The record average sales price in our Douglas Elliman Hamptons market report made “The Bloomberg Number” today on Betty Liu’s show “In The Loop.”

The record price (highest we’ve seen since we began tracking it in 1999) was the result of skew towards the high end of the market as higher end consumers pushed to close prior to December 31 to avoid potential tax increases. It’s not that housing prices are rising, rather a lot more sales closed at the high end in 4Q12. For example there were more sales to close at or above $5M (49) than we have seen since we began tracking this metric in mid-2008.

Looks for a slower market in 1Q13 as sales that would have organically closed were poached (pulled back) into 4Q12.