Real LI

If you’re interested in a seaside retreat without the airs of the Hamptons, a prime waterfront property is for sale in a quaint village that has been affectionately called “Boreport.”

The nearly five-acre property with 300 feet of beach in Bellport was owned since the early part of the 20th century by the family of Elmer Sperry, an inventor who founded the Sperry Corporation. (His original residence was sold off years ago and is on the adjoining property.)

The property has a three-bedroom cottage — which was built in the 1960s, long after Sperry’s death — with panoramic water views, two in-ground pools and a guest cottage overlooking a pond on a parcel preserved by the town.

Isabella Rossellini and Charlie Rose live in the low-key beach community, which was once summer home to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis when she was a girl.

The property was sold by the Sperry family in 2007 for $5.5 million and is now back on the market for $5.7. It is listed with Anthony Gandolfo of Old Purchase Properties in Bellport.

DONNA ROGERS

If you’d like to live in the same village as celebs like Charlie Rose and Isabellla Rossellini, check out this two-bedroom, two-bath home on South Howells Point Road in Bellport. The home belongs to Ross Klein, who recently left his job as president of the luxury brands group of Starwood Hotels, which includes W Hotels & Resorts.

The home is a 1954 Weyerhaeuser kit house, which Klein restored and decorated with mid-century modern pieces, says listing agent Bryan Cronin of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Babylon. The cedar-shingle home, listed at $799,000, has a great room with beamed ceilings and walls of glass, and comes with deeded private access to private ocean and bay beaches.

Cronin says that Klein, who is now global head of luxury and lifestyle brands for Hilton Hotels, is selling the home because he has relocated to Los Angeles.

A gauntlet has been thrown. But will anybody pick it up?

Two teams of developers, one headed by AvalonBay Communities and the other by Ornstein Leyton Company, will each construct a Bellport home in five days next week as part of Habitat for Humanity’s nationwide building blitz.

“AvalonBay is ready to meet the challenge -- I’m betting that our crew is faster than Orenstein Leyton’s, although I’m sure they think otherwise,” Matthew Whalen, vice president the Melville-based AvalonBay, said in a press release.

OK, we all know Isabella Rossellini is Bellport's most famous resident. But did you know she prefers the indoors to the outdoors? According to the new issue of Hamptons magazine, the actress says, "I like inside. It's always a little cold outside, or too hot." Her house -- a converted barn -- "is a very big space, and very rustic. I feel like a squirrel living in a tree." While she may commune with nature, she tells the magazine that she will kill termites and carpenter ants. "But I don't use pesticide on the grass because it washes into the bay. And if I have a few ants or spiders, I'm not going to [contaminate] the whole house."

Designer Kathryn Letson owns this 1876 former post office in Bellport. The four-bedroom, four-bath Italiante-style house was built for Richard Gerard, a Bellport postmaster, and his wife, Nancy. Around 1915, it was a tearoom. The home has incredible period details, including wide plank pegged pine floors, a marble fireplace mantle and pedestal sinks, says Bryan Cronin, who is co-listing the house with Gina M Vigliotti for Coldwell Banker Residential in Patchogue. "Everthing's been restored or updated," he says, including the kitchen, which has marble counters and Viking and Bosch appliances. The original carriage house on the 100-by-165-foot lot has been converted into a separate cottage. Letson is asking $1.2 million. Letson is a former designer for DKNY and the The Gap who is now a fashion forecaster and owner of Trend Inc. in New York

Long Island shows proudly in the new book "Vogue Living: Houses, Gardens, People" (Alfred A. Knopf , $75), out this month. Written by Hamish Bowles with a foreword by Calvin Klein, the book about "spectacular houses and gardens -- owned by celebrated figures in the worlds of fashion, music, art and society" opens with photos of Aerin Lauder's East Hampton Greek Revival home (which once belonged to grandmother Estee, whose 1962 Mercedes is parking out front) and of former Duchess of Marlborough, Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan's study in Southampton.

Also captured from the pages of Vogue over the past two decades is actress Isabella Rossellini's Bellport house, which appeared in the magazine in 1999. She chose the house not only because she found it "magical" but because she could walk to the Long Island Rail Road station (she doesn't drive). She worked with architect Pietro Cicognani to restore the barn on the property, which had been abandoned. "I enjoy fixing houses up," she says. "I think I enjoy the fixing up more than the living!"

Another chapter in the 400-page book features the Springs home of Carolina and Ian Irving, done in the English style. (She's style editor for Vogue Living; he's a Sotheby's auctioneer who handled the 1988 sale of Andy Warhol's collections.) The photos were taken in 2006.

A wall-raising today in Bellport marked the start of what will be the fourth all-women's built home supervised by Habitat of Humanity of Suffolk County.

The recipient of the home will be Claudia Hunt, who lives in substandard conditions in East Patchogue with her son, Jayron, 4, say Habitat-Suffolk officials. Hunt, whose parents live blocks away from the Habitat project on McDonald Avenue, is an office supervisor for a car auction firm. She will be required to put in hours of sweat equity -- meaning labor on the home -- before she is granted an interest-free mortgage for the residence.

According to Les Scheinfeld, associate director for Habitat-Suffolk, Hunt has hoped for a home in the same area where she grew up for the longest time. "We're happy to be part of making her dream come true,” he said.

Aura Levitas, a retired Broadway dancer, is the project's sponsor. It's the third time Levitas, who was instrumental in beginning the women’s build program on Long Island, has sponsored a Habitat home.

-- GARY DYMSKI