Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Rumors about bigfoot possibly exaggerated

Hey schlubfans. I apologize for my dearth of blogging. The last two weeks have been extremely hectic. I was working on an article that touches on (among other things) the legend of bigfoot in the Hamptons.

For those of you who don't know what the heck I'm talking about, here's a little back story:

Back in February, I wrote a story for the Post about how the Hamptons real estate scene had slowed down considerably, and I had been told by several independent sources that a strange, unnamed millionaire buyer had been cruising Hamptons property, stopping by multimillion dollar estates, and offering firm, fixed $1 million offers on them. And that several of his offers had been accepted.

The rumor had several incarnations: that the buyer (aka "bigfoot") was going through with several purchases; that he had just made the offers to stir the market; that although he gotten accepted offers on several places he only bought one of them. Every broker I spoke to heard the rumor. Not one could tell me who this person was or what had actually happened. (Most brokers were skeptical.)

But the rumor had a tremendous impact on the Hamptons market. Because of this, Hamptons buyers were putting in absurdly low offers on properties (and were surprised when sellers wouldn't even counteroffer).

Turns out the brokers were right to be skeptical. New York magazine's great Jhoanna Robledo does a marvelous job debunking said rumor.