Long Island vacation homes make for easy weekend getaways

With their 2020 vacation plans dashed by COVID-19 restrictions, Tyrone and Monetah Sellers of Hauppauge found a cure for cabin fever — not by traveling abroad — but by purchasing an actual cabin.

“I like to travel, so I said, ‘Let’s find something on the Island where we can go any time we want to enjoy our time away from home,' ” Tyrone Sellers, 64, a retired CPA, recalled of a conversation he had that summer with his wife, Monetah, 58.

Joy Bryant, an associate broker at Little Bay Realty in Wading River, helped the couple find their Long Island paradise at Lake Panamoka in Ridge. The private, slightly under-the-radar community is “a wonderful choice,” Bryant said. “It’s a 45-acre freshwater lake stocked with fish and great for boating, swimming and fishing.”   

That October, the Sellerses purchased a lakeside one-bedroom, one-bath cottage, which was built as a summer bungalow in 1941, 20 feet from the lakeshore. The sale price was $320,000, according to data on Redfin.com.

They’ve spent the past two summers at their second home, shopping and dining out in nearby Riverhead. Tyrone Sellers regularly goes kayaking and fishing on Lake Panamoka and Long Island Sound — also nearby — sharing the catches at the Harvest Revival Christian Fellowship church in Cambria Heights, Queens, where he’s senior pastor and Monetah is a church elder.

“I like peace, the tranquility and the country feel, “he said of their home away from home, “though you are just a stone’s throw away from civilization.”

If you’ve ever dreamed of buying a summer or weekend hideaway, you can add a pied à terre to your real estate without a bridge or ferry crossing. 

“It is still possible in today’s market to purchase a wonderful vacation home on Long Island at an affordable price,” said Bryant, who’s recently brokered a number of “mini-vacation home” sales on Long Island, to fellow Long Islanders.

As with first-home buyers, location is a main selling point. Bryant said they want “access to the beach, whether it is [Long Island] Sound front, lakefront or bayfront,” and proximity to “farm stands and wineries and shopping.” Others express interest in a community “they may someday retire to,” she said.

Bryant said waterfront homes have recently sold for as little as $550,000 in Riverhead and North Shore communities Baiting Hollow, Rocky Point and Sound Beach.

While demand for second homes in the United States soared during the first two years of the pandemic, it has fallen below the pre-pandemic baseline for the first time in two years, according to a report from real estate brokerage Redfin. The number of locked-in mortgage rates for second homes was down 4% in May compared to before the pandemic. A year earlier, that number had soared to 70% above pre-pandemic levels.

Mortgage rates are somewhat higher on second home mortgages — by as much as 0.5 to 1% more, according to Bankrate.com. That is in part to compensate for the risk of second-home buyers walking away from payments they can’t make.

'Amazed by the view'

Eliso Chikvashvili, 49, of St. James, a classical pianist, and her husband, Dr. Georgiy Chikvashvili, 59, a general medicine practitioner at Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center in West Islip, also found a bargain on Lake Panamoka.

“We found this lake by accident,” while looking online for a summer house on the water, Eliso Chikvashvili said. At first glance, she said, “I thought it was some kind of bay.”

But on a visit, the couple “was amazed by the view,” the sandy beach, and that Lake Panamoka is “a hidden gem — a place a lot of people don’t even know exists.”

In March they purchased a three-bedroom, 1½-bath ranch-style Lake Panamoka house for $490,000, about $60,000 less than the original asking price, Georgiy Chikvashvili said. They put about $150,000 into completely renovating the house, which was built in 1960, adding central air conditioning, redoing the bathrooms and basement, and constructing a porch overlooking the beach.

“It's only 35 minutes from home,” marveled Eliso Chikvashvili, who gave concerts as a teen in Canada and Ukraine, and is planning to move her grand piano from St. James to the lake house. 

“In one hour or two hours I feel so relaxed here,” Georgiy Chikvashvili said. “We plan to spend as much time as we can here.”

Affordable options

Bargains are also available in South Shore Suffolk County, according to Victoria Swenson, associate real estate broker at Moriches Bay Realty.

One affordable option is Center Moriches, which Swenson describes as a “quaint town with many festivals, parades, and neighborhoods with private beaches, docking for boats and clubhouses.” Swenson said that home prices in the community just west of the Hamptons range from $300,000 to $600,000.

Swenson is the listing agent for a four-bedroom, one-bath Center Moriches Cape Cod, which has been owned by the same family for more than 60 years. The house has a pending sale at $450,000, according to OneKey MLS.

“It has a lot of memories for our family,” Frederick Sinn, 69, of Jericho, owner of a precision manufacturing business in Westbury, said of his family’s Center Moriches property. Although Sinn never owned the house, he visited it often while growing up in Holliswood, Queens.

Sinn’s grandparents were living in Astoria, Queens, when they purchased a one-fifth of an acre plot in 1957 as their Center Moriches retirement retreat.

“I remember as a child of 5 or 6 years old watching them pour the concrete for the foundation. They built a beautiful, brand-new house,” Sinn said. As a teen, he, his sister and five cousins “spent beautiful summers there fishing for fluke and flounder and water skiing on Moriches Bay” from an uncle’s 20-foot boat docked at the nearby marina. Family barbecues, backyard horseshoe tournaments and accordion concerts were traditions at the house, which Sinn’s grandparents sold to his father in the 1990s.

The last family owner was his sister, who died of COVID-19 complications in April 2020, six days apart from their father. Other family members had subsequently been renting the house with plans to buy it and keep it in the family, but they opted for a larger house nearby, Sinn said.

“It’s a great history,” Sinn, executor of his sister’s estate, said of a house that became a family heirloom. “It’s a shame that it has to end.” 

The Hamptons experience

If you’re looking for the more traditional summer resort experience farther east, the pricier, much busier Hamptons offers second homes both for summer people and year-rounders like Anthony S. Passaretti, 61, of Plainview, a retired CPA, and his wife, Teresa, 58, an interior designer.

“We’re not summer people,” said Passaretti, of the family’s year-round residence at their second home in East Hampton. “We like it here for the tranquility, the quiet and the spaciousness,” Passaretti said.

The couple began visiting the East End about 15 years ago, when they were raising their three (now-grown) children in Garden City, and taking summer family trips to Montauk’s beachfront hotels.

“We started thinking it might be nice to have some sort of little getaway of our own,” Passaretti said. In 2008 they closed on a three-bedroom, three-bath East Hampton saltbox house they used as “a typical weekend getaway,” said Passaretti, who declined to provide the sale price.   

Four years ago, they sold the saltbox and bought a “slightly bigger” East Hampton five-bedroom Colonial. It became their pandemic refuge during the early 2020 lockdown to stem the spread of COVID-19. They stayed there between selling their Garden City house in March of that year and moving into a new Plainview condominium that summer.

Their current living arrangements have them dividing their time between Plainview and East Hampton. This fall, in contrast to the height of the pandemic when summer people were staying en masse beyond Labor Day, the couple are finding it easier to get a table at their favorite restaurant.

Even without a reservation, Passaretti said, “We walked in at 6 p.m., and they sat us right away.”