If this isn't the definition of the "1 Percent," we don't know what is.
A Manhattan financier recently purchased a strip of land 12 inches wide in New York's affluent tony Hamptons region for $120,000, according to multiple sources. And he reportedly did it just to keep his neighbor from walking on his property to get to the beach.
When Suffolk County, N.Y., acquired the narrow ribbon of land after its previous owner stopped paying taxes, the county wanted to sell it for just $10, Newsday reports. But two homeowners whose properties border the skinny sliver started a bidding war that quickly shot up to $120,000, with the winning bid going to Marc Helie, the paper notes.
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The red line shows the ribbon of land that financier Marc Helie bought for $120,000.
Suffolk County property manager Wayne Thompson, after hearing from staffers who ran the auction, explained what the high price was really about. "I gathered one guy really did not want the other one walking over his property to the water," he said, according to Newsday.
The slender belt of land, which is located in the tiny, low-lying area of Napeague (population 223), runs 1,885 feet from the Montauk Highway to a pristine beach where New York City's financial elite have summered for years and where Helie, who reportedly works for a Manhattan investment firm, has beachfront property.
Despite the sum it fetched, the slim strip of ground doesn't sound all that amazing. "I don't know how you could even walk on it, it's only a foot wide and all overgrown," Thompson told CNBC. “You’d have a hard time locating it without a survey,” he said to Southampton-based news site 27 East.
Helie better hope his neighbors don't build tall wooden fences on either side of his little sliver -- it could get cramped in there.
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