They found a 1930s fisherman’s shack on Davis Creek in the town of Southampton, and are paying $10,000 a month.The beach in Southampton, N.Y. The COVID-19 exodus has driven Hamptons real-estate prices to record highs. Farrell, who moved his family into a newly completed modern home nearby, said he has rented 10 houses this season, some new builds and others that he rents every year. They rented a six-bedroom, three-bath house with a hot tub, pool and tennis court — sight unseen — for $11,000 a month, planning to stay through the end of May.Late last month, concerned that New York City “wouldn’t open up enough to enjoy it,” Mr. Aronson, 47, who is working remotely in his insurance brokerage job at Marsh & McLennan, extended the lease for another $10,000 to the end of June.“We didn’t get to go on our Turks and Caicos trip” in mid-March, Mr. Aronson said.

And the evictions freeze applies to short-term rentals.Jill-Mandy Voutta and Carlo Voutta of Jersey City, N.J., were tired of being cooped up in a two-bedroom apartment, and signed a lease to rent a Hamptons house beginning May 1.Then they learned the previous tenant wasn’t going to move out on April 30 as scheduled “because of the Covid situation, and because of this they cannot be evicted,” said Ms. Voutta, 35, an assistant to an interior decorator. On the other hand, some of those fears may be tempered by owners who don’t typically rent out their homes looking at the market and deciding to jump in.Sheryl Carlin Jenks, a sales agent at Douglas Elliman, is currently trying to place a dozen customers in seasonal and summer rentals in the South Fork communities that make up the Hamptons, from Westhampton Dunes to Montauk.“People who are looking for seasonal rentals are concerned there will be less rentals for them to choose from because so many rentals started in March or April,” Ms. Jenks said. Some haggled for gym equipment, pool tables and Ping-Pong tables, he added.With rentals in short supply and people wanting to go places within driving distance, Ms. Herman of Elliman predicted that “people will look to buy.”“You will see a surge of homes selling this summer,” she said.Mr. HamptonsRE.com is the only destination to search Hamptons Real Estate & North Fork Real Estate directly from the brokerage firms of the East End. “There is not less inventory; there are just more people looking to rent.”While she is still getting calls for the traditional Memorial Day start, many renters wanted to move east by May 1, and “numerous people have already extended” their leases, she said.The pace hasn’t let up for landlords or agents, with many of these renters new to the Hamptons and quite happy once they are able to settle in.“This is definitely a health crisis, not a real estate crisis,” Ms. Jenks said.In mid-April, when the coronavirus made living in their Manhattan co-op increasingly untenable, Dan and Jessica Aronson and their two sons, ages 8 and 9, decamped to Remsenburg, a hamlet in Southampton with nary a stoplight. Now the Southampton house which Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie famously …

Ms. Shabtai moved on, only to learn that the owner installed the heater herself, then jacked up the price by $15,000. The North Fork, however, dipped 16% during Q1. Donning a mask, gloves and protective booties, she bucked the virtual route and toured around 30 houses.“It was like, ‘Oh my god, what did I do?’,” she recalled. “The market was so high and out of control,” said Ms. Miller, 40, a lawyer specializing in real estate at Cozen O’Connor. For $50,000 to $70,000 for the season, she couldn’t find a three-bedroom house with a heated pool, at least “not in towns I want to live in,” she said.

The ultra-rich are buying multiple quarantine mansions in the Hamptons for the “long term,” as Gov. A week on an island turned into a vacation home for weeks and weeks.” Now, with summer camps unlikely to open for their sons, the Aronsons are considering extending through July.“We are absolutely loving it out here,” said Mr. Aronson, who is enjoying the novelty of getting in the car and driving to get groceries. Vichinsky concurred. “I don’t know how I will transition back to city life. Ms. Shabtai agreed, then realized she didn’t want to fly or even be in an airport. “I didn’t rent this house so I could be spending all the money renting an inferior house,” she said. The Hamptons summer rental season, which traditionally runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day, got off to an … At the ultra high end, rental prices are up 20 percent over last season: “It is cheaper to buy and carry a home than to rent a home because the rental rates have gone so crazy.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, As Summer Nears, the Hamptons Face a ‘Feeding Frenzy’Brokers say it is a landlord’s market this year in the communities that make up the Hamptons.Dan and Jessica Aronson and their two sons left their Manhattan co-op in mid-April and decamped to Remsenburg, N.Y. “We are absolutely loving it out here,” said Mr. Aronson. “Now I started from zero again,” she said, hoping an online listing for a $10,000-a-month, renovated 1930s fisherman’s shack on Davis Creek in Southampton Town, would pan out instead.