A Step Closer to Longer Leases at Lazy Point
With the enthusiastic endorsement of their lessees, many of whom crowded the meeting room at Town Hall on Monday, the East Hampton Town Trustees took a step closer to codifying a significant change in the terms for the lots at Lazy Point, Amagansett, where residents own their houses but lease the underlying land.
As they had suggested last spring and again two weeks ago, the trustees are preparing to extend leases in the bucolic neighborhood on Gardiner’s Bay, which one resident described on Monday as “a throwback to simpler times,” from the present one-year term to 35 years.
On the South Fork, home to some of the most expensive real estate in the country, rent at Lazy Point remains as modest as the small lots on which the mostly unassuming houses sit. When the trustees raised the annual rent by 50 percent in 2013, the new figure was just $1,500.
Subsequent increases spurred lengthy negotiations and tenants’ calls to modify lease terms in a way that would allow them to obtain mortgages. The trustees, who derive around half their annual revenue from the leases and the 4-percent transfer fee on house sales they initiated in 2015, have warmed to their tenants’ point of view over the last year.
The latest draft of a new 35-year lease has been circulated among the trustees, they said on Monday, and they called a special meeting for Wednesday evening to discuss it.
Lazy Point leases historically lasted one year and were renewed on a year-to-year basis. This, residents have told the trustees, rendered them and prospective homebuyers unable to obtain a mortgage or other long-term loans with which to make improvements and repairs.
On Monday, Joan Priore, secretary of the Lazy Point Neighborhood Association, read a statement on her neighbors’ behalf in which she asserted that a 35-year lease represents a win not just for the neighborhood but also for the trustees and all of the town’s residents. “Lazy Point homeowners, especially those of us who are senior citizens, need to feel a sense of certainty that our homes will be here for us and our families in the future,” she said. “A year-to-year lease does not provide that assurance. A 35-year lease will.”
The selling price of well-maintained, updated, and improved houses would benefit the trustees, who will reap higher transfer fees, Ms. Priore said. Other residents of the town should favor 35-year leases at Lazy Point, too, “because it will make mortgage financing a possibility and open up a path for more of them to contemplate buying a house at Lazy Point.”
The South Fork’s stratospheric real estate prices coupled with the year-to-year lease terms restrict the pool of homebuyers to those with cash to put down, Ms. Priore said, echoing remarks by Jim Grimes, a deputy clerk of the trustees, earlier this month. “These are important things to consider in your review of this proposal.”
The neighborhood’s residents are always there for one another, “and we are always there for Lazy Point,” Ms. Priore said, describing an annual spring cleanup and efforts to install snow fencing to prevent erosion. “Lazy Point has a certain charm and character. It’s an out-of-the-way, ‘unHamptons’ enclave, a throwback to simpler times.”
Preservation of the neighborhood’s unique character is a goal the trustees and tenants share, she said. “When you are ready to vote, we ask you to vote yes for 35-year leases, confident in knowing it will benefit everyone and won’t change anything about what makes Lazy Point Lazy Point.”
The version before the trustees is “close to a final draft” of the new lease, said Christopher Carillo, the trustees’ attorney. He and the trustees will work toward a finished product at next week’s special meeting, he said, which the trustees will then present for public comment.