Hamptons home prices surge to record highs thanks to Wall Street and shrinking supply.

Hamptons prices set a record this summer. Fall is when you actually get to see the houses.

This is a special Hamptons edition, ten houses instead of ten apartments; we are back to New York City next week.

The median Hamptons sale price crossed $2 million for the first time last year and hit $2.5 million in the second quarter, up 32 percent in a year. Inventory has fallen three quarters in a row and sits far below its ten-year average. When there is this little to buy, what holds value is whatever cannot be replicated: a reserve, water frontage, a block you can walk to the village from.

Fall is my favorite time to show properties. The summer renters left after Labor Day, so owners who rented through the season have listed and are showing again, with no tenant in the way. The traffic left with them, so a day of showings from Southampton to Montauk is a day, not a weekend. A contract signed in October or November closes with time to spare, so you are settled in, not still unpacking, when the season starts.

The Hamptons have been my second home for my entire life. I spent every childhood summer out there, and a little over six years ago I bought and renovated my own place in Southampton Village.

This week my client closed on 645 North Sea Mecox Road in Southampton, an 1860s farmhouse on just over two acres that had been on and off the market for more than a year. The diligence made the deal: the 38 acres around it are an agricultural reserve that can never be built on. That is privacy in perpetuity, and it is not something money can add to the house next door.

This week’s ten run from a $1,850,000 saltbox in Montauk to a $39,500,000 estate on Mecox Bay in Water Mill, across Southampton, Bridgehampton, Sag Harbor, East Hampton, Montauk and Shelter Island. If one pulls at you, reply and we’ll set up a private tour.