No-longer-“real”-housewife, Kelly Bensimon has just chopped the listing price of her haute East Hampton home by a full third! The magic number a month ago was $12M~ now, suddenly it will only cost you $8M to chill like Kelly, dude. Confused? You aren’t alone. Some blogs have speculated that the aspirational original listing price was a PR ploy to keep her name in the news since not being asked back for the next season of Bravo’s Real Housewives of New York [where she was often filmed at her Hamptons home].

Here’s how listing agent Prudential Douglas Elliman describes the hip Further Lane home :

Amazing property on prestigious Further Lane, south-of-the-highway, in East Hampton. Only minutes from the ocean and Maidstone Country Club, the 2-story traditional features exquisite details, including 5 bedrooms, a master suite with fireplace, open kitchen with vaulted ceiling, family room with fireplace, dining room, den and bonus room. There’s also a wide open backyard with a heated gunite pool and all other amenities.

Okay, now back to trying to decode the NEW list price of $8M….

According to real estate site Zillow.com, the median value per square foot in East Hampton is $600 [the mid-point of the value of all homes in East Hampton, per square foot, derived by taking the “Zestimate” for each home and dividing it by the home’s square footage~ e.g. a 1,000 square foot home with a Zestimate of $200k would have a $200 value/square foot].

Translation: that would mean for the original asking price of $12M, the breakdown was a whopping $2,068 per square foot. Now at $8M, Kelly is asking approximately $1,379 per square foot. Of course, the location of the home, and size of the lot is a taken into consideration when putting together a listing price, but most East End industry insiders are saying that this former housewife’s haunt will not be able to fetch $8M either.

Last summer Casa Kelly was available for rent at $250,000 for the season. Naysayers crowed that renters would not shell out a cool quarter million without being oceanfront….guess they were right on that one.

Let us know what you think Kelly’s house should be properly priced at? KDH thinks the former model did a great job on the design~ maybe the $8M could include the furniture? Post your comment….

*go to www.elliman.com for more information on the listing…

[photos courtesy of elliman.com]