Shirley, NY real estate market

Shirley sits in the Town of Brookhaven, on Long Island's South Shore, and its story starts with a name and a sales pitch. Developer Walter T. Shirley looked at the land around Mastic Bay in the 1940s and saw a chance to build something affordable. His company put up 4,000 four-room homes starting at $4,700, with lots going for $295. That is the bones of the place, and a lot of that postwar housing stock is still what you find street to street today.

Before it was Shirley, this area went by Tangiers, a name tied to William "Tangier" Smith. In the early 1900s it held a scatter of summer bungalows, many owned by New York City people looking for a break from the city. Some of those Tangiers-era bungalows still stand, though hurricanes, winter storms, and the occasional arson have taken others over the years. It gives the hamlet a layered feel, old beach cottages mixed in among the mid-century tract homes.

Getting around is straightforward. The Mastic-Shirley Long Island Rail Road station serves the area, and it exists as a compromise since both Mastic and Shirley pushed to have it named for their own hamlet. For beach access, the Smith Point Bridge is one of only two bridge crossings from Long Island to Fire Island, so you can get to the ocean without a ferry. Buyers should also know Shirley runs about 11.9 square miles with a decent chunk of water, and the northern edge is sometimes called East Yaphank, all under the same 11967 ZIP code, which is worth checking against depending on which part of the hamlet a property sits in.