On a latest Could night, Janet O’Brien served up Outdated-Fashioneds and tequilas on ice to buddies at her Montauk dwelling. The conversational menu featured what one may anticipate for a tony Hamptons cocktail hour: previous and upcoming journeys to Morocco, Manhattanites bragging about not often stepping foot in Brooklyn and gossip about how a lot neighbors spent on renovations.
The setting is probably the fascinating half: Ms. O’Brien’s house is in what all of them name “a trailer park.”
Montauk Shores, the roughly 200-unit manufactured dwelling neighborhood that overlooks Ditch Plains Seaside, isn’t what instantly involves thoughts when one thinks of a trailer park. The crash of ocean waves pierces the air, and practically all the things within the park seems to be in pristine situation — together with the manicured lawns, the easily paved roads and the “trailers.”
For many individuals, dwelling in a manufactured dwelling isn’t a alternative, however a necessity. Right here, the “trailers” are a number of folks’s second or third houses, and sometimes not their solely dwelling within the Hamptons. A pied-à-terre for a pied-à-terre.
The common value of a single-section manufactured dwelling in the US is $86,100, in response to the Manufactured Housing Institute commerce group. However that gained’t get you a lot in Montauk Shores, the place an 800-square-foot beachfront dwelling bought for $3.75 million in February, the best recorded sale within the park’s historical past.
1,000,000-dollar trailer park isn’t exceptional — take, for instance, Paradise Cove Cell Dwelling Park in Malibu or Smuggler Park in Aspen. The posh communities had been usually shaped as one thing very completely different. Montauk Shores started as a campsite, and within the Nineteen Seventies, it formally grew to become a cell dwelling condominium.
In its early days, fully-furnished trailers usually went for $10,000. It was an reasonably priced place for blue-collar employees and households to take pleasure in a slice of beachy Hamptons life, a refuge for many who may not in any other case have had one. “A variety of the folks there have been firemen and policemen. It was only a place for them to flee,” stated Tom Zemaitis, 73, who at first knew of Montauk Shores as a campground and bought a trailer together with his spouse, Cherie Doughan, in 1976. “We cherished going to Montauk, nevertheless it’s modified.”
The houses have gotten greater and glitzier. Driveways are actually lined with BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes. At one level, J. Darius Bikoff, the founding father of Vitamin Water, purchased a house there.
Ms. O’Brien, the founder and president of an occasions and catering firm, owns three houses: her important residence in Sag Harbor, a winter hide-out in Snowmass, Colo., and her dwelling not distant from dwelling at Montauk Shores.
To snag her spot in Montauk Shores in 2005, she famously obtained right into a bidding battle with Jimmy Buffett for a beachfront unit. The proprietor accepted her $430,000 provide, and the 2 additionally bonded over their shared Irish heritage, Ms. O’Brien stated. In 2020, she bought that dwelling for practically $1.4 million and used the cash to purchase one other dwelling within the park for $725,000.
Ms. O’Brien’s present two-bedroom manufactured dwelling has a deck, out of doors bathe and an all-white inside — together with white furnishings, pillows, home equipment and décor. The bleached design alternative is supposed to function a counter to her in any other case nerve-racking life, stated Ms. O’Brien, 52.
“I simply knew it — that I wished to have a spot there, from simply being in there and being on the seashore,” stated Ms. O’Brien, who rents out her unit to tenants throughout peak summer season months. “I put my surfboard throughout the again of my tricycle and bungee wire it and trip all the way down to the gate. Going over the pace bumps, I’m as comfortable as might be.”
On the lookout for One thing That ‘Hardly ever Exists’
When a unit in Montauk Shores went up on the market in 2014, Louise Phillips Forbes knew she needed to act quick.
She put in a proposal sight unseen, and acquired the property for round $570,000.
“Boy, after we obtained there, it was not very fairly,” stated Ms. Forbes, 60, an actual property dealer. “I wouldn’t even stroll inside it. I simply purchased it. There was a tree rising by way of the bottom inside the home.”
Ms. Forbes and her husband tore it down and changed it with a two-bedroom, 900-square-foot abode, full with hand-drawn wallpaper adorned with waves and a granite kitchen countertop put in the other way up. (Ms. Forbes most well-liked the matte end to the glossiness of the highest.)
“I like saying that I’m trailer trash simply because I wish to see how folks will reply. However truthfully, it will technically be a prefab home,” Ms. Forbes stated. Her major residence is on the Higher West Facet of Manhattan, and he or she additionally has a spot in Bridgehampton.
Montauk Shores is reserved principally for household time and browsing. “It’s about rolling off the bed and waxing your board and getting surf classes,” she stated. “The children would run round in a herd. They’d this freedom you could’t have whenever you’re a metropolis child.”
Equally, Alicia Murphy, an inside designer, stated that the principle enchantment for getting into Montauk Shores was for the enjoyment of her 4 kids.
“We’re giving our children that type of old-school, American, community-based summer season that basically not often exists anymore,” stated Ms. Murphy, 37, who lives full-time in close by Amagansett. “I believe that’s why all these rich persons are shopping for these homes, as a result of they wish to give their youngsters and their household that laid-back summer season on the seashore in a little bit 800-square-foot shack.”
