Hamptons Home Prices Fall as Buyers Avoid Luxury

Home prices in New York’s Hamptons, the beachside resort towns in Long Island swelled by summering Manhattanites, dropped 14 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier as buyers opted for less-expensive properties.

The median price of homes that sold in the quarter fell to $696,000 from $810,000 a year earlier, according to a report today by New York appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and broker Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate. It was the second-lowest price in the firms’ six years of keeping the data, behind only the $675,000 median in the first quarter of 2009.