Can East Hampton's new house size rules encourage a smaller, more affordable Hamptons?

Gently rumbling ocean waves and sand-strewn paths were only part of the allure of Amagansett’s Beach Hampton neighborhood when Jaine Mehring purchased a summer home there in 2002.

She found the other charms: quaint cottages, coffee with tight-knit neighbors, dogs trotting down the street.

But when Mehring, a retired Wall Street research analyst, moved in full-time just before the pandemic, she spotted a trend she found distressing. The humble abodes that once defined the seaside community, envisioned 90 years ago as a haven for middle-class vacationers, were being torn down and replaced by a new wave of mega mansions.

“A charming set of cottages original to the 1940s got demolished and a brand new house went up that was of extraordinary proportions,” Mehring recalled. “And that was a wake-up call for me.”

As she spoke with neighbors, Mehring discovered the trend wasn’t isolated to the oceanfront and hedge-lined streets south of Montauk Highway. No part of town, from the quiet haven of Springs to the farthest fringes of Montauk, was immune from the frenzy of replacing homes with mansions, eroding neighborhood charm and year-round housing, she said.

From 2017 to 2024, the average newly built home in East Hampton grew 32%, from 4,367 square feet to 5,782 square feet — nearly triple the national median size of a single-family home, according to town building department data. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, the median size of new single-family homes sold in 2024 was 2,210 square feet.

While stately mansions south of Montauk Highway, including along the coveted Further Lane, routinely top most expensive home sales lists, other areas such as Springs were more in reach for year-round locals. That was until lots there, too, were being maxed-out with large homes.

"It's just so shocking when you drive down a street in a neighborhood that used to have modest ranches and see an 8,000-square-foot house there," East Hampton Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, a Springs resident, said in an interview. 

For several years, East Hampton lawmakers have launched into contentious debates over the best way to curb the trend, while at the same time deliberating ways to promote affordable housing in a community where its teachers, health care employees, police officers and other municipal workers struggle to find places to live.

The board ultimately adopted a series of measures that have set the stage for a smaller, more affordable community, town officials and advocates of the laws say.

One measure, adopted in December, slashes the house size to an absolute maximum of 10,000 square feet, down from 20,000 on the largest residential lots above 2 acres. Another law, approved in March, limits house size expansions to 7% of the lot area plus 1,500 square feet.

It's too soon to tell if the measures will have an effect on new construction, but Burke-Gonzalez said she hopes the formula can rein in overdevelopment while preserving rural character, promoting sustainability and maintaining a working-class community year-round.

"I'm hoping that people recognize their neighborhoods," she said. "Folks that live here year-round want to maintain our sense of place. People want to know their neighbors."

But the plan has drawn pushback from builders, architects and brokers who say the formula is too broadly written and will hinder renovations on smaller homes.

Darius Narizzano, a real estate agent based in East Hampton, framed the regulations as a broken promise by the town board. The freedom to expand one’s home, he said, is part of a homeowner's “bundle of rights.”

He expressed sympathy for young couples looking to build out their homes to accommodate their growing families.

“When they bought it, there was the promise of expansion that could go along with that house, that down the road, when they were able to afford it, they could add on to the house, or renovate it,” he said. “The town board has taken that away.”

Not 'just for the moment'

Town Councilwoman Cate Rogers, who introduced the measure, said the laws were drafted with sustainability and affordability in mind.

“Zoning codes aren't just for the moment,” she said in an interview. “They're for the future as well.”

Under the new measures, basements also are no longer to extend beyond the footprint of the home, curbing a trend town officials say was building lot line to lot line underground.

An analysis by town officials shows the new formula reduces what can be built by between 13% and 27%, depending on lot size. Previously, houses could be built at 10% of the lot size plus 1,600 square feet.

Oversize homes, Rogers said, consume more resources to build and maintain, from water and energy use to tree clearing and paved surfaces. Loss of small houses also impacts the working-class makeup of the year-round community.

“It's the lack of teachers, businesses having problems staffing, the town having problems staffing, even though municipal jobs are great,” she said.

Thwarting expansions

Opponents of the law say they could have an unintended consequence: Limiting expansions on more modest-sized homes.

Amy Dalene, of Springs, said she and her husband may be headed back to the drawing board as they consider renovating their fixer-upper home, which they’ve outgrown since having two young children.

The new regulations “make it tough for people that want to have their families” and put down roots, she said. 

“I do not need a massive house,” Dalene said. “It’s literally to expand so our kids can have their own bedrooms. ... It’s just wanting something to be a little bit more comfortable.”

Chris DiSunno, a Sag Harbor architect who led a coalition of tradespeople including builders and surveyors to review the proposed changes, said the town should have considered a more nuanced, neighborhood-specific approach.

"There are places in the township where those homes belong," DiSunno, who opposed the final version, said. "The Hamptons is famous for the estates."

Proponents of the changes say the formula still allows for sizable homes.

The new code sets the maximum house size at 4,300 square feet on 1 acre, 2,900 square feet on half-acre lots, and 2,200 square feet on quarter-acre lots, a reduction of between 13% and 23%. Garage space and finished basements do not contribute to those calculations, town officials said.

Larry Kane, an East Hampton builder, said he’s supported gradual reductions to house size over the years but felt the latest changes went too far and could create hurdles for multigenerational households that are increasingly common due to the slim stock of affordable housing.

“A family who needs to expand their home for their parent or recent college grad, or they’ve had a third child, these people all of a sudden — they live on a third of an acre in a what we'll call a normal house — they go to get a permit to put an addition on, and they're surprised when they realize that their property has no more room for expansion,” Kane said.

He said he felt the town refused to compromise as the building industry was villainized.

“We’re local people who have raised our families here, who hike on the trails here, who go kayaking here,” Kane said. “We are not trying to exploit the town that we live in.”

Focus on smaller lots

Rogers said the legislation focused on smaller lots because 70% of the residential lots in East Hampton are less than one acre, and 37% are less than a half-acre. Homes on the tiniest lots would have typically been thought of as “starter” homes, but those too are now priced at $1 million or more.

Nancy Carney, superintendent of the Springs school district, said in an interview she supported the regulations on lot size. She hoped it would restore some charm to what had once been the “working-class community of the Hamptons.”

“There have been lots of big houses going up on small lots,” Carney said. “Most of the people that build bigger homes, [those] are second homes and vacation homes for people.”

The change is evident on School Street, home to the Springs School, which serves children from pre-K through eighth grade. The street has long been home to a series of smaller houses — but now, larger homes tower over those, Carney said.

Summering in the Hamptons is not a new phenomenon, but the glut of short-term rentals also contributes to the housing crisis, officials said.

For Scott Bluedorn, of Sag Harbor, who was born and raised in East Hampton, overdevelopment has "rapidly" changed unique neighborhoods and poses serious threats to the environment.

 

The 39-year-old artist pulls inspiration from the area’s flora, fauna and maritime history and is most concerned the larger homes being built are harder to heat and draw more energy and water use.

“It becomes an out-of-control spiral towards a much more energy-intensive community,” he said in an interview.

In the past, Bluedorn said, homes weren’t always built to their maximum size.

“Visually, they loom over their neighbors,” he said. The focus for builders is the "return on investment," Bluedorn said, "to attract a certain attractive buyer for the maximum price."

"It all becomes a portfolio asset,” he added.

'Captains of industry'

The trend of supersize mansions is one other East End towns are hoping to curtail.

Janice Scherer, Southampton Town’s planning and development administrator, said in an interview she’s heard from residents who want the town to revisit its zoning laws amid a recent influx of large homes being built on smaller lots. Some homeowners remove the vegetation on their lots to make even more room for their new homes, she said. Homes in Southampton can be built no more than 15,000 square feet, Scherer said. 

She said the trend increased amid the pandemic. In the past, Scherer said, the few larger homes in the area were home to “sea captains” and other “captains of industry,” in what was a “farming and fishing community.”

“Now, everyone’s a sort of captain of their industry,” she said. “Some people may see that as progress; some people may see that as a disturbance.

“Now, we’re an international market. It’s not just people from New York City competing for a piece of property, it’s the whole world, because anybody could buy a piece of property in America and work remotely.”

Southampton has two formulas for regulating home size: one setting limits for lot coverage based on lot size and residential zone, and another “pyramid law,” which accounts for “encroachments in the three-dimensional plane.”

Some new homeowners are stretching the limits of those requirements, Scherer said.

“The purpose of the law is still being met, it’s just that visually you’re looking at a much bigger structure than what was there before,” she said. “That’s just a function of economics. In the past, people weren’t able to build the size of homes that they can today.”

The dynamic has created a favorable position for people trying to “sell their home, but not necessarily good for somebody trying to enter the market,” Scherer said.

Adriel Reboh, a real estate agent for Compass Real Estate who grew up in East Hampton, said in an interview he thinks developers will have to get a little more creative.

"There's been a little bit of a shift, and value on square footage is really looked at with more scrutiny," he said. "It will still make sense to be building, it'll just take some time to get used to this new normal."

Affordability the goal

Michael Daly has worked in Hamptons real estate for 26 years and is the founder of the advocacy group East End YIMBY, which stands for Yes In My Backyard. He said the East Hampton town regulations could "limit the change in the character" of the area, but doesn't anticipate an effect on the area's affordability.

"People will still build to the biggest they are permitted to build ... it's human nature to look for loopholes, and to ask for variances," Daly said. "There's no shortage of developers coming in and asking for permission to break the rules and to get larger structures."

Robert DeLuca, president of the Group for the East End, said in an interview he empathized with the challenges facing town officials, given “extreme market forces.” 

“I think it all helps; incremental change is still change,” he said.

East Hampton is also addressing the affordable housing crisis through its Community Housing Fund, a half-percent tax on real estate transactions that the town is using to fund new affordable apartments and provide grants to first-time buyers. The fund has raised just over $20 million since it took effect in 2023.

Last year, Mehring, who advocated for the measures, was appointed to the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals and is planning to establish a community housing trust to steward permanent affordable housing.

Advocating for smaller houses has been eye-opening, Mehring said.

She quipped that even her own home, barely over 1,000 square feet, “gets a little tight” for year-round living. “I was never used to having my winter and my summer clothes here, and my dog — he takes up a whole closet,” she said.

“There’s an underlying trend that bigger is always better in America, but this is at a whole other level for a house someone might use 21 days of the year.”