I toured an $85 million Hamptons mansion and learned something about the economy

Eight bedrooms. A private path leading to the beach. A replica lobster protruding from a replica pool floaty and hanging out from the ceiling.

I saw all of this, and much more, when touring 43 E Dune Lane in East Hampton. The house, which sits on 3.6 acres, is listed for $84,900 million, down from an initial $120 million last summer. According to the listing, it’s been on the market for more than 450 days.

Terry Cohen, the Compass agent showing the property, joked with the staff dotted throughout the eight-bedroom house about being back yet again. She’s shown the property to many potential buyers without luck yet, but said she’s confident it will sell soon.

Even if 43 E Dune hasn’t flown off the market, Cohen and other Hamptons real estate agents I talked to said that the luxury Hamptons market has been hot and prices have soared. Walking around the East Hampton property and an $18 million stone mansion at the tip of Montauk, I could feel Wall Street’s boom despite broader economic uncertainty.

“The last six months have been, in terms of real estate, at least in my world, more explosive than COVID,” Cohen told me as we walked through the house, which now belongs to venture-capital investor Ann Tenenbaum. She’s worked in the Hamptons for 25 years and said that the high luxury market has been especially active.

The $85 million property has pretty much every imaginable amenity: a cinema, a gym with a Peloton and rowing machine, a speakeasy room hidden behind a bookshelf, a sauna, multiple steam showers, a tennis court, a pool, a path leading down to the beach, and enough art to fill a museum wing. In Montauk, at the $18 million home, I was charmed by a vintage sink and the pool lined by hydrangeas, but was more struck by the views than anything. A seal bobbed in the water below us during the tour, and I had a clear view of the lighthouse from inside.

According to Douglas Elliman‘s second-quarter report this year, the average price for the top 10% of sales was up 12% year-over-year, and homes have sold more quickly than during the same period last year. Their threshold for the top 10% of sales was stable, and the number of total sales closed was up only 4%.

Saunders also found that luxury home sales were up in the Hamptons in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024: sales rose 23% for homes worth between $10 million and $20 million, and 40% for those worth more than $20 million. Home prices are up across the country, but unlike in the Hamptons, that’s largely holding buyers back.

Kyle Rosko, an agent with Douglas Elliman, also said prices have been strong this year when he showed me the Stone House, a three-bedroom home perched on the coast at the very end of Montauk. It’s entirely different from the other property — more out of the English countryside than the swanky art world — but I ended up talking about much of the same market strength on both tours.

“This year has been really strong in the luxury over the past month and a half. I’ve showed everything over 10 million that I have in the past month than I showed the entire year of last year,” Rosko told me. He said buyers are cautious, especially when purchasing a second or third home, so his sales volume hasn’t been incredibly high despite the impressive prices.

Dawn Watson, a Hamptons real estate agent with Serhant, told me on the phone that the pandemic “set a high watermark and we haven’t really reset.”

“Prices continue to go up. There’s more money than ever here,” Cohen said. “That’s because there’s more money generated with those same people. Now they’re buying for the kids and grandkids, multigenerational homes.” A new zoning law in East Hampton that limits the size of homes could shake up the market, at least temporarily, Cohen and Rosko told me. The wealthiest, they said, don’t seem entirely pleased.

The agents all said that people in finance continue to dominate the Hamptons market, and Wall Street is generally flying high despite broader economic instability. Stocks have hit record highs this year, and the notorious finance bro confidence is very much alive among Hamptons hopefuls.

“We are kind of in this interesting place where the rest of the rules of the world don’t apply to us,” Watson said.

“Follow Wall Street,” Cohen advised me as we walked through the airy living room. “The numbers are incredible.” Potential shakeups at the Federal Reserve and ongoing tariff negotiations don’t seem to have done much damage, even though some on Wall Street remain uncertain.

In the high-end Hamptons world, Cohen, Rosko, and Watson all told me they’re seeing interest from people in their 40s, especially those with kids. It’s no longer, to quote Watson, just those who are “60 to dead” with the power to buy.

The sense of detachment stayed with me as I walked back to my car with Cohen, who chatted with another Douglas Elliman employee who had joined the tour. They compared the prices at two luxury grocers and dissected the rules of padel, a favorite sport among the ultrawealthy.

There’s no padel court at 43 E Dune Lane, but I wouldn’t be shocked if an eventual buyer puts one in. As Cohen said, the whole property is “under scale. You could add so much more.”

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