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Living Year-Round in a Summer Bungalow

Some former summer communities have been turned into co-ops that offer an affordable alternative to bigger homes in the area.

Chrissy Dorio, 58, a divorced housing specialist for the elderly, searched all over Westchester for more than a year to find an affordable home where she and her college-age son could live.

In the fall of 2019, she moved into a $215,000, one-bedroom, one-bath 572-square-foot fixer-upper in Campwoods Grounds, a cooperative community of single-family homes in Ossining, about 32 miles from New York City. She soon discovered that she bought into more than just a house.

When she lost power during a thunderstorm last year, a neighbor ran an extension cord to her home to keep her refrigerator going. “How many people would do something like that,” she said, “I love the people here.”

Considered a “horizontal co-op” by brokers and homeowners, Campwoods Grounds is a former summer bungalow colony that has evolved into a year-round community that offers an affordable alternative to homes in the area that generally come with higher prices and bigger tax bills.

There are other examples of these colonies in the metropolitan area and each one often comes with prices that are lower than the surrounding area and a community of helpful neighbors, something that is especially attractive during these social-distancing days of Covid-19. Working largely from home because of the pandemic, Ms. Dorio said she and her neighbors have kept in touch via the co-op’s Facebook page, often buying groceries for one another.

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The Campwoods Auditorium, where co-op board meetings and social events are held.Credit...Preston Schlebusch for The New York Times

Founded in the mid-1800s by the Methodist Church as a tent community where congregants could enjoy the outdoors along with church services and social events, it is now a seven-and-a-half acre enclave of 45 one- to three-bedroom houses on small tracts of land, overseen by the Ossining Camp Meeting Association. Similar communities with Methodist Church roots can be found on Long Island — in North Merrick, in a section now known as Tiny Town, and in Jamesport, and in Ocean Grove, N. J. and Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.

Homeowners at the Campgrounds — as it’s called by residents — lease their land, paying monthly maintenance fees of $450 to $600, which cover their leases, taxes on communal green space, the upkeep of the road that runs through the complex, and water and sewage bills. The homeowners also pay Ossining village and school taxes.

Recent sales included a 400-square foot cottage with annual taxes of $3,600 that sold for $127,000 in July; and a two-bedroom, two-bath cottage of 821 square feet and a tax bill of $5,638 that closed for $252,000 in September.

“You can’t find taxes like this in Westchester,” said Jane Rodman, a broker with Howard Hanna/Rand Realty in Yorktown Heights. Her most recent listing at the Campgrounds for a two-bedroom, one-bath 1,010-square foot home for $269,500 with annual taxes of $4,901, has drawn an accepted offer from a young family, she said.

Elsewhere in Ossining, recent listings ranged from a three-bedroom, two-bath house for $409,000 with taxes of $12,288, to a seven-bedroom, five-bath home with a pool and a price tag of $1,750,000 with taxes of $50,148.

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Brenda Burbach, the vice president of the Ossining Camp Meeting Association, says the community is “diverse and welcome to everybody.”Credit...Preston Schlebusch for The New York Times

Prospective buyers at the Campgrounds have to be approved by the co-op board, which meets these days online. The co-op includes “Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, Jews, Christians, Atheists, gays and straights,” said Brenda Burbach, 50, the association’s vice president and an 11-year resident. “We’re diverse and we’re welcome to everybody.”

According to 2018 estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, the 24,812 residents of the village of Ossining are 46.1 percent white, 45.5 percent Hispanic, 17.3 percent Black, 4.6 percent Asian and 2.1 percent Native American — demographics which roughly reflect the makeup of the campgrounds.

Farther north, about 60 miles from New York City, three co-ops on former farmland — Vail’s Grove, Bloomerside and Pietsch Gardens — ring Peach Lake in northern Westchester and southern Putnam County. Each carries the name of the farmer who in the 1800s leased land to campers eager to fish the fertile waters of the lake.

When farming declined in the early 1900s, in part because of the construction of the state reservoir system, they realized that it would be more profitable to turn their land into a resort, said Mary Vail Rubini, attorney for the Vail’s Grove Cooperative and a farm family descendant. Tents were replaced by bungalows that were eventually turned into winterized year-round rentals.

