In Wall Street’s playground

The Umbrian landscape and the negotiations to purchase a hamlet on behalf of Big Daddy seem a world away. I have left the hilltop towns, the medieval squares, the friendly locals and that pleasant evening light for a destination at the opposite end of the spectrum – the Hamptons.

Resting on a thin strip of land at the tip of New York’s Long Island, this is the weekend/summering location of choice for discerning Manhattanites. I used to visit as a child during the 1980s, when it still felt like a rural idyll, settled by artists, including Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner and Willem de Kooning. My parents would take me to visit Alfonso Ossorio, an artist and patron, at his estate The Creeks in East Hampton. We spent our days cycling past corn fields and sipping on coke floats in Bridgehampton’s Candy Kitchen. But when Ossorio died in the 1990s the house was sold to Revlon owner Ron Perelman. That’s a good indication of how the Hamptons has changed over the years.

Prices have soared (up to multiples of five in some cases) as every Wall Street broker, hedge fund manager and east coast movie star vied to secure a home in Southampton, Bridgehampton or East Hampton. Renovations and new builds made millionaires of area contractors. We once heard about an 18th-century farmhouse purchased upstate and relocated, brick by brick, to the Hamptons.

Summer typically brings endless rounds of cocktail parties, usually in aid of charity and always with a fairly stiff price tag – $500 is the norm – and it’s standard practice to hop from one to another and then a dinner. It is Manhattan-sur-mer, with deals struck by the side of the pool.

I’m staying with friends from those childhood summers who have a timeshare in Sagaponack, a popular way for the merely well-off to enjoy summer weekends outside the city. This house is close to the beach, comes with the obligatory pool and hot tub, and is filled with New York wannabes and will-bes.

One particularly odious banker talks of nothing but money. He commands our host to tell us how much he’s paying for the timeshare and then claims he could have negotiated a better deal. I doubt it. The rental market here is booming while potential purchasers wait for the market to bottom out. I know one man who is planning to spend about $15m on a house but paid $1m for a summer place; he thinks values will drop 15 per cent in the next 12 months.

Apparently, houses in the $1m to $10m price bracket, the “bread and butter” of Hamptons estate agencies, are already down 20 per cent since last year. That said, the super-prime market seems, if anything, to be rising. “There will always be a demand for that perfect property right on the waterfront,” I am told. A five-acre estate on the beach in Southampton is currently on the market for $80m.

The banker house guest is looking and seems to have adopted me as his new friend – for realtor’s office visits at least. His standard opening lines are: “Who’s in trouble? Who’s about to foreclose? Who was with Bear Stearns? Those guys must be really hurting.”

On one outing without him, I find myself in an art gallery. There’s a charming painting of those corn-on-the-cob fields I remember from my childhood visits. But just as I’m handing over my credit card, my “friend” appears. He insists on knowing what I’m paying – the ticket price – then berates me and tries to renegotiate “the deal”.

“Who was it who said some people know the price of everything and the value of nothing?” I ask vaguely.

“Oscar Wilde,” the vendor replies.

At least the artisan spirit is still alive in some corners of the Hamptons.

secretagent@ft.com