When Ms. Murphy and her husband first purchased the property in 2013, it was a “considerably rundown single-wide.” It had shag carpeting, an avocado inexperienced kitchen and mirrored partitions, Ms. Murphy stated. “I walked in a single time and stated, ‘I can’t be in right here,’ and I walked out.”
They changed it with a custom-designed manufactured residence that has a 14-foot-high pitched ceiling, a bathe with a skylight and a deck. As a result of the price of labor was costlier in Montauk, Ms. Murphy stated that she labored with a producer out of state to put in numerous options. “I ordered the kitchen, I despatched it to Indiana. We ordered the home windows, we despatched them to Indiana. I ordered tiles from Southampton and despatched them to Indiana.”
Grime Roads, Tents and Chilly Water
Mr. Zemaitis and Ms. Doughan, who now dwell in Placida, Fla., fondly bear in mind what Montauk Shores was like. They’re each now retired — Ms. Doughan labored as bodily therapist and Mr. Zemaitis was an data expertise marketing consultant (after gigs performing in a rock band and dealing at a music retailer).
“There have been events happening on a regular basis. We had a tequila celebration,” stated Ms. Doughan, 73. The couple would drive in for lengthy weekends from their condo in Kips Bay, Manhattan with their two cats — Bombay and Captain Morgan — who would get all excited as they neared the park. “They had been so comfortable to be there as a result of we’d allow them to out.”
The couple initially met at a nightclub in Montauk referred to as the Cola Copa, and so they had each grown up spending summers within the park. Ms. Doughan’s father, Al Doughan, performed an integral function within the park’s formation. Functioning as a seller, Mr. Doughan bought cell dwelling models to folks for round $10,000. “He was making an attempt to advertise the neighborhood and make it simple for folks to get the cell houses,” Mr. Zemaitis stated.
When it was principally simply tents within the Nineteen Sixties, Mr. Zemaitis recalled, there have been dust roads and public restrooms with solely chilly water. He additionally remembered making lobster traps with park residents, and having to take over the barbecue virtually each time Mr. Doughan put it on, as a result of he would wander away to have a cocktail with a neighbor. “It could burn on a regular basis,” Mr. Zemaitis stated.
“Over time, all the things obtained costlier,” he stated. “After we went again to go to, we’d purchase stuff inland earlier than we obtained to Montauk, as a result of when you purchased a pound of butter, it was such as you needed to take a mortgage out.” Round 1990, the couple bought their trailer for $45,000.
There are a handful of authentic homeowners remaining within the park immediately, together with Mr. Zemaitis’s brother. Enthusiastic about all of the methods during which it has modified over time, “it makes me unhappy,” Ms. Doughan stated. “I grew up with everybody there.”
‘Cash to Burn’
Current day in Montauk Shores, the which means of dwelling in a trailer park, for most of the present residents, has shifted removed from the unique intention of manufactured houses. Within the Eighties, across the time of the park’s official founding, manufactured houses had been the fastest-growing sort of residence within the nation, proliferating as an answer to the nation’s excessive housing prices. In 1992, The Instances reported that almost 16 million Individuals, or about 1 in 16, lived in them.
Right this moment, an estimated 22 million American residents dwell in manufactured houses, in response to the Manufactured Housing Institute commerce group. Lately, the reasonably priced housing inventory that manufactured houses characterize has been more and more threatened, with buyers being answerable for growing shares of cell dwelling park purchases.
No less than one side of life in Montauk Shores may need remained fixed over time. A number of homeowners — previous and current — careworn that they felt a robust sense of camaraderie with their neighbors. The houses are located shut collectively, so the park naturally lends itself towards a type of communal dwelling. It additionally hosts arts and crafts actions for youngsters, bingo nights and pancake breakfasts.
However at occasions, there was some rigidity between the newer homeowners and those who’ve been there longer, Ms. O’Brien stated. She recalled getting fined for minor violations over time, together with for having noisy tenants. “A variety of the previous guard right here had been complaining concerning the surfers,” she stated. “Anyway, we’re type of taking up, slowly and certainly.”
Strolling by her previous oceanfront dwelling, Ms. O’Brien identified the assorted homeowners who had a number of properties within the park. “They purchased this one, and I believe they purchased one other one. I imply, there’s folks with cash to burn.”
If the waves are good for browsing, Ms. O’Brien stated, some homeowners simply come out and use their models as altering rooms. She added, “I’m type of the identical.”
For some, caught between nostalgia for the previous and the realities of the current, dwelling in Montauk Shores feels conflicting.
Andrea Tese, 40, started renting a house within the park a couple of decade in the past. A restaurateur and fisher, she spends a lot of her time there spear and fly fishing — it’s too crowded to take pleasure in browsing, Ms. Tese added. “It’s much more flashy now,” she stated. “There was a extra relaxed, type of old-timey feeling. Only a completely different type of individual was within the trailer park, like a retired cop.”
“I cherished the way in which it was,” stated Ms. Tese. “However I assume I’m additionally a part of the change, proper? So I can’t actually complain.”
