Hard choices: Clintons rent ‘modest’ $18M Hamptons home for vacation

Still rebounding from criticism for insisting that she and Bill Clinton were “dead broke” after leaving the White House, Hillary and Bill have decided to settle into "modest" accommodations for the summer.

Of course, “modest” may have a slightly different connotation for the Clintons than most of us.

Hamptons resident and reporter Blake Fleetwood writes in the Huffington Post that the Clintons are “slumming” it this summer by settling in to an $18 million, seven-bedroom home that rests upon a 200-foot bluff overlooking Gardiners Bay and Gardiners Island, the most highly valued (because it’s not for sale) piece of real estate in the world.

The home is "modest" because the property, which is costing them $100,000 for three weeks, is north of the main Hamptons road, Route 27, and has only bay views rather than ocean views.

It’s also more conservative than the home they rented in the Hamptons last summer, which reportedly cost them more than $200,000 per day.

Fleetwood writes: “The owners of the home the Clintons are renting, like many other chic Hamptons veterans, are getting out of town for August and decamping to Tuscany for the month to escape the usual summer frenzy.”

But the Clintons can take solace in the fact that they won’t be the only famous folks hanging out in rented properties this summer. Fleetwood says they can walk next door to meet their summer neighbor, movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. Or, about a mile down the road they could schedule a lunch with Steven Spielberg. Paul McCartney is also regularly seen floating by on the bay.

Regardless of what they’re paying for a summer rental, the Clintons can almost certainly afford it without double-checking their bank accounts. The couple has reportedly earned more than $100 million together since leaving the White House, with Hillary herself taking in millions in both speaking fees and contracts for her two best-selling books.

And after their summer vacation, if the Clintons aren’t trekking around the world on their various projects, they can always make a stop at one of the homes they do own, with residences in both New York and Washington, D.C. Their daughter Chelsea also resides in a Manhattan home reportedly worth $10.5 million.

Summer rentals are a lucrative business in the Hamptons, even in the area Fleetwood refers to as “the wrong side of the tracks.” Homes in Amagansett, this summer’s destination for the former and potentially future occupants of the White House, can sell for up to $50 million. And homeowners can charge upwards of $500,000 for summer rentals while they are out of town, according to a recent analysis in the New York Times. In other words, a bit more than the Airbnb place you were considering for your own brief summer exodus.

So, what will the Clintons be up to while they are in town? Fleetwood says the couple is expected to largely take it easy, with walks on the beach, reading and listening to music. But when you’re arguably the most powerful couple in the world, it’s always a working vacation. For her part, Hillary has an August 16 scheduled stop on her “Hard Choices” book tour at local, independent book retailer BookHampton. Oh, and speaking of hard choices, she’ll probably schedule in a moment or two to decide if she wants to make another run at her husband’s old job.

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