F U L L D I S C L O S U R E

There's More To Some Agents Than Meets the Eye

First, we will have the nice-nice stuff. Some fun things about the people who handle your real estate-buying or selling-were submitted to "Full Disclosure" by one of the top real estate brokers on the South Fork. She did not need attribution, she wrote, so we will respect her wishes.

Nevertheless, these are things you might never have needed to know about the people who work in the industry. Still, it's nice to know they are or have been m o re t h a n what you usually see when you're sitting w i t h t h e m in their car, listening to their pitches or hammering out the details of a deal.

So, here we go.

Did you know that Angelo Piccozzi of Dering Harbor Real Estate farms oysters in his spare time? That Tom MacNiven of Prudential is a w o r l d - c l a s s t r i a t h l e t e , Miles Riley of Sotheby's is a profess i o n a l i c e skater, or John Christopher of Brown, Harris, Stevens is a s o n g w r i t e r and music producer?

It might come as a surprise that Lori Barbaria of Prudential Douglas Elliman is writing a book, or that Cee Brown of Allan Schneider Associates imports objects d'art from Bali. Joe DeSane of Corcoran is an actor/playwright, and coworker Greg O'Halloran is an artist. Speaking of art, Gioia diPaolo of Corcoran is an art collector. And Anja Breden of Corcoran is a calendar girl ...

June graduations, my u n n a m e d c o n t r i b u t o r wrote, gave me this idea: the Real Estate Yearbook.

M o s t P o p u l a r : Gioia diPaolo (Corcoran), Cee Brown (ASA). Most Likely To Succeed: Lori Barbaria (Pru), Gary DePersia (ASA). Best Personality: Corey Bezerman (Pru), Myles Reilly (Sotheby's). Best Athlete: Tom MacNiven (Pru), Anja Breden (Corcoran). Prom Queen: Kathy Zappola (Strough Realty). Prom K ing: Joe DeSane (Corcoran). Most Versatile: Angelo Piccozzi (Dering Harbor), Amelia Doggweiler (BHS). Class Clown: ????? (I'm accepting open submissions for the last category, so let's hear your suggestions.) In a similar vein, showing that real estate people are more than what you see, Jean Marie, the senior administrative assistant at Prudential Elliman's Bridgehampton office, tells us that, contrary to popular belief, real estate agents do have a life outside of work. And the agents of the Bridgeh a m p t o n o f f i c e o f P r u d e n t i a l Douglas Ellim a n h a v e been busy. Ja n e G i l l a n d He i d i Wood recentl y an h o s t e d art opening for local artist Kryn Olson. And a number of agents from Prudential Elliman's Bridgehampton, Southampton and Sag Harbor offices played baseball against a formidable Dan's Papers team. They fell short and lost, 11-9. A "get-even" game will be scheduled sometime in the near future. Now, perhaps for the more quarrelsome stuff.

I asked for input ("Oh, George, where are you?") when writing about Market and Country Real Estate repor t two weeks ago. I got that input from George S i m p s o n o f Su f f o l k R e s e a r c h Service and, to my mind, it serves the Insights, the Town

industry and therefore the public. "Here's what I have to say about `Market Insights,'" he wrote.

"1. The good thing about the Town & Country Real Estate `Market Research Report' is you can't read it. It is presented in PDF format on the Town & Country Real Estate site on a scale where the text is fuzzy, and the charts on quarterly comparisons of South Fork sub-market sales are so small you can't read them. When you print the report, it is worse. The text takes up only the middle 1/4 of the page, and you can't read anything.

"2. The `Market Insights' data comes from Suffolk Profiles (www. liprofiles.com), a transfer data provider which does not separate residential properties from land and other types of land uses. When `Market Insights' talks about Sagaponack, it says the median `home price' for the 1st quarter of '06 was $4.7 million. Their hard-toread graph shows a median price of about $1.3 million for 2005 (1st quarter) but quotes Forbes magazine with a price of $2.7 million for the year 2005. As I said, the Suffolk Profiles figures are for all properties, and not `home prices,' as `Market Insights' says they are. Look at our widely quoted data on w w w. Su f f o l k Re s e a rc h . c o m / m a rkets.htm and you will see that the Sagaponack 1st five months residential price for single-family homes (land use code 210) was over $5.6 million for 2006.

"3. In my opinion, the Town & Country document is not a market research report. It is mostly real estate listings and pictures of properties-a sales pitch for Town & Country Real Estate. There are a few pages of na‹ve and downright wrong analyses.

"[ Town & Country] should stick to selling real estate and leave market analysis to those who know what they are doing. A free market research report may be downloaded from our site www.suffolkresearch. com/report.pdf, published in April of '06. It is 21 pages of tables, charts and graphs on all five Eastern Long Island towns."

So, two things. What are your views? And, as I always say, East End real estate is a very strange business ...

Angelo Piccozzi



Gioia diPaolo



John Christopher



Cee Brown



Joe DeSane