Flanders house for sale was safe haven amid COVID, cervical cancer, pregnancy

When Eve McDavid and her family purchased their Flanders home six years ago, the seller told her, "Life here is an adventure."

"And we really learned what that meant," said McDavid, now 39.

Her home is on the market for $1.7 million — it's bittersweet, McDavid admitted, because of how many significant moments happened there.

McDavid was diagnosed with cervical cancer just before the pandemic, while she was pregnant with her son.

"By the time I was finished with treatment, my doctors urged me to be somewhere where I wouldn't be at risk of being exposed to COVID," she said.

Although they had not planned to move, the family relocated from Brooklyn to Flanders.

McDavid and her husband prioritized finding a home immersed in nature. Their saltbox-style house features three bedrooms and 3½ bathrooms, with views of Flanders Bay from every window, McDavid said.

"When you live on the water full time, you really get an intimate understanding of the subtle changes in nature: The changes in the tides, the changes in the moon," she said. "All these things that, inside a different environment, you just wouldn't have that kind of exposure to."

McDavid, her husband and their daughter, now 8, and son, who recently turned 6, often hosted gatherings on their lawn. The backyard is elevated above the bay, enclosed by a fence. With the water right below, the house is surrounded by the bay on three sides.

The home stands out even just in its own neighborhood, said Mary Binder, of The Corcoran Group. She is co-listing the home with Dianne Klink.

"This is the only house in that community that has three corners of it right there on the water," Binder said. "You feel like you're on an island."

With more than 2,000 square feet of living space, the house features a private balcony off the primary suite and a renovated bathroom, with a steam shower and built-in Bluetooth features. The home, on Pine Avenue, sits on a 0.49-acre lot.

The property is in the Riverhead Central School District, and the taxes are $15,747. Flood insurance is transferrable to the new owner, at $1,100 a year, Binder said.

McDavid, a former Google executive who recently launched the medical device start-up Mission-Driven Tech, said she has reached her "five years post-treatment, no relapse milestone." Looking back, when McDavid and her husband first came to Flanders, "we truly felt like we discovered something new," she said.

"That was her healing property," Binder added.

Now, it's time for the family's next adventure.

"To see our toddler be able to walk up to this body of water and not be consumed by it, but rather just toddle in and gently splash — we were so overwhelmed with how good that experience felt," McDavid said, "and how happy we saw our kids together, after having what we had just survived. All that was important for us was finding a place where our family could be safe and flow and heal and recover, and, as we do, rise again and keep going."