A change to Southold Town’s code last year hoped to strike a balance between the businesses of short-term landlords who use websites like Airbnb to rent out their properties and the quality of life of the renters’ neighbors.
Tag: Bed and Breakfast
“Welcome to The Beach House!” reads an ad on homeaway.com promoting a five-bedroom rental on a private road in Orient.
The “large entertaining home” has an average price tag of $586 per night and sleeps 14 people, according to the listing.
Fourteen is also the minimum number of nights the home can be rented for, the ad states.
A calendar on the website shows no bookings for this summer.
The Suffolk County Comptroller’s Office has a three-person enforcement unit that’s going after businesses, including short-term rentals, that may be avoiding paying the county’s three-percent hotel/motel tax.
Since the group has started enforcing, over $254,000 has been levied in penalties and interest payments, according to Comptroller John Kennedy, who spoke before a joint meeting of North Fork chambers of commerce Wednesday night in Riverhead. READ
A proposal to expand the maximum number of rooms from three to five for a Greenport Village bed and breakfast drew mostly support at a public hearing Thursday night. READ
(Credit: Barbaraellen Koch)
Brooklyn transplants Alane Kelly and Daniel King have transformed a traditional North Fork home into a modern yet rustic bed and breakfast. (more…)
Residents asked the Southold Town Board Tuesday night to curb short-term rentals. (Credit: Tim Gannon)
A number of residents asked the Southold Town Board Tuesday to enact new regulations to curb short-term rentals.
The short-term rentals are gaining an unfair advantage on hotels and bed-and-breakfasts’, which must pay commercial taxes, obtain permits from the town and be subjected to regular inspections, residents said.
DANIELLE DOLL PHOTO | The Farmhouse Bed and Breakfast was a featured stop on the Cutchogue Holiday House Tour.
Locals and tourists alike had the chance to get a look inside some of Cutchogue’s more historic homes – though there are plenty to pick from – this past weekend during the Cutchogue Holiday House Tour.
Spearheaded by Joyce Barry of The Farmhouse Bed & Breakfast, this one-day event was created to promote Cutchogue businesses, particularly in the long winter months of the off-season.
RACHEL YOUNG PHOTO | The bedroom at The Farmer’s House Bed and Breakfast where couples can purchase elopement packages for a more intimate, smaller wedding.
Shortly after Joyce and Robert Barry launched the The Farmer’s House Bed and Breakfast at their Cutchogue home three years ago, the couple began receiving inquiries from guests about a service they hadn’t explored before: elopement packages.
“I can’t tell you how many couples are frazzled because their parents insist on these huge weddings their kids never wanted,” Ms. Barry said. “People have said to me, ‘Oh, I wish I could have had my wedding here, at the bed and breakfast.’ ”
Stirred by her guests’ wistful laments, Ms. Barry obtained a certificate allowing her to perform wedding ceremonies. She also set to work creating an elopement package that begins at $1,800 and includes a ceremony, a bridal bouquet and a two-night stay in one of the house’s luxury suites. Additional items, like a gift certificate for dinner at a local restaurant, are available at an extra cost.
“They’re very intimate and quiet,” said Ms. Barry, who hosts three or four weddings a year and generally limits them to a maximum of 20 guests. “It’s really about the bride and the groom. There’s so much stress involved when there shouldn’t be. It should be about the commitment a bride and groom have to each other and to have your most intimate friends and family witness that, without all the hoopla.”
The Farmhouse isn’t the first North Fork bed and breakfast to offer elopement packages. Sylvia Daley, who has run Quintessentials Bed and Breakfast and Spa in East Marion for the past two decades, began offering small wedding services to guests eight years ago.
“People started phoning me about it,” Ms. Daley said of her decision to begin hosting elopements. “Or, when guests came here and got engaged, they would say, ‘Do you do weddings?’ That’s when I started learning more about it.”
Budget-friendly elopement packages are not just a local trend but a service offered at small inns across the country. At Historic Heights B&B in Minneapolis, couples can get married for $1,000 or less with a package that includes 20 guests, an officiant, champagne, appetizers, cake and a room and gourmet breakfast for bride and groom. Travel to the Bluff Mountain Inn in Sevierville, Tenn., for the Elope to the Mountains package and the owners there will provide all the requisite wedding accoutrements, plus a wedding planner, for just under a grand.
At East Marion’s Quintessentials, elopement packages range from $1,200 to $1,800 and include a ceremony that takes place in a fully dressed gazebo at the property’s “secret garden,” a wedding cake, champagne and a bridal bouquet. Spa services, videography and photography can be added on for an additional fee.
Ms. Daley, who is an ordained minister, thinks it’s “wonderful” that couples are opting for small, intimate weddings. She said she performs six to 10 ceremonies a year.
“With the economy, a lot of people realize that it might not be a bad idea to have a simple wedding ceremony with two or four of their best friends and then go out to dinner afterward,” she said. “They can save the money they would have spent on a big wedding for a house or go on a honeymoon at a later date.”