The Vail’s Grove Cooperative, formed in the 1960s, features 173 year-round homes on 85 acres with either North Salem or Brewster addresses. Incorporated in the 1970s, both the Bloomerside and Pietsch Gardens co-ops include about 100 houses each.

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The mailbox bank at the Vail’s Grove Cooperative, which is on the border of Westchester and Putnam counties.Credit...Jane Beiles for The New York Times

About 30 to 40 percent of the houses at Vail’s Grove house school-age children, said Ms. Rubini, 53, who grew up there and calls it “a magical place to live.”

“There are pumpkin-making parties, bingo in the summer, a Christmas party and fireworks on the lake,” she said. The 2020 schedule, however, was limited by the pandemic.

Cottages start at $250,000, with lakefront homes costing up to a $1 million, she said, but prices are still lower than elsewhere in North Salem, which “tends to be a very affluent town and hard to find something that is affordable.”

According to a graph compiled by the Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors, the largest number of homes that sold last year were in the $500,000 to $600,000 range, followed by those in the $700,000 to $800,000 range, and those priced $1 million to $2 million.

Homes in the co-op tend to remain in families “from generation to generation,” said Karen Benvin Ransom, a broker with Coldwell Banker Realty in Katonah. Recent sales included a two-bedroom, one-bath house that sold in early December for $318,750 and a two-bedroom, two-bath that sold for $490,000 in September. On the market now is a four-bedroom, three-bath home listed for $425,000 with taxes of $11,259 that has drawn a number of interested buyers, she said, including “people who came from Brooklyn who wanted a country escape.”

Like Campwoods Grounds, homeowners lease their land; however, here they also own co-op shares. They pay an annual maintenance fee of about $2,800, along with school taxes to the town of North Salem and property taxes to either North Salem or the town of Southeast.

The co-op board does look favorably on those who know someone in the community, said Ms. Rubini. “While they are not a diverse community, we are an open-minded co-op,” she said. Of two people she said who were turned down, “one was for financial reasons and the other for multiple DWIs.”

A mix of cultures is what Diane Tolley, 62, a broker for Coldwell Banker Realty in Mendham, N. J. found 30 years ago when she bought a two-bedroom, one-bath cottage for $78,000 at Woodland Lake, a 28-acre co-op that had once been a summer bungalow colony in Mendham, about 32 miles from New York City.

Reasonable house prices are what originally drew Ms. Tolley, then a single mother with three children, to the co-op, which at the time had a mix of Jewish and Irish families. “It’s Mendham’s best-kept secret,” she said. She has since moved out of Woodland Lake, but she has been the broker for subsequent owners of her former home over the years.

None of the 36 houses there are now for sale, but a two-bedroom, one-bath house with taxes of $4,596 and a monthly maintenance fee of $335 recently sold for $257,000.

Over the last six months, the average sale price of a Mendham home outside the co-op was $922,581 with taxes of about $19,000, said Bryan Seavey, a broker with Turpin Realtors in Mendham. Recent Zillow listings included a $439,000, two-bedroom, two-bath home with taxes of about $8,780, and a $7,495,000, nine-bedroom house with a tax bill of $127,685.

Mr. Seavey, who is also a builder, recently renovated and rented out five two-bedroom, one-bath cottages in Mendham that he believes were once part of a bungalow colony in the 1930s. The houses from the former colony are now just part of the larger Mendham community, but they tend to be less expensive than other homes in the area because of their smaller size.

His tenants include a newlywed couple and several singles.

“With Covid-19, all of my clients stay in their cottages and work from home,” he said. He hopes to eventually turn them into $350,000 condos, offering a lower-price alternative for the area.

“They’re smaller homes, but you’re still getting the pleasure of living in Mendham,” he said.

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A correction was made on 
Jan. 26, 2021

An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the vice president of the Ossining Camp Meeting Association. She is Brenda Burbach, not Brubach. 

How we handle corrections

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section RE, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: Summer Bungalows Transition Into Co-ops. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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