Author Information

Debra Scott

Debra Scott is a recovering real estate agent, having plied the trade at Whitbread Nolan in Manhattan (back in the day), Vicki Bagley Realty in Washington, D.C., and Braverman Newbold Brennan before it was purchased by Sotheby’s International Realty.

Articles by this author:

  • Cocktails: The Heat Is On

        With the relentless battering of this winter’s weather and the endless succession of long nights, a body needs to break cabin fever, get to a place of conviviality, and imbibe some heart and soul-warming libations.

    By: Debra Scott
  • South Fork on the Cusp of a Sellers' Market
    Buyers have held the cards in the real estate game here since 2008, but a slow switch to a sellers’ market began last year and is taking on steam.
    By: Debra Scott
  • Montauk Gets Busy as Rental Season Explodes
    The coming summer rental season in Montauk is already as wild as a summer night at the Surf Lodge.
    By: Debra Scott
  • Sag Harbor Grandeur
    Real estate in the Village of Sag Harbor has ascended to a plane where certain properties are commanding South of the Highway prices
    By: Debra Scott
  • Cook Travel Merges Offices

        After more than 20 years in South­ampton, Cook Travel abandoned its office there last month and merged it with its Main Street, East Hampton, office, where it was founded in 1984. The agency still has offices in New York and Greenport.

        “Customers rarely walk into the office for travel help these days,” said Audrey Lyons, a leisure specialist at the company. “Because of Google, our customers come from all over the world. Most of them contact us by phone or email.”

    By: Debra Scott
  • Home Movies
    The ultimate Hamptons home theater owner desires the most luxurious reclining seats, swathed in supple leather, and sporting heated cup holders, pilasters to emulate the architectural details of a traditional cinema, velvet-covered acoustic panels (for enhancing sound), motorized curtains, sophisticated lighting, and, of course, the best audio and video equipment money can buy.
    By: Debra Scott
  • Differing Data
    Last week “Company Town” offered a list of the top 10 house sales in 2013 as compiled by Town and Country Real Estate. We reported on that list because it was the only one we had in hand at press time. Later, however, Sotheby’s sent out a preliminary list of high-end sales, which included several not listed by Town and Country.
    By: Debra Scott
  • And the Winners Are . . .
    The results are in for the top 10 house sales on the South Fork in 2013, at least according to Town and Country Real Estate. Drum roll please . . .
    By: Debra Scott
  • The Architect Effect
    Since the 1960s, when Charles Gwathmey dotted the landscape with square houses, South Forkers have had a love affair with architects. About a decade ago, Modernism reared its head once again, and local firms that had been designing contemporary domiciles began to flourish.
    By: Debra Scott
  • A ‘Jewel’ Is Available
    East Hampton Village is soliciting sealed bids for the summer season for one of the coveted Sea Spray Cottages
    By: Debra Scott

Blogs by this author:

  • Bridgehampton Blowout (Business)

    Lila Beudert, a native of East Hampton, wants to make sure that there’s no such thing as a bad hair day in the Hamptons. For those with windswept beach locks or just plain frizz, stylists at her hair salon, Blow Hampton, which opened on Wednesday on Main Street in Bridgehampton, does only blowouts.

    By: Debra Scott
  • Who’s Making the Chimichangas? (Business)

         That was a question asked on Colin Ambrose’s Facebook page this week when the chef-owner of Estia’s Little Kitchen in Sag Harbor posted a picture of his hand, dressed in bandages. His right hand that is. The chef wondered aloud how he would cope in the kitchen with only his left hand.

    By: Debra Scott
  • Richard Gere's North Haven House Reduced (Real Estate)

    When Linda Haugevik, an agent at Sotheby’s International Realty, put North Haven’s six-acre Strongheart estate on the market in July for $65 million, there were those who accused her of being on “hallucinogens,” she said.

    In other words, even though the property belonged to the actor Richard Gere and his wife, Carey Lowell (who have since filed for divorce, according to the tabloids), it was perceived by some as overpriced. Nine months later, the price has been reduced to $56 million.

    By: Debra Scott
  • Another Historic Gem Bites the Dust (Real Estate)

    Last week, when Stacy Ludlow was driving down Halsey Lane in Bridgehampton en route home to Mecox Bay Dairy where she and her family make cheese, she noticed that a lovely old farmhouse dating from circa 1720 was being torn apart.

    By: Debra Scott
  • Arc House to Be Televised Sunday (Real Estate)

    The Arc House, a residence on Green Hollow Road in East Hampton that is a kind of glamorized Quonset hut will be featured Sunday on the Travel Channel.  Designed by Maziar Behrooz, an East Hampton architect who just opened an office in Manhattan’s Flatiron district, the nearly 5,200-square-foot structure is made of corrugated steel and held up by 14 “ribs.”

    By: Debra Scott
  • Romance in Sag Harbor? (Business)

    Move over East Hampton. That village was once voted the “most beautiful village” in America by National Geographic.

    Getting its day in the sun, Sag Harbor was ranked number 4 of America’s most romantic towns in January by readers of Travel and Leisure, behind Simons, G.A., Beaufort, N.C., and Amelia Island, FL.

    Where?

    By: Debra Scott
  • House, Delayed (Real Estate)

    When Paul Rice, an architect who has designed houses throughout the South Fork with his partner, Ward Welch, for 25 years, purchased a house at 78 Meeting House Lane in Amagansett in 2008, he set to work gutting it and adding 1,200 square feet. The timing couldn’t have been worse.

    Plans were for a 4,500-square-foot, updated gambrel-roofed traditional but construction, which only extended to the exterior of the house, was stopped as the market dove south. The interior is framed, but unfinished. 

    By: Debra Scott
  • House Sale Sets North Haven Record (Real Estate)

    A nearly six-acre property with a Tudor-style 12,000-square-foot house built in 2005 for Richard Demato, who is a Sag Harbor gallery owner, and his wife, Harriet Sawyer, an artist, closed Tuesday for just over $31.7 million. Though the deal does not set a record for the most spent on a North Haven property — that honor goes to Tyndall Point, a 55-acre sub-dividable parcel with a main house built in the 1950s that sold for $36 million in 2011 – it does set a record in the hamlet for a single-family residence.

    By: Debra Scott
  • BookHampton: What They're Reading Now (Business)

    While we’ve all been snowbound these past weeks, some intrepid souls have made pilgrimages to BookHampton in East Hampton for diversion. Kim Lombardini, a manager at the shop, shared with us winter’s most popular reads.

    FICTION    
    “The Goldfinch,” Donna Tartt’s anxiously awaited third novel published last year about a boy who loses his mother in a terrorist attack in an art museum, takes its title from a painting of a bird the boy filches as he flees the wreckage. At a hefty 771 pages, it is selling like hotcakes.

    By: Debra Scott