Prices surge for beach house rentals
Prices are up and inventory is way down for rentals along Connecticut shoreline
With summer still months away, high demand for Connecticut beach house rentals is leading to scarcity and steep price increases.
Summer doesn’t begin for another two months, but the beach rental market along Connecticut’s shoreline has been red hot for weeks, leaving few choices for those who waited to book a vacation to soak up some sun and surf.
Perry Garvin, the owner and manager of Hawk’s Nest Beach in Old Lyme, a private, family-run beach area with 40 cottages, said he is fully booked through Columbus Day, the end of the season.
“Normally, at this time of year, I would have some openings but, in the middle of winter nobody took a vacation — they didn’t dare — and so certainly they wanted to get out,” Garvin, the fourth generation of his family to run the beach resort, said. “So everything got scooped up quick.”
The strong demand is, in some cases, pushing up prices renters are willing to pay as much as 10% by one estimate, compared with a typical year before the pandemic, real estate agents said. From Stonington westward along the coastline even into lower Fairfield County there has been keen interest in summer rentals, they said.
On top of stepped up demand, the options are more limited this year, said Aulay Carlson, real estate agent at Shore & Country Real Estate in Old Lyme.
“One of the reasons that it’s busier, we’re finding that many families that own properties down at the beach, they are going down and taking it for themselves,” Carlson said. “So, just like everyone else, they have been cooped up at home. So that’s lowered the inventory.”
Part of the reason beach house property owners are opting to spend more time at the shore is because they can work remotely, combining work with pleasure, Carlson said.
“Even some of the properties that are renting, they are limiting the weeks because they also want to use the property,” Carlson said.
In a typical year, Shore & Country represents about 55 summer rentals, from Westbrook east to Stonington. This year, the agency has 38 and a waiting list that is approaching 100, Carlson said.
Sheila Tinn-Murphy, an agent at Berkshire Hathaway Home Services/New England Properties in Madison, said pickings are slim along sought-after Middle Beach Road in Madison.
“There’s nothing available except for May and the first half of September and it’s $11,000 for two weeks,” Tinn-Murphy said. “And those aren’t even the premiere summer times.”
Tinn-Murphy said there are some properties available on other streets with access to the beach. One, a 1,051-square-foot house with 2 bedrooms and 1-½ baths with a “nice, little sandy beach” is going for $10,000 a month and is available in July and August, Tinn-Murphy said, “and that would be considered reasonable.”
“People are very anxious about rentals because they are not finding anything, and that is why prices are going up for the rentals because they can charge more because there is such limited access and people want to go away,” Tinn-Murphy said.
Even interest in highend summer rentals in Lower Fairfield County has intensified after New Yorkers and others fleeing crowded urban areas found the area an attractive summer retreat and are returning this year, said Mark Pruner, a real estate agent at Berkshire Hathaway Home Services/New England Properties.
“What happened last year is that we got some really amazing prices for rentals and people — particularly at the high-end here in Greenwich who would never have thought of renting their houses — but, at those prices, they said, ‘We have another place on Nantucket or somewhere else. Let’s spend the summer up there and rent our place out,” Pruner said.
Some of those same people are doing the same this summer, Pruner said.
One property owner, Joe Bordonaro, said he rented a 7,000-square-foot home he owns in New Caanan beginning in May through the end of October, for $20,000 a month. He rented it for $18,000 a month last summer.
Bordonaro, who lives much of the year in California, said he signed the lease in November.
“They didn’t even wait until after New Year’s to reach out,” Bordonaro said. “I think I could have done better if I waited, but it would have been for shorter period of time, two or three month.”
Pruner said the pandemic has reawakened interest in Greenwich and surrounding towns as a summer retreat for the well-to-do, as it was for much of the last century, until the area became more developed.
Carlson said prospective renters might have better luck looking after Labor Day, if there are not constraints of children returning to school.
“A lot of people think summer’s over, but the water is warmer in September than it is in July, and prices drop,” Carlson said. “If people can adjust their thinking of being at the beach, they should start looking in September, right now.”