With summer just around the corner, many New Yorkers’ thoughts are turning to the Hamptons, and local real estate agents are thriving.

“The market is incredible. It’s the best couple months we’ve had, probably since 2003,” a vice president of the East End offices for the Corcoran Group, Rick Hoffman, said. He says high-end properties are selling fast, but rentals are doing even better.

“The last 30 days for the rental market was incredible,” Mr. Hoffman said. “We will have a record rental this year.”

Seasonal rentals, which run between Memorial Day and Labor Day, can range from $20,000 outside of the village to upward of $900,000 for three months of oceanfront property. Local agents say it’s the most expensive properties that are hard to come by, but that news has hardly been discouraging. According to Mr. Hoffman, about 80% of Corcoran’s active rentals are off the market — that’s 10% more than a year ago at this time — and bargain shoppers are nowhere to be found.

“People use to accept the sort of big old ‘mildew manors,'” Mr. Hoffman, who has been working in the Hamptons for more than a decade, said.

“Now renters are actively looking for amenities at the high-end with central air, new kitchen, pool, and tennis. People are not settling the way they use to,” he said.

Considering last year’s record bonuses in the financial sector, who needs to settle?

“It’s the playground for Wall Street,” one of Corcoran’s top brokers in Bridgehampton, Gene Stilwell, said. He says that even if someone has the cash for high-end real estate, property is scarce.

“Every time I call for a high-end rental the lease is out,” Mr. Stilwell said. “Looking for 8,000 square feet? It’s just gone.”

A local agent for Sotheby’s, Myles Reilly, who has worked exclusively in the Hamptons for the past 15 years, says the rental market is the strongest he’s ever seen: “Last year the rental season came late. This season there’s not a lot of flexibility of price and the inventory is very tight.”

The top agent at Prudential Douglas Elliman’s Southhampton office, Laura Nigro, agrees that the big bucks from Wall Street made all the difference.

“Last summer there was a build-up of property,” Ms. Nigro said. “Things were not moving, and it took a whole new round of bonuses to really make an impact and loosen up pockets.”

The difference a year makes in the East End’s real estate market is significant. Ms. Nigro estimates the rental prices in the standard village estate area have grown 10% to 15% this year. Homes with an asking price of just more than $6 million last year are now carrying price tags of up to $10 million.

So, what’s available? Homes for sale in the lower price range, between $1.5 million and $3 million. As for rentals, those costing less than $100,000 for the season are still on the market, as are higher-price rentals for a much shorter time period — for example, $200,000 for the month of August alone.

The president of Miller and Samuel Inc, a residential real estate appraiser and consultant in Manhattan, Jonathan Miller, said he recently started keeping a database on property sales in the Hamptons and will release his first report in April. He said that after witnessing what’s happened in the city, it doesn’t surprise him that the high-end lots in the Hamptons have been snapped-up so fast.

“You get more irrational price behavior when the market is limited,” Mr. