REAL ESTATE

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On the other hand, many sellers with $20-30 million properties act with the surety of clairvoyants. They feel that there's plenty of money around and anyone in such a league is not concerned with worldly issues. Lead the nouveaux pauvres to grittier pastures. The result? A period of stagnation.

Other periods had different reactions. The dot-com spill of the late '90s was probably more serious than the '87 crash, and with broader repercussions. People didn't lose their homes necessarily but merely their retirement nest eggs that had been stashed in brash internet holdings. All those paper fortunes disappeared. Instead of bond manipulators in the '80s like Milken who went to jail, high profile types were preparing for time in the can. Sam Waksal was a product of his time, as was, to some degree, Martha Stewart. The one steady commodity was real estate, which after 1991 became the safe haven again. From that point on until 2007, real estate has appreciated enormously, with the Hamptons in the lead.

Time will tell. Sellers can wait for conditions to improve or lower prices to generate a sale. It's as simple as that. The wild card is, how long is long? That depends. Will more black dramas unfold? Will more high-paid Wall Street moneymakers lose their jobs? Will the less arcane hedge funds unravel like pearls on a string? Will a Democrat or Republican win the White House? Will the fight for Middle East oil cause even more conflagrations?

If there's any saving grace for Hamptons real estate, it's the ongoing and driving desire to live as well as one can. New Yorkers and flush suburbanites are not going to spend hot summers at home on a busman's holiday placated by excursions to Coney Island or forays to black fly country. Summering in the Hamptons is as important to most New Yorkers as the right condo.

Where are today's opportunities? Southampton homeowner and billionaire Wilbur Ross is busy investing in servicing mortgages because most of us are still making those payments every month. We're told that groups of savvy investors are joining with friends to shop for bargains here at lower prices.