REAL ESTATE

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What's the Status?
As far as home trends go, some younger families are tearing up tennis courts they don't use—now viewed as a status symbol of the past—to have more landscaping, even though brokers advise against this.

"The biggest reason homes don't sell is because they don't have tennis courts or room to put them—they're a key component of a house," Lenz says. "People will switch locations for a tennis court even if they don't play. It's a quirky thing."

Developer Joe Farrell agrees, saying that tennis courts can add millions of dollars in value to a home. Rory Pierpont, of Castle & Pierpont, which has landscaped over two tennis courts this year, says people are also spending more money on landscaping—up on average from $125,000 last year to $150,000 and more this summer.

Client requests are also becoming, more, well, intricate. This year, one client, for example, wanted a pair of staggered water walls with a modern "living sculpture" garden with only ball-shaped boxwood topiary shrubs, "punctuated intermittently with stands of white birch and sculpted black granite benches placed strategically throughout the space," Pierpont said.

Brokers have been besieged by specific requests from high-end renters. Corcoran broker Rick Hoffman says he's been asked to provide "multiple sets of high quality linens so that beds could be changed with starched sheets every day." Others have requested exercise rooms and even rock climbing walls, along with iPod docking stations for a central stereo system, he adds.

Angela Boyer-Stump, executive vice president of Hampton Country Real Estate, says she's been asked to feed cats and dogs, wait for movers, cable guys, get renters free golf course passes at the ritzy clubs and onto exclusive party lists. One perfectly able-bodied young man even asked her to assemble his TV stand.

Worse was the time a renter cut a tree down by the pool because it made his spot in the sun too shady. "He didn't try to hide it, but I had to deal with it," Boyer-Stump said. Let's just say the off-the-record solution worked. (The summer season is just too short to launch eviction proceedings, she added.)