A Tale Of Two Zelins As Amagansett Properties Change Hands

Here at 27east.com and the Press we try to double-check everything—and it’s a good thing, too. Case in point is one of the biggest deals of the last couple of weeks, a property on Sandpiper Lane in Amagansett that went for $7 million.

The interior of the 4,500-square-foot house—designed by Daniel Romuldez as an Arts and Crafts-style retreat—contains 4 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, and what is described as “a sleek professional grade kitchen.” The grounds feature a heated pool, pergola-covered pool house, sunning deck, spa, open-air dining terrace, and an outdoor pizza oven, all surrounded by specimen plantings and white-sand dunes.

The new owners of this appealing manse are Joy and Steve Zelin. The latter was a senior managing director of the restructuring and reorganization advisory group at the Blackstone Group headquartered on Park Avenue in Manhattan, where he had been since 1998. Nowadays, Mr. Zelin is a member of the executive board of New York University’s Stern School of Business as well as a member of the School of Business advisory group at SUNY Albany.

So where was the potential for error? Well, initial research could lead one to believe the new owner of the Sandpiper Lane property was not the Blackstone Group’s Steve Zelin but Steve Zelin the “Singing CPA.” Yes, you read that right. The other Mr. Zelin, also in Manhattan but on Eighth Avenue, founded Steven Zelin CPA LLC in 2008. It specializes in nonprofit work, providing general business services to artists and other creative types. But the cool part is, when he’s not working a calculator he is composing songs for children. This Steve Zelin appears regularly at business and family events strumming his guitar and belting out tunes. One newspaper reviewer who caught a performance described him as “that really smart tax guy who writes and sings funny stuff.”

But he is not the guy who has just moved to Amagansett. The Singing CPA probably didn’t have time this month anyway, because one of his regular gigs he performs every year on tax deadline night at the Main Post Office in Manhattan.

Speaking of singing and strumming, another Amagansett property that just changed hands is on Stony Hill Road. A relatively modest $2,473,000 was paid by Taylor Barton-Smith, the singer and wife of the guitar man G.E. Smith, formerly of the Saturday Night Live Band