After a childhood in Manhattan and a career on Wall Street, working in the East End real estate market represented a homecoming for Nick Brown, an agent with Sotheby’s International Realty’s East Hampton brokerage. Brown, who grew up on the Upper East Side, had early access to the coastal lifestyle as a child: His parents had a house in the Amagansett dunes before he was born and bought an 18th-century potato barn in East Hampton’s Springs hamlet. When Brown returned to make Springs his full-time home in 2017, he converted the barn into his living quarters.
“I had my whole life here on weekends and now I live on my parents’ property,” he says with a laugh.
Once here, he said he realized “what I could offer was much more unique in the Hamptons, because I had been coming here my entire life, I’m connected to lots of different parts of the area through friends and, as a second-home person, I can speak to a lot of people’s needs.”
Such experience, coupled with exposure to signature architecture and architects at an early age, helped Brown home in on his unique perspective for the market. And it’s paid off: He has represented the sale of architecturally significant houses, including the record-setting modernist house on Shelter Island designed by Bertrand Goldberg, which was, in turn, beat by Brown again with the sale of the Jaffe-designed Osofsky House for $15,995,000.
Brown spoke with us about how he built a second act in his second home.
Southforker: Was there anything in your earlier life here that telegraphed your journey into not only high-end homes, but ones of historic interest?
Nick Brown: Growing up out here, I had friends who lived in houses by Norman Jaffe, Charles Gwathmey, Richard Meyer and Robert Stern, and Gwathmey, in particular, was friends [with] my parents. I think that I may not have realized it at the time, but architecture and the way one lives was always something that was part of my life.
SF: How do these amazing listings find you or do you find them?
NB: As agents, we don’t always have the luxury to pick and choose what homes we represent, or what our buyers are looking for, and it isn’t always the case that the architect is someone as celebrated as Jaffe or Goldberg, but more about the understanding the nuances of good architecture. There’s usually something about the property that speaks to me and is unique, and I would say, as my career develops, I’m able to spend more of my time on things that are exciting to me.
SF: Are there projects on the East End you find exciting right now?
NB: We just went into contract on a house designed by James Merrell [of Merrell Soule Architects in Sag Harbor] and he was very available to me for questions and backstory. I’m working with a listing on Shelter Island designed by a young up-and-coming architect Clement Nespoulous, and it will be interesting to see his work develop. It’s nice to work with homes where the architects are still alive and available.
SF: What are some of your favorite places on the East End?
NB: I live very close to a peninsula called Gerard Drive, which looks out on Gardners Bay, and it’s just the most beautiful spot I’ve gravitated towards throughout my life. And I religiously go to the same restaurant every week that as a kid, went to every Friday night with my family, Sam’s.
SF: You sound busy! How about your spare time?
NB: I would say that water in general is a constant for me in my days here, whether it’s swimming, walking by it, walking the dog [Miss Peanut] to the bay in the morning or going to the beach in Amagansett.
