Bryan Graybill and Daniel Dokos built their dream home in Sag Harbor but are now selling it because their goldendoodle Rufus gets “pouty” when he’s there
4 min
Shortly after Bryan Graybill and Daniel Dokos moved into their dream home in Sag Harbor, N.Y., in 2022, the couple realised they had a problem: Their beloved Covid dog, a redheaded goldendoodle named Rufus, didn’t like the house.
“He was sort of a little pouty,” said Graybill, an interior designer, who said they adopted Rufus from a dog breeder in Montecito, Calif., where they rode out the pandemic.
Now, the couple is doing what any self-respecting dog parents would do: They are moving.
“I’m slightly ashamed to admit that we’ve become ‘those people,’ making life decisions around our dog,” said Graybill. And yet, he said, “He’s the joy of our life.”
The house is coming on the market for $14.95 million, said Preston Kaye of Hedgerow Exclusive Properties, which is co-listing the property with Noble Black and Erica Grossman of Douglas Elliman . Graybill and Dokos, a lawyer, who also have homes in East Hampton and Montecito, plan to split their time between the two. They also have a place in New York City.
Before Rufus, Graybill said the couple thought the newly built Sag Harbor house would be their “forever home.”
When they got married in 2015, they lived mainly in East Hampton and began building a house there. During construction, they rented a place in Sag Harbor and unexpectedly fell in love with the area and bought property there, too. “It’s sort of a vibrant little town, even in the middle of winter,” Graybill said. They wound up renting out the newly built East Hampton house until recently.
In 2018, they paid $2.65 million for a nearly ½-acre property in Sag Harbor with about 110 feet of frontage on Upper Sag Harbor Cove. Graybill said at the time, the property had a modest, roughly 1,600-square-foot house built in the 1950s.
Graybill said he initially assumed the house would be overly-complicated to renovate because of its proximity to the water. “Buying the property was a roll of the dice,” he said. “We didn’t know how much we could do.”
As it turned out, they could do quite a bit.
Diving into historic research, the couple learned that a stretch of the now-defunct elevated railroad that once ran from Bridgehampton to Sag Harbor crossed a corner of their property, which was also home to a warehouse during the area’s whaling heyday in the 1800s.
With approval from local officials, Graybill and Dokos substantially renovated the 1950s home, building a roughly 4,200-square-foot house with five bedrooms in its footprint. “It required a huge feat of engineering acrobatics to figure it out,” Graybill said. Because the house is set back 12 feet from the water, they were able to add a pool, a pool house and a two-car garage between the house and the street.
Graybill said the property’s original 1880s building inspired him to commission a warehouse-like structure with loading dock doors, high ceilings and open spaces. Part two of the design was to convert the industrial space to a home, using features like interior window walls. Permitting took about three years, and it took another two years to complete construction.
Graybill said despite being smaller than their East Hampton home, which is about 6,500 square feet, the house in Sag Harbor felt “intimate” and had all the amenities they wanted, including a pool, a pool bar and an office that looks west over the cove and north over a marsh and bird sanctuary. Graybill, who trained in London under the late restaurant designer David Collins , said he adopted certain U.K. sensibilities in the Sag Harbor home, such as high-set windows to maximize natural light, and a “boot room” near the front door where visitors can sit and remove their shoes and coats. The large kitchen is a “working” kitchen with pots and pans hanging within reach. “It’s not a relaxation area,” he said. “You’re in the kitchen to cook.”
They spent about $8 million on construction, landscaping and hard and soft costs, Graybill said. “I thought it would be our forever home, so I really leaned into everything being custom.”
Graybill said they “went a little indulgent” on interior finishes like light fixtures, paint, plaster and kitchen appliances, and the windows were made in Charleston, S.C., by a company specialising in historic windows.
The median sale price in Sag Harbor was $1.9 million during the fourth quarter of 2023, down 12% from the prior-year period, according to real-estate appraisal firm Miller Samuel. But sales were up 61.5% year-over-year during the quarter, while inventory rose 16.8% compared with the fourth quarter of 2022.
Graybill said they designed the house before adopting Rufus, so there are no doggy amenities. “Gosh no, and as a result he sleeps in the bed with us and walks freely on whatever furniture he wants,” he said. After a romp on the beach, Rufus also bathes in their tub. (Graybill said part of the decision to move to East Hampton is that the house there has a covered porch where they can put a dog sink.)
Like other pet owners, Graybill and Dokos adopted Rufus during Covid when they were living in Montecito and spending more time at home. “Dan had never had a dog,” said Graybill, who grew up with poodles and lab retrievers and was initially reluctant to get a dog because he knew how much responsibility it would be. “We like our freedom,” he said.
But Graybill said one night as they lay in bed, Dokos texted him a picture of a local breeder’s two golden doodles. “One was William and one was Harry,” he recalled. When they went to see the dogs the next day, Harry—the smaller of the pups—ran right up to Dokos. They brought him home that afternoon and named him Rufus, which means redheaded in Latin. The trio fell into a new routine that included daily jaunts on the beach.
Graybill said when they moved to Sag Harbor, Rufus’ joyful demeanour changed.
They took him to nearby bay beaches, but they were narrow and a bit rocky. “The dog was constrained,” Graybill said. He couldn’t run as fast or as far as he had in California. “He couldn’t dig.”
Graybill said he and Dokos thought Rufus would acclimate until they drove to East Hampton one day and the dog was back in his element. “The smile on his face—if dogs could smile—I said to Dan, ‘I think the dog is happier in East Hampton,’” Graybill said.
