New York City dwellers heading for the East End have led to a record amount of money raised for the Community Preservation Fund.

"The prices for what you were getting were somewhat ludicrous," says Jane Preiser, of Connecticut. She was looking to buy a house in the Hamptons, but says prices were so high she ended up renting for the summer.

It's the result of a house-buying spree that started when city residents migrated east after the pandemic broke out. "Things that I know I looked at maybe three years ago were maybe 30% more," Preiser said.

All of these home sales are raising millions of dollars for land preservation. That's because anyone who buys a house or property on the East End has to pay an additional 2% of the purchase price. That money goes to the towns who use it to buy and preserve open space and farmland.

"These are revenues that no one could have ever contemplated," says state Assemblyman Fred Thiele. He was the sponsor of the bill that created the program back in 1998.

In the first six months of last year, the real estate surge brought in $53.3 million for the five East End towns.

In that same period this year, the revenue swelled to $113.5 million.

Thiele admits that no matter how much is raised, it'll never be enough to preserve all the open space people want, but adds that the program helps conservation keep pace with development.

"We're under such development pressure. There are so many lands that still need to be acquired," Thiele says. "There's more revenue but the demand to protect the environment is also greater."

Nonprofits, including the Peconic Land Trust, also partner with towns to help obtain as much open space as possible.

"You have to have the resources in order to compete to acquire land. that's in high demand. The program as a whole is an enormous success," says the Peconic Land Trust's John VH Halsey.

The program has raised more than $1.5 billion since its inception.

The program was the first of its kind in New York state and has preserved more than 4,000 acres of land to date.