She Realized Her American Dream With a Hamptons House. Which One Did She Buy? (2024)

Karine Dubner was 20 when she arrived in the United States, with $1,500 and the vague hope of living in New York one day.

It was 1989, and the French-born Ms. Dubner was a student at the Sorbonne in Paris, traveling the world with a friend. When she landed in Los Angeles, she instantly fell in love with the lifestyle and the fashion industry. She found a job as an assistant to Max Azria, the founder of the clothing brand BCBG Max Azria, and dropped out of school to chase her own American dream.

Putting down roots in New York had to wait. As the decades passed, Ms. Dubner married, had three sons and acquired a women’s fashion brand, Brochu Walker. By 2015, she was divorced and living in Beverly Hills, and her ties to Los Angeles felt more binding than ever. But a few years later, she found herself at a fashion show on the East Coast, in a place she had never been: the Hamptons. It was tantalizingly close to New York City, but with a sense of peace and open spaces that reminded her of her childhood in Toulon, in the south of France.

“Everything was so green. The people were so nice. There were little American flags everywhere,” said Ms. Dubner, 55. “I found it so charming.”

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She decided to make two important real estate decisions at once: To find a location for a Brochu Walker retail store in the Hamptons, and to buy a home in the same area that she could use as a base when she visited.

The house would come first. In the summer of 2022, she began working with Randi Ball, a licensed real estate saleswoman with The Agency in East Hampton, looking for a house that could serve as a vacation home and a rental property when she wasn’t there.

Ms. Dubner was especially charmed by the town of East Hampton and decided to focus her search there. She had a preference for traditional architecture and hoped to find a home with a lot of green space and a pool, in a place that would put her within walking distance of the beach and the shop-lined Main Street. She also wanted at least five bedrooms and bathrooms, so there would be enough space for her three sons to visit and she could maximize her prospects in the rental market. She set a target budget of around $5 million, but quickly realized it would need to be adjusted.

“With every single criteria I added, I needed to spend more,” she said.

Ms. Ball knew they had to be creative to find something that ticked all the boxes, particularly in an area where prices have skyrocketed and inventory has plummeted since the pandemic. “We were still coming off the Covid inventory crunch,” she said. “We saw a few homes, but nothing fit the bill.” So she began asking colleagues to tip her off to pocket listings — homes that were not yet on the market.

Among the properties Ms. Dubner considered:

No. 1

Pocket Listing Over Budget

Ms. Dubner didn’t mean to fall in love with this eight-bedroom home with a gunite pool and English-style country kitchen, but its blend of warm farmhouse design and grand entertaining spaces hooked her. It had a tree-lined terrace and a private pool house, as well as walkability to the heart of East Hampton. The 6,100-square-foot house, built in 2019 on 0.75 acres, was off market, and the seller wanted $25 million — five times the budget Ms. Dubner had set. So she began to consider selling other real estate or moving some of her business’s shares to make buying the house possible. The annual property taxes were about $20,000.

No. 2

Modern Style With Sculpture Garden

This six-bedroom, eight-bathroom home was filled with light and provided Ms. Dubner something she coveted: privacy in the heart of East Hampton. Set behind a gate, with a long, winding drive, the 6,050-square-foot home, built in 2021 on 0.44 acres, offered gleaming new construction, with a wall of sliders from the kitchen out to the pool, and landscaped grounds that included a delightful life-size elephant statue. With an en suite bathroom for every bedroom, it was set up nicely as a rental property. The asking price was $6.75 million, with about $27,000 a year in taxes.

No. 3

Traditional Architecture on Large Plot

At about 9,000 square feet, this seven-bedroom, eight-bathroom 2016 house was the largest Ms. Dubner considered. Its elegant, traditional design was precisely the aesthetic she wanted, and the outdoor spaces, where a pool and covered cabana anchored manicured grounds dotted with wildflowers, felt dreamlike. The house was within walking distance of the beach, which Ms. Dubner liked, but not the village of East Hampton. The property of about 1.25 acres was not on the market, but the seller told Ms. Ball he would consider selling for $11.2 million. The annual property taxes were about $17,000.

Which Would You Choose?

Which Did She Buy?