The bad rap on Long Island is that there’s no affordable housing. Not true.
In advertising his Rocky Point ranch, Frank Speringo doesn’t want to eat his words – just ask his waistline.
Six or so months ago, he and wife Yolanda Rivera bought new stainless steel kitchen appliances, but Speringo has barred everyone from using all but the refrigerator. The self-imposed boycott springs from his own house-hunting experience.
“Everybody claims that, ‘Everything’s new,’ but is it really new if people are using it?” Speringo said. “So I want to make sure it’s new . . . It’s good for my wife not to cook, but it’s kind of hard on our waistlines ‘cause we’re like fast food junkies right now.”
But Speringo himself likes to say almost everything in his two-bedroom home is newish also. More than two years ago, the plumber started renovating one room at a time, putting in bamboo and oak flooring, Andersen and Pella windows and doors, a roof and more.
“I gutted every room in the place, down to the studs,” he said. “The only thing that’s old is the boiler and the basement.”
That work has made the house so energy efficient, from appliances to insulation, that Speringo said he’s got the paperwork to prove that electricity costs $80 or less monthly and perhaps $20 more with air conditioning in the summer.
Listed at $289,000, the Rocky Point house is about a block from Long Island Sound and the real estate agent, Gerri Grieger of Prudential Douglas Elliman in Miller Place, claims another bonus is the “lowest” taxes around, about $1,683 with STAR.