys across four buildings, all close to Montauk’s downtown. There is also a pool facing Fort Pond.
10) Joy Behar Lists Sag Harbor Home for $10.5M
Joy Behar, the Emmy Award-winning co-host of ABC-TV’s popular daytime talk show The View, is selling her Sag Harbor home of nearly a decade.
Behar has listed the restored Victorian with Saunders & Associates’ Ed Gaetjens and John F. Wines and Bill Wines of the Wines Team. The asking price is $10.5 million, nearly two and a half times what she paid for it almost a decade ago.
“It is a timeless home that balances Victorian charm and modest living,” Gaetjens told Behind The Hedges in late November. In the heart of the historic village at 98 Bay Street, “The best location in Sag Harbor,” Gaetjens continues, “close to Havens Beach, the Sag Harbor Yacht Club, the marina and the village shops and restaurants.”
Email tvecsey@danspapers.com with further comments, questions or tips. Follow Behind The Hedges on X and Instagram.
