Less than 50 miles from Manhattan, in a protected wetland off the Robert Moses Causeway, a custom-built Long Island house has hit the market on an under-the-radar blip of land.
This four-bedroom, two-bathroom property is one of 32 houses on Captree Island, a marshy mass in the middle of the Great South Bay near Fire Island.
Captree “is flat and almost featureless, consisting of marine grasses bisected by tidal pools and streams,” a 2021 article by Fire Island News reported. “Captree Island was once attached in places to Jones Beach Island before the dredging of the state boat channel in 1935.”
Kevin Hill of Signature Premier Properties, who holds the $1.25 million listing, told The Post “transfers of homes are very, very rare on Captree Island. Things don’t come up for sale very often here. It’s a very tight-knit community.”
The residence now up for sale was constructed in 1986 by its current owners, who are looking to downsize.
Captree is accessible by boat (“most of the residents are boaters,” Hill said) and has a private dock “large enough to accommodate vessels of any size,” or by car. There is an exit on the Robert Moses that takes residents directly to the island’s only road, along which all the homes are built.
“Being right there in the causeway, you can get anywhere” on the mainland quite quickly, said Hill, meaning Captreers get both relative convenience and “the benefit of the exclusivity and privacy,” which comes with living on a tiny, barely populated island.
Like the other houses on Captree, the house for sale has well water and its new owner must pay $4,000 a year to the mainland Long Island town of Babylon, which technically leases residents the land.
The two-story, roughly 3,000-square-foot property also has a wraparound deck, an eat-in kitchen and a primary bedroom with a walk-in-closet — and an ensuite, skylight-, Jacuzzi tub- and walk-in shower-equipped bath.
As well, there’s a large den and storage room on the first floor, and a sumptuous living room upstairs with vaulted ceilings and large windows showcasing panoramic views in three directions.
