REAL ESTATE

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Ocean Road in Bridge-hampton is a thoroughfare of mansions, each bigger than the next. What ever happened to that charming yellow house?

A friend dragged me to her spec house deep in the woods between Southampton and Bridgehampton, down a long, dark driveway until we arrived at what Daphne du Maurier did not have in mind for Manderley. There were so many bedrooms and so many living rooms, I wondered if the average household could handle such distended quarters.

I've been inside a few of these über-spreads on both sides of the highway. They come off like Stonehenge, swiped off a mountainside.

Maybe it's the Rennert effect: size matters if you've built with your congregational brethren in mind. But I suspect that the abundance of these super houses lolling like boils on the landscape are mostly the result of what so much easy money can buy.

It almost makes one nostalgic for a little ranch house with oblong wings and asphalt shingles.

I must admit to total ignorance of the hedge fund world and the new personalities who populate it. My young nephew, fresh from his new perch on Wall Street, visited me recently and talked nonstop of "CDOs" and other acronyms not found in Webster's. The only comment I could muster was, "Do you wear a suit and tie to the office?"

That Hamptons houses are on steroids is no surprise considering for whom they're intended. But are they selling? Some big spec houses are sitting empty, as far as I can tell, with fewer buyers willing to ante up $15 million or $20 million for ownership. Some think this McMansion trend could grind to a halt, with few mourners.

Happily, prime waterfront properties are still very much in demand. Just this spring, the last remaining Tyson holding off Further Lane went for $29 million for two desultory lots far back from the ocean containing two houses that might be crushed as soon as title passes. Ad tycoon Donnie Deutsch won the bidding war for this property.