How I Rented a 3-Bedroom House in East Hampton for $93 a Month
By Dan Rattiner
Renting a three-bedroom house south of the Montauk Highway today will run you about $100,000. One summer, I rented one for myself for $279.51 on Cove Hollow Road in East Hampton.
A friend had told me about it. He’d paid good money for it the summer before, but he wouldn’t be going back. The husband and wife who owned it were arguing all the time and he’d heard that over the winter they had filed for divorce. Now, neither would let the other rent it.
“But maybe you could figure something out,” he said.
So I called the ex-husband and he met me there. Three bedrooms, one bath, breakfast nook, dining room, living room, kitchen. Maybe the whole place is 1,000 square feet. Good for a bachelor, I thought. That was me. There was also a garage and a front and backyard.
“I don’t know what to charge ya,” he said. “My wife will come and kick you out.”
“I’ll try and sweet talk her,” I said.
“Tell you what,” he finally said. “I gotta pay the mortgage. Stuck me with it. $93.17 a month. Pay my mortgage and it’s yours. And good luck.”
I remember a wonderful party I had there. I’d gone to see this traveling troupe of actors perform the Broadway show How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying at Guild Hall. It was the premiere so I invited them over for an after-theater party.
When the morning came and my girlfriend and I were cleaning up, we found that the wood floor in the living room had a bounce to it that wasn’t there before. The troupe had reprised the sing and dance finale upon it. Lots of stomping.
Crawling under the house I found that the building was on cedar posts and the one holding up the living room had been stomped down a good inch further into the ground, leaving a space between its top and the beam that was supposed to rest on it. Thus the bounce.
I fixed it by shoving an axe head in the gap. I never reported that to the landlord, but in the fall I moved out to rent elsewhere.
Ten years ago was the last time that house got sold. It went for $1.4 million. Axe head was probably still under there.
Have a East End real estate story? Want to share? Text us at 516-527-3566. We’ll call you back, and then write it up for this weekly column. –Dan
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