Graybill said he has no regrets about deciding to sell the house, in part because he and Dokos enjoyed the building process together. “I’m giving up this life we wanted to build in Sag Harbor,” he said, “but I’m gaining this daily ritual of going to the beach with my husband and dog, and I just really cherish that.”
Copyright 2020, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. LEARN MORE
What a quarter-million dollars gets you in the western capital.
Alexandre de Betak and his wife are focusing on their most personal project yet.
Unmarried home buyers say they are giving priority to a financial foundation over a legal one
4 min
The big wedding can wait. Couples are deciding they would rather take the plunge into homeownership.
In reshuffling the traditional order of adult milestones, some couples may decide not to marry at all, while others say they are willing to delay a wedding. Buying a home is as much, if not more of a commitment, they reason. It helps them build financial stability when the housing market is historically unaffordable.
In 2023, about 555,000 unmarried couples said that they had bought their home in the previous year, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Census Bureau data. That is up 46% from 10 years earlier, when just under 381,000 couples did the same.
Unmarried couples amounted to more than 11% of all U.S. home sales. The percentage has climbed steadily over the past two decades—a period in which marriage rates have fallen. These couples make up triple the share of the housing market that they did in the mid-1980s, according to the National Association of Realtors.
To make it work, couples must look past the significant risk that the relationship could blow up, or something could happen to one partner. Without a marriage certificate, living situations and finances are more likely to fall into limbo, attorneys say.
Mark White, 59 years old, and Sheila Davidson, 62, bought a lakeside townhouse together in Newport News, Va., in 2021. But only her name is on the deed. He sometimes worries about what would happen to the house if something happened to her. They have told their children that he should inherit the property, but don’t have formal documentation.
“We need to get him on the deed at some point,” Davidson said.
White and Davidson both had previous marriages, and decided they don’t want to do it again. They also believe tying the knot would affect their retirement benefits and tax brackets.
Couples that forgo or postpone marriage say they are giving priority to a financial foundation over a legal one. The median homeowner had nearly $400,000 in wealth in 2022, compared with roughly $10,000 for renters, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances.
Even couples that get married first are often focused on the house. Many engaged couples ask for down-payment help in lieu of traditional wedding gifts.
“A mortgage feels like a more concrete step toward their future together than a wedding,” said Emily Luk, co-founder of Plenty, a financial website for couples.
Elise Dixon and Nick Blue, both 29, watched last year as the Fed lifted rates, ostensibly pushing up the monthly costs on a mortgage. The couple, together for four years, decided to use $80,000 of their combined savings, including an unexpected inheritance she received from her grandfather, to buy a split-level condo in Washington, D.C.
“Buying a house is actually a bigger commitment than an engagement,” Dixon said.
They did that, too, getting engaged eight months after their April 2023 closing date. They are planning a small ceremony on the Maryland waterfront next year with around 75 guests, which they expect to cost less than they spent on the home’s down payment and closing costs.
The ages at which people buy homes and enter marriages have both been trending upward. The median age of first marriage for men is 30.2, and for women, 28.6, according to the Census Bureau. That is up from 29.3 and 27.0 a decade earlier. The National Association of Realtors reported this year that the median age of first-time buyers was 38, up from 31 in 2014.
Family lawyers—and parents—sometimes suggest protections in case the unmarried couple breaks up. A prenup-like cohabitation agreement spells out who keeps the house, and how to divide the financial obligations. Without the divorce process, a split can be even messier, legal advisers say.
Family law attorneys say more unmarried people are calling for legal advice, but often balk at planning for a potential split, along with the cost of drawing up such agreements, which can range from $1,000 to $3,000, according to attorney-matching service Legal Match.
Dixon, the Washington condo buyer, said she brushed off her mother’s suggestion that she draft an agreement with Blue detailing how much she invested, figuring that their mutual trust and equal contributions made it unnecessary. (They are planning to get a prenup when they wed, she said.)
There are a lot of questions couples don’t often think about, such as whether one owner has the option to buy the other out, and how quickly they need to identify a real-estate agent if they decide to sell, said Ryan Malet, a real-estate lawyer in the D.C. region.
The legal risks often don’t deter young home buyers.
Peyton Kolb, 26, and her fiancé figured that a 150-person wedding would cost $200,000 or more. Instead, they bought a three-bedroom near Tampa with a down payment of less than $50,000.
“We could spend it all on one day, or we could invest in something that would build equity and give us space to grow,” said Kolb, who works in new-home sales.
Owning a place where guests could sleep in an extra bedroom, instead of on the couch in their old rental, “really solidified us starting our lives together,” Kolb said. Their wedding is set for next May.
Homes and weddings have both gotten more expensive, but there are signs that home prices are rising faster. From 2019 to 2023, the median sales price for existing single-family homes rose by 44%, according to the National Association of Realtors. The average cost of a wedding increased 25% over that time, according to annual survey data from The Knot.
Roughly three quarters of couples move in together before marriage, and may already be considering the trade-offs between buying and renting. The cost of both has risen sharply over the past few years, but rent rises regularly while buying with a fixed-rate mortgage caps at least some of the costs.
An $800 rent hike prompted Sonali Prabhu and Ryan Willis, both 27, to look at buying. They were already paying $3,200 in monthly rent on their two-bedroom Austin, Texas, apartment, and felt they had outgrown it while working from home.
In October, they closed on a $425,000 three-bed, three-bath house. Their mortgage payment is $200 more than their rent would have been, but they have more space. They split the down payment and she paid about $50,000 for some renovations.
Her dad’s one request was that the house face east for good fortune, she said. Both parents are eagerly awaiting an engagement.
“We’re very solid right now,” said Prabhu, who plans to get married in 2026. “The marriage will come when it comes.”
