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Recent posts
- Stagers furnish Habitat for Humanity home in Bay Shore
- Listing of the Day: Amityville house on a private island
- 3 'Mad Men' style houses on the Long Island market
- The High and the Low: A look at the Long Beach market
- Show house features Angelina Jolie room
- For sale sign at Rocky Point ranch leads to film role
- Open House Watch: Check out 5 houses in Bellmore
- Historic Bay Shore mansion on market for $1.895 million
- Why Rosanne Cash loves Napeague
- Half of Sagaponack Greens has been sold
- Three houses on the market with stone fireplaces
- Open House Watch: Enter free makeover contest in S. Merrick
- $20 million going to Nassau for affordable housing, homeless aid
- Golubs finally sell their Valley Stream house
- Open House Watch: Check out 11 houses in Dix Hills
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Stagers furnish Habitat for Humanity home in Bay Shore
Dietary aide Georgia Barnes and the youngest of her three children, Barachel, 13, helped build their Habitat for Humanity house in Bay Shore, but what they didn't know when they moved in Friday was that stagers and various businesses, from feng shui experts to a sod supplier, had donated all their services and goods to complete the home.
Usually, a Habitat house is bare when families move in, but this one was decked up, the idea of Val Allocco, founder of Staged 2 Sell NY in Northport.
During the summer, she had visited a Habitat fundraiser in New Jersey, where each room in a McMansion was set up by different stagers. She decided to copy the idea on Long Island, but after weeks of Allocco getting turned down by builders, brokers and owners of ritzy homes with “lots of rooms,” Les Scheinfeld, the associate director of Habitat’s Suffolk affiliate, suggested staging one of his clients’ new homes.
Allocco and the new, central Long Island chapter of the American Society of Home Stagers and Redesigners weighed the pros and cons of doing up a show home versus a Habitat home; the nonprofit won easily.
“This would be unique, but I said we can’t approach it the same way,” Allocco said. “We can’t put rental furniture in there and then pull it out. That’s mean. How do you do that when the house is going to be given to someone and they come in and see it all decorated and then they go in and everything’s all stripped out of there?”
For months, Allocco’s friends in the industry and several stagers tapped their contacts and visited businesses to ask for donations. In lieu of sod for the yard, Pam Holland of Holland Environmental Design in Northport got grass seed and big bags of fertilizer, which stank up her SUV for three weeks before the Bay Shore house was ready for yard work. Carmela Abella, a Selden-based stager, got donations and convinced the Girl Scouts to fill Barnes’ home with spices, cookware and all the necessities of life, even as her father grew sick and came to live with her.
At one point, with companies unwilling or slow to donate, Allocco was going to use her nephew's memorial fund, started by New York City police, to pay for bath towels and other needs. Eventually, businesses came through, from Cort Furniture Rental to Lowe’s and Wal-Mart.
In a sense, Allocco and the other stagers of the trade group’s central Long Island chapter, who never knew each other before, found they were a family also.
“We feel so fortunate to have met each other,” Allocco said. “I feel that by working together, it really strengthens the bonds. You really get to know people. It’s just an amazing thing, that you have home stagers that are not in competition but are working together.”Photo by Joseph D. Sullivan
Tags: Bay Shore, help for homeowners, staging
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Listing of the Day: Amityville house on a private island
Yes, you need to take a boat to get to this Amityville home. And yes, Darren Sebor of Coach Realtors is earning his commission when he shows it ... via rowboat.
This two-bedroom, two-bath historic home -- circa 1700s -- is on Enoch Island in the Amityville River. It is a year-round home for the current owner, whose husband was a member of the family that owned it for more than 200 years.
Enoch Island is about 50 feet from shore, 1,190 feet long and 110 feet wide. There are two beaches and 300 feet of bulkhead. One other home occupies the island, and there is about 100 yards between the homes.
The asking price is $599,000, with annual taxes of $9,448.
Permission Coach RealtorsTags: Amityville, Listing of the Day
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3 'Mad Men' style houses on the Long Island market
Don Draper's house in the AMC series "Mad Men" is a Colonial Revival built in 1916. This Colonial, built that same year, is in Greeport. And the three-bedroom house is for sale for $449,500.
Then there's a four-bedroom home in Freeport, top left, another 1916 Colonial, on the market for $375,000.And a 1916 three-bedroom Glen Cove, bottom left, can be had for $649,900.
If you're not the market for a house but want some mad style at your place, click here for design ideas, gear and books.Permission Century 21 Agawam Albertson, Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Realty
Tags: house and home, Greenport, Freeport, Glen Cove
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The High and the Low: A look at the Long Beach market
Welcome to the first installment of the High and the Low, where we look at the highest priced and the lowest priced houses in a particular Long Island community's market. Today, we focus on Long Beach:
Most expensive home in: $3.4 million
This six-bedroom, 6.5-bathroom home on the bay features two kitchens, three fireplaces, an in-ground pool, a two-car garage, three decks and a boat dock. Annual taxes are $28,768. Listing agent: Susan Solomon, Coldwell Banker Beach West Realty, 516-889-7500
Least expensive home: $149,000
This three-bedroom, one-bath ranch has been a rental-income home for 20 years. It’s cute, but it needs tons of work. Annual taxes are $4,138. Listing agent: Phyllis Katzen of Coldwell Banker Beach West Realty, 516-889-7500.
Permission Coldwell Banker Beach West Realty
Tags: The High and the Low, Long Beach
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Show house features Angelina Jolie room
Want to get your house with it? Check out the up-to-the-minute decorating at Inspired Designs: A Showhouse Celebrating Extraordinary Women, being held through Dec. 4 at the new condo development 535 West End Avenue in Manhattan.
Each room is inspired by a woman, including Angelina Jolie, who lived for a short time this year in Centre Island while filming her upcoming movie "Salt." Manhattan designer Inson Wood says he tried to capture her duality in this living room -- both her "European sensibility" and "LA glamour." So the walls, for instance, are Venetian plaster waxed to be reflective. "Part of her is soft and sensual but the other is intense and action packed," he says. He also chose items that represented her work as a United Nations ambassador, including handmade baskets from the Amazon that take two years to weave as well as Persian rugs made in Iran.
>> See photos of the Grace Kelly room, the Angelina Jolie room and others
Photo by Dave Sanders
Tags: celeb, show houses
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For sale sign at Rocky Point ranch leads to film role
The real estate sign on the lawn of a modest two-bedroom Rocky Point ranch led to an unusual phone call for Bel Breeze Real Estate agent Roula Stampoulidis, who also happens to own the home. Patrick West of Newdreams Media was looking for a home to shoot "The Mailbox," a 15-minute film he wrote while his fiance was getting a massage during a brief Vermont vacation. Stampoulidis’ investment home fit the bill.
The plot involves a young waitress who is bombarded with bills, late notices, IRS letters and eventually an eviction notice, and in a moment of misdirected anger takes out her aggressions on the post-mounted mailbox. She sorrowfully puts the mailbox back together, and a back story involving her grandmother kicks in that leads to the same mailbox eventually containing unexpected and unbelievable good news.
The film will be edited and completed in December and distributed to several film festivals in early 2010.
The two-bedroom, one-bath home is on the market for $244,900. Annual taxes on the 100-foot-by-100-foot property are $2,215.
Permission Bel Breeze Real Estate
Tags: Rocky Point, movies
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Open House Watch: Check out 5 houses in Bellmore
One house in Bellmore is not only holding an open house -- it's on open waters. And boaters can actually sail up to see it, although listing agent John Arena Jr. says, "I haven't had someone do that yet." The Barbara Street home is on a canal off Bellmore Bay with 90 feet of bulkheading and a floating dock. "It's one of the lowest priced waterfront houses," says Arena, of Coldwell Banker Your Home Realty. The home, built in 2002, has decks on the lower and upper floors.
Whether you want to check out that home or others this weekend, here's a lineup of what's on the real estate docket:
SATURDAY
1 to 3 p.m.
Condo at 2060A Lakeview Rd.
Colonial at 2358 Grand Ave.
Cape at 200 Argyle Pl.
SUNDAY
Noon to 2 p.m.
Hi-ranch at 2781 Barbara Rd.
1 to 3 p.m.
Cape at 2673 Shirley Lane
Permission Coldwell Banker Your Home Realty
Tags: Bellmore, Open House Watch
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Historic Bay Shore mansion on market for $1.895 million
A Moorish-style brick mansion in Bay Shore on the market for $1.895 million was designed and built in 1912 by Rafael Guastavino, Jr., whose father Rafael, Sr., designed the arches used in the construction New York’s subway system. The family’s Guastavino Tile Company was responsible for adding craftsmanship to many dramatic structures throughout New York City, including a 162-foot dome at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, curved tiled vaults at Grand Central Terminal and tilework at the main hall of Ellis Island.
This 4,000-square-foot, tiled roof home was built in 1912 on 1.26 acres overlooking the Great South Bay. There are 12 rooms, including five bedrooms, 3 ½ baths, maid’s quarters and three fireplaces. There’s also a private terrace overlooking the water off the master bedroom.
The home was owned for years by Guastavino Jr.s daughter Louise, who married Frank Gulden, Jr., onetime president of Gulden Mustard Company.
Bonnie Williamson of Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Realty has the listing.
Tags: Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Realty, Rich Cribs, Bay Shore
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Why Rosanne Cash loves Napeague
It’s not just the musical gene that got passed down to Johnny Cash’s daughter -- it’s also a connection to the water and to the beaches on Long Island’s East End.
Rosanne Cash told Magnet Magazine recently that Napeague, between Montauk and Amagansett, is her favorite stretch of coastline in the world. “I go to Napeague quite often," she tells the magazine. "I love the dunes and the white sand and the quality of the light. The sun sets just to the right and slightly behind you in the summer if you are facing out to sea, and it can be quite magnificent. It has a lonely quality, or at least I imagine it does.”
Cash currently lives with her family in Manhattan. One of her ancestors, she says, was a whaler from Nantucket who survived a shipwreck off the Napeague shores a century ago. “When I think about the storms and the shipwreck and the urgency of survival and the moment when my own bloodline was in danger of obliteration, it makes the light and the water feel so immediate and so important," she says in the interview.
Photo by Ethan A. Russell
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Half of Sagaponack Greens has been sold
Even though half the buildable lots at Sagaponack Greens have now been spoken for, if you’re looking to establish an estate near the ocean, there is still hope.
Four contiguous parcels of vacant land, totaling more than 6.5 acres, remain available. Each lot stretches over 1.63 acres and is priced at $5.95 million if purchased individually. There also is a 25-acre reserve next to the lots, available for $4 million.
The property is owned by Alan Schnurman, partner in the law firm Zalman and Schnurman of 1800lawline.com.
The land is co-listed by Gary DePersia of The Corcoran Group and Paul Brennan of Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate.
Sagaponack Greens originally went on the market for $64.5 million for the entire 41 acres comprised of the reserve and eight buildable lots. The price was lowered early this year to $47 million. The remaining four lots and reserve can now be had at $27.8 million. Schnurman reportedly purchased the spread in 2005 for $25 million.
DePersia told Newsday earlier this year that no matter how a builder positions a house on the land, each lot would afford “first-floor views” of the ocean. Ira Rennert’s 60-acre spread is a stone's throw away.
Tags: Sagaponack, The Corcoran Group, Rich Cribs, Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate
