Last week I mentioned two exclusive land listings we got from a friend and some of you industrious realtors have been emailing me. I can tell you about one of them. For a level wooded playing field (remote attempt at pun) we have a shy six acre building lot between Sag Harbor and East Hampton, good for home, pool, and tennis court. The smaller lot across from it is on the market for $795,000. Ours is less, Bub. Buyers' brokers preferred if you have an interest and a customer.

On the big Montauk deal we mentioned briefly a few weeks ago. Yes, well, polo playing communications honcho and art collector, Adam Lindemann, has found an oceanfront hideaway in Montauk for $21.5 million. Lindemann, represented by selling broker John Golden, Prudential Douglas Elliman East Hampton Office, bought the sprawling five-bedroom, seven and half -bath home on six acres with 500 feet of beachfront on Old Montauk Highway, listed by The Corcoran Group's Bonnie Ahrens and Janette Goodstein.

Helping close the deal in a legal way, was a lot of St. Patrick's Day Green, besides the other $21 million kind. The Honorable Edward Burke, Sr, back with a boom at Burke and Sullivan when not dispensing justice in Southampton Town, was there for his client Lindemann, as was attorney John MacLachlan, of MacLachlan & Eagan.

Property listed with Prudential Douglas Elliman.

The hideaway has a chef's kitchen, den, library, stone fireplaces, media room, home theater, wine cellar, staff rooms, a separate guesthouse and, of course, a 55-foot-long gunite pool.

We wrote about the Northwest Woods and the two Amagansett oceanfront estates sold by the de Menils' – one in the 1980s, and the other the gigunda $103 million dollar deal last year - and then each sister bought in East Hampton's Northwest Woods, still on the water (Northwest Harbor) but, with the ultimate luxury, namely, privacy.

Some back story: The ultimate luxury, privacy! Lona Rubenstein, Inc. used those words in the 1980s, because selling the Grace Estate twice - once unimproved then two years later improved - and other large acreage in that area, we really saw that the Northwest Woods was special, indeed. It was country, it was water, it was trees, it was East Hampton as much as the broad sandy ocean beaches South of the Highway.

More back story: The 9.4 acres recently acquired by Adelaide de Menil-Carpenter once was Ernie's Marina. We are told about Ernie by Larry Koncelik, of the Northwest pioneer Koncelik and Whalen families (23 children all told, living and growing up on Mile Hill Road, some before electricity got that far).

Writes Koncelik, "Its funny, Ernie spent his life digging holes there. His only customer, I think, was me. I paid him 30 dollars a month to keep my scallop boat there in 1974 and 1975. He had a dream for the place. He had a vision, just no money. Ernie called himself 'Loveable Ernie.' He could not make any money at the marina that he bought in 1959 so he moonlighted as a full-time mailman in East Hampton. His major problem with the marina was that the bay was too shallow for boats to get to it when the tide was low. He spent years digging and digging, night and day. He liked to play country guitar as well. His hands were the size of baseball gloves. What a character. He sold the place around 1985 for $400,000; de Menil paid $7 million. It has enough dry ground for one house. It is an absolutely beautiful place."

Thanks, Larry, for the local tale. Larry and wife Gaye have a wonderful home for sale abutting the "absolutely beautiful place." Holly Rubenstein (yeah, I know) has that exclusive with Prudential Douglas Elliman in East Hampton.

Back story, this on last week's annual achievement awards that mentioned offices in the real world outside of the twin forks. Tom MacNiven, managing broker at Prudential Douglas Elliman East Hampton, adds, "If you want to comment on the fantastic years our excellent offices in Bayside, Queens, and Franklin Square had - the average transaction in those markets is less than $200,000, and the offices have three times as many agents as ours. It's about units - not high dollar sales. Comparisons to the Hamptons are apples/oranges. But, at the end of the day, it's all about who brings home the bacon."

Tom also provided this tiger lady quote from Prudential Douglas Elliman's CEO Dottie Herman regarding the drama that always surrounds the company's top producer awards: "If you weren't competitive, then something would be wrong, you'd be in social work. There are government jobs, there's social work. In this kind of an industry, you want competitive people."

Yeah, right!

East End Real Estate? A tough and very strange business.