Ed Wolfersdorf Reminisces About the Era of the 'McMansion'

In his 23-year tenure as a building inspector, Ed Wolfersdorf has seen his share of ups and downs in the real estate market. In 1988 when he started in Southampton Town, modern houses with their flat roofs and blocky dimensions were on their way out. But this followed the financial crisis of 1987, remembered for Black Monday when the Dow fell 22 percent in one day precipitated by “program trading.”

“Pages and pages of spec houses were listed for sale in the local paper,” said Wolfersdorf, as he tidied up his spare desk in Quogue Village Hall, where he has worked for the past 11 years. “And then it crashed.”

The town also had to deal with homeowners who were able to buy houses for a pittance compared to today, and rent them to groups that would hole up as many as 50 on a summer weekend.

“That doesn’t happen too much anymore, especially in Quogue,” he said. “It’s too expensive.”

When the real estate market returned, he found himself in the Southampton Village Building Department, where he spent the next five years negotiating with business owners who wanted to post more signs and sell more things on the sidewalks than the village code allowed and the village board wanted.

This was the real estate boom of the late ’90s. “And they were pumping out houses for the ultra wealthy,” he said.

The era of the McMansion had arrived with its postmodern design of large houses wrapped in shingles. 

“Then we had to deal with houses getting too large for the properties,”  he said.

Not too long after, an architect submitted a plan for a house on Dune Road that covered 16,000 square feet; the village jumped in and set the limit on how big a house could be.

Wolfersdorf pulled out a bookmarked and worn copy of the village code. Yep, in May 2009 all residential buildings were restricted to 12 percent of the total property plus 1,200 square feet.

“That was the biggest one ever attempted,” he said, showing the plans for the slatted shoebox of a house that never was built.

Wolfersdorf is allowed to reminisce. He will be retiring next week to go to the beach, walk the dog and "grow old gracefully".

But he soon expects to get back to work with his wife, a real estate lawyer, and go back to the work he did in the private sector before becoming a municipal employee. He will do some drafting, perhaps help expedite permits and variances from his East Quogue home.

This will keep him in touch with the builders, real estate agents and brokers and village employees he has grown to love.

“I’ll miss it,” he said while getting into his car parked next to the gazebo on the Quogue Village Green.