If You're The Top

of the real estate market or you're the bottom, your news is good:

Prices and sales volume for Manhattan real estate continued to hold relatively steady in the second quarter of 2012, because of a continued decline in inventory, low interest rates and increased foreign investment.


Relatively good, that is, but the effect of foreign investment may be bad in the long run. Even so, let's have no pity for the folks of East Hampton who need help:


When one thinks of the Hamptons, what jumps to mind are masters of the universe and their mansions by the sea. But a strong, steady stream of immigrants has been flowing to the area for years, drawn by a service economy that demands hedges be trimmed and houses be cleaned. In the Springs, a hamlet in the town of East Hampton, where most of the houses are small and the year-round population is relatively large, the Hispanic population has tripled in the past 10 years — and tension has emerged.

Some longtime residents of the Springs and similar areas complain that homes are being illegally crowded, that houses with half a dozen cars parked outside are a blight on the street, and that the many children living inside are overwhelming the local schools and causing property taxes to rise.

The Russians may be here to spend money, but the Guatemalans are here to work, and that is how and why the Irish and the Italians got here a century ago.