Falling behind schedule on renovations may be a first-world problem, but it could also lead to a Hamptons nightmare: a beach house that won’t be ready by Memorial Day.
“What’s going on in East Hampton is a nightmare,” said one resident who is worried about having a not-so-peaceful summer. “The [new] Tesla parking lot is a complete eyesore, huge new houses take up entire lots, there are dirt piles and trucks everywhere. I miss the quaint days when the only thing stressing me out was a landscaper’s trailer parked on the edge of someone’s grass,” they added. “The construction is ruining the very reason we go to the beach in the first place.
Another summer resident ranted about the sheer volume of work being done in her neighborhood—and the lack of the work being done to her own second home. “My own construction has finally broken me,” she said. “It’s like a faucet of money while the stock market is tanking. I don’t think my contractor fully understood the inflationary pressure and supply-chain disruptions. And we have to pay the bill.” But, she said, “we are at their mercy.
He couldn’t have been more wrong. Landing a contractor in the Hamptons is just the latest measure of status, like getting a dinner reservation at Le Bilboquet in Sag Harbor.“I basically hired him,” he said. Feeling somewhat desperate to get into his new home by Memorial Day , and hopeful he wouldn’t get price gouged, he didn’t ask how much the renovations would cost.