Okay, shellfish molt, animals shed, countries purge, businesses downsize, and realtors play musical desks. It's all in the interest of progress, Bub, or perhaps just change hoping that change is progress.

So if you are looking for your broker or an agent here is where you will find them in 2009. (Those not mentioned are either where they were or have left town for New Zealand where the market is booming).

Susan F. McGraw has moved to Town & Country Real Estate in Southampton as a Broker and Senior Vice President. That is along with veteran brokers JP Foster and Wendy Geehring to Town & Country East Hampton and Holly Rubenstein to Town & Country Bridgehampton. Gloria Doyle has moved over to Town & Country Southampton as well. (Any relation to the Judge?).

Property listed with The Corcoran Group

Popular and effective broker Beau Hulse is still out there. Not where he used to be, but is he making careful decisions in the interim? We don't know. Call us Beau, we are getting inquiries.

Lee Minetree, commercial specialist, particularly successful with moving restaurants as we remember from his Allan Schneider days, has gone to Saunders Associates in Bridgehampton. Nice catch, Saunders and good luck to Lee, who yes, went through school with my kids and his are going or went to school with theirs.

Saunders also snagged Ed Brisotti, Joe Ruzzo, Robert Press, Donna Daniele, John Kelly, Jean Luban, Nancy Mizrahi, Anne Riordan, and Laura White to their office.

Nice going, however, an alert. Big is not always more effective, no matter how competent realtors are. The pie size is a fixed item. Cuts can end up being too slim. Service to clients and customers is crucial. Knowledge of area is a necessary condition. Support staff is vital. I guess what I am pointing out is that it is all about quality in the long run. There is no conversion factor from quantity to that currency.

So downsizing can be a very good impetus for improved business and broker environment, whereas more and newer firms can be an injection of new ideas, and a transfusion of new contacts. We see it as a win-win, as long as knowledge of limits is kept in mind by management. When you tune an instrument to high C, you are there. Going further gets D flat.

Both Gary DePersia of The Corcoran Group and Judi Desiderio, CEO Town & Country Real Estate, get some nice coverage in print as to the market given recent Wall Street and national events.

Here's what they have to say: "Sales volume in the Hamptons has also slowed this year, but the Wall Street turmoil in September 'broke the logjam' of the buyer-seller stand-off," said Gary De Persia, senior vice president of Corcoran Real Estate. "A flurry of sales between $2.5 million and $8 million closed in the weeks following Lehman's bankruptcy as sellers decided it would be better to negotiate on price than to wait. No one walked away with a wash, but were they at prices that (the sellers) anticipated in the spring? No."

Both DePersia and Desiderio see opportunity for the super-rich to snap up Hamptons homes at favorable prices. The so-called "East End dirt" is safer to put money into than investing cash in the stock market or depositing it in major banks, which could disappear overnight. 

Yes, well, the successful broker-owner, Desiderio has been pointing that line of thought out in these columns for some time now.

This picked up by Laura Scott or Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate, CEO Dotty Herman's right hand, and shipped to us under 'This Is Not A Recession' - "If you think of it as a recession, you may be tempted to 'hunker down' and wait for the economy to cycle back. If you think of it as a recalibration, you will be motivated to focus on what you have to do differently."

Yes well, did I suggest East End real estate is a very strange business? On the other hand, we are from the duck school of reality - If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck - you know the rest.

Some brokers who have stayed have been doing things that time may not have allowed in other years. Lori MacGarva and Robert Kohr, Prudential Douglas Elliman's energetic and gifted commercial real estate division based in their East Hampton office but covering both Forks, have been creating a brochure for their commercial properties, sales and leasing, and have, we are told, some very attractive offerings in their inventory. Actually "hot on the market" was the phrase used as I remember. Brokers and customers interested should contact them as early birds before the piece goes out.

That's what we think, but on the other hand, what-do-we-know? Because East End real estate really is a very strange business.