Suffolk Closeup: The housing crisis hits home

The median sale price for a single-family house in Suffolk County has hit a new record high — $725,000 — as reported in December in Newsday. (The figure was from November, provided by OneKey MLS, which is based in East Farmingdale and co-owned by the Long Island Board of Realtors.)

Newsday added that in July 2025, a previous record high was reached — $702,000 — the first time the median dollar figure for a house in Suffolk had gone into the $700,000 range. 

As for the median price of a house in the Hamptons, it is far more, beyond breathtaking. And this is the situation these days for a house on Shelter Island, too.

As Julie Lane reported in the Reporter in November: “According to Realtor.com, ‘The median listing price in Shelter Island was $2.8M in September 2025, trending up 22.1% year-over-year.’” The median sale price for October 2025, said Realtor.com, compared to the median listing price the month earlier, was $2.75 million.

In October 2024, Ambrose Clancy wrote a piece headlined “Shelter Island house prices continue to rise: Factors determining the increase.” He noted that a decade earlier, in 2013, “the median home sale price on the Island was $723,000.”  

Realtor.com reports that the median sale price in October 2025 of a single-family house in Southampton was $3.45 million; in East Hampton $2.69 million; in Sag Harbor $3.5 million.

Some personal housing experience. The first place my wife and I lived on Long Island in 1961 when we were 19, was a basement apartment in Hempstead with a rent of $50 a month. Then we went higher up the housing food chain to a two-room cottage in Islip with a rent of $75 a month. We welcomed our first child in 1963 in that cute cottage. Then, with child, we rented a larger house in Brentwood for $125 a month.

As to buying a house, after I got a job as a reporter at the daily Long Island Press in 1964, we figured we could afford a seven-room, two-bathroom house in Sayville for $19,000. We could have bought a house for much less: we were shown nice houses for $15,000 and $16,000. But the Sayville house was in the dream-house category.

Then, in 1974 we moved to Noyac, west of Sag Harbor, and with the money from selling the Sayville house for $39,000, bought a century-old saltbox for $45,000. We could have bought a house in Sag Harbor for much less, too; most were selling for $39,000 in those days. But we jumped for this place where, 52 years later, we still live.

When I’ve discussed housing with my journalism students at SUNY Old Westbury and how much we rented for and how much we bought houses for, they are shocked, and express huge concerns for what their future will bring. I understand there’s been inflation over the years. But the rate of inflation between 1964 and 2025 in the U.S. increased by 10 times. And 10 times $19,000 — what we paid for our first house in Suffolk — is considerably less than the new median house price in the county of $725,000. 

In the Newsday piece, Richard Haggerty, CEO of OneKey MLS, said: “Until we have more inventory, we’re not going to solve the affordability problem, and that’s a really gnarly problem to tackle.”

It’s not simply inventory. A variety of housing types also would seem necessary. A great deal of attention, quite notably on Shelter Island, is being focused on accessory dwelling units, or ADU’s, an additional residential building occupying the same lot as a primary residence. 

The Island has been concerned about the housing situation for years. The Shelter Island Comprehensive Plan states that it is “a basic goal to assure that a supply of affordable housing on Shelter Island exists … adequate to serve the diversity of the Island’s population and that any new housing be developed in a manner harmonious with the Island’s environment.”

In 2022, Islanders passed Proposition 3 authorizing a .5% real estate transfer tax enabling local funding for affordable housing. Involved in that effort was Elizabeth Hanley, who has just stepped down from being chairperson of the Island’s Community Housing Board to this week taking a seat on the Town Board, to which she was elected in November.

Julie Lane wrote a piece in 2022 saying: “What prompted Ms. Hanley’s concern about a lack of affordable housing on Shelter Island was the realization that when she and her family returned to the Island, the place her family has called home for three generations, most of the friends she grew up with had left, primarily because they couldn’t afford to stay.” 

Last week, Ms. Hanley was explaining to me how the need for affordable housing on the Island “is very personal with me.” She spoke about a three-pronged initiative now being pursued. This includes action on ADUs on the Island. Some $2 million was initially received from the state’s Plus One ADU Program, and then another $1.5 million to facilitate them. Then there is a plan for construction of 10 “affordable rental units on Town property.” The third component is a “comprehensive survey” of Island housing needs funded by a federal Community Development Block Grant. This, she said, will assist in further decision-making, grant-seeking and investments. 

About the cost of housing on the Island, Ms. Hanley noted that being an accountant is her profession. And the price of housing on the Island presents a “financial challenge. We are trying to make the math work. Land is expensive, there is the cost of building.” 

With the Island joining the Hamptons in astronomical housing prices, tackling the housing crisis is a huge challenge.