Centre Island sees a flurry of sales as residents go south

Real estate agent Cottie Maxwell has long repped property deals in a certain Long Island village — one that’s famously linked to Billy Joel.

Once a popular spot that attracted not only the Piano Man, but also other big-name residents, Maxwell says this area has also slowly cleared out over the years.

Welcome to Centre Island, an isolated community with no gas station, no grocery store and no post office. All that exists are houses with scenic views of the Oyster Bay Harbor and Cold Spring Harbor.

And it’s intentionally kept that way.

“They know who they know and they know who they don’t know,” Maxwell, of Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Realty, told The Post. “And that gives people like Billy Joel, Rupert Murdoch who once lived there, and even Brad [Pitt] and Angelina [Jolie], who rented there for a summer at the time, a sense of security.”

However, since the COVID-19 pandemic, Centre Island — which holds about 200 homes, according to Census data — has seen a massive selling spree.

More than 50 homes have traded hands in the serene Centre Island town since January 2020 — and an additional 9 homes are currently on the market, according to the brokerage site, Redfin.

One of them, a new-construction build spanning 7,500 square feet, has been on the market since July 2020, with no takers. It asks $6.25 million.

(Centre Island is a village within the North Shore town of Oyster Bay, which has seen its own overall level of activity. According to Realtor.com tallies, 525 homes there have listed since January 2020, with 338 selling in that period of time.)

The reason for the flurry of recent Centre Island transactions? According to Maxwell, most residents have since fled to Florida — and that includes Joel who purchased some three homes in Florida over the years.

Joel, 74, renovated, expanded, and completed his Centre Island estate — only to list the decades-long compound for $49 million in May. Bonnie Williamson, who’s also with Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Realty, has the listing. The under-renovation property is known as Middlesea — and not only boasts some 2,000 square feet of water frontage, but also a main house running more than 20,000 square feet.

“I think that’s what his plan was. And then his plan changed,” Maxwell, who’s not involved with his current $49 million listing, said of Joel attempting to expand his Centre Island home for a horse farm. “Maybe he’s older. He’s retiring. And he’s spending more time in Florida.”

In 2021, Maxwell sold Joel a property, which had not traded hands since the 1970s, next to the $22.5 million home he purchased in 2002.

When Maxwell was growing up, that property, known as the Palmer Estate, consisted of five parcels that were later split up and sold off separately.

“Billy Joel at the time was looking at land next door, and … he wanted to have horses there,” Maxwell said of Joel’s 2021 purchase. “So he was attaching the three properties back to the way they originally were.”

But Joel listing there is still part of a larger village-wide trend.

“People are selling the bigger estates and they’re getting smaller houses,” said Maxwell. “And they’re taking the money and putting it into a property in Florida … so many people left this area to go down to Florida. So many. It’s amazing. Some people have come back. But I also saw a lot of people buying around here during COVID from California, because the prices in California are so high.”

(Meanwhile, in Florida, Joel has an oceanfront estate in Manalapan listed for $64.9 million.)

One former resident of Centre Island who moved to Florida in 2021 said that he was looking for better weather year-round and being able to get more bank for the buck.

“We don’t have as many winters and at the same time we can retire with more money left in our pockets,” the former resident, who asked not to be named for reasons of privacy, told The Post. “We loved our little community, but it was time.”

As Centre…