The East End, in figures.

The defining fact of the 2026 East End market is scarcity. Second-quarter listing inventory stood at 1,166, down 9.5% in a year and 15.8% below its ten-year average, against 425 closed sales, itself 12.3% below the decade’s norm. Prices responded the way prices do: the $1M–$5M band, now a record 67.8% of all sales, posted a $2.2 million median, up 16.1% year over year. Sub-$1M sales have thinned to 14.6% of the market. Sales at $5M and above held a 17.9% share.

The geography of the high end is concentrated: Bridgehampton, Water Mill, and Sagaponack together carried a $5.33 million median and three of the quarter’s seven $20M+ closings. Amagansett’s median sat near $4.3 million on sharply reduced volume. Hampton Bays remains the only submarket with a median under $1 million. For altitude: the overall East End median in early 2005 was $735,000, and the first quarter of 2025 set what was then a record at $2.04 million.

New York’s top state income tax rate is 10.9%, and a New York City tax resident faces up to roughly 14.8% combined once the city’s 3.876% top rate is added, which matters because much of the East End’s ownership is taxed as city residents. New York ranks 50th of 50 on the Tax Foundation’s 2026 State Tax Competitiveness Index. The statewide effective property tax rate on owner-occupied housing runs about 1.30%, before the East End’s insurance realities on coastal product.

Then the estate layer. New York’s 2026 estate tax exemption is $7.35 million per person with a top rate of 16% and no spousal portability. Exceed the exemption by more than 5%, roughly $7.72 million, and the exemption disappears entirely; the whole estate becomes taxable from dollar one. On the East End, where a single house routinely clears the threshold by itself, the cliff is not an edge case. It is the default trajectory of anyone who bought before 2015 and did not plan.

The IRS counts what people do, not what they say at dinner. In the 2022–2023 filing year, New York lost a net 71,987 tax filers and $9.9 billion in adjusted gross income. The states gaining filers in the same data: Florida (+55,349), Texas (+56,473), North Carolina (+39,118), and South Carolina (+29,214). Three of the four are a two-hour flight from Islip.

The receiving end has been cutting taxes into the inflow. South Carolina’s H.4216, effective for tax year 2026, moves the state to a two-tier structure of 1.99% below $30,000 and 5.21% above it, with automatic future reductions when revenue triggers are met. Florida remains at zero. Neither state, nor North Carolina, nor Georgia, levies an estate tax. A household with $1 million of annual taxable income pays roughly $109,000 to Albany at the top state rate before the city’s share; the same income costs about $51,000 in South Carolina under the 2026 structure, and nothing in Florida. Over a decade, the difference is a second house. Frequently, it is this second house.