They’re finding a heady mix of vintage housing stock and new developments with price tags well below what they’d pay in other second-home playgrounds such as the Hamptons, the Jersey Shore or the Connecticut coast. Brianna StachowskiĪfter decades of colonizing well-known historic towns such as Woodstock and Saugerties, the new batch of buyers, mostly from the worlds of fashion and art, is now showing up in picturesque hamlets like Marlboro, Stone Ridge and High Falls. “They visit for a weekend and then end up falling in love the with it.” Smiley, happy hipsters at Field + Supply in High Falls. The area’s scenic beauty began attracting creative types as far back as the early 1900s, when the town of Woodstock housed the county’s first artists’ colony.īut a new wave of New Yorkers on the hunt for weekend retreats and summer homes has recently begun flooding the area, says Jim Allred, a broker with Mary Collins Real Estate. Urban dwellers, including many artists and musicians, have long been drawn to the densely forested mountains and secluded farmland of this Hudson Valley region that also encompasses part of the Catskill Mountains. Getty Imagesīowie wasn’t alone among New Yorkers finding their way to Ulster County. “People come up here for a quiet, simple life to get away from some of the craziness of the city.” The area is popular with creative Gothamites including Iman and the late David Bowie. “He lived a relatively quiet existence up here, but that’s exactly why New York City residents like this area,” says Bill Sidoriak, the principal broker at Fleming Realty, which covers Ulster County.

He left the home to Alexandria, the 15-year-old daughter he had with Iman. Yet what ranked among his most prized possessions, close friends say, was a 62-acre estate in Ulster County, a rugged enclave along the Hudson River about 100 miles north of Manhattan.

The remainder of his estate was mostly split between his two children. Rocker David Bowie bequeathed half of his $100 million fortune to his wife, Iman, after his death in January, including the apartment the two shared in Soho, which he bought for $4 million in 1999.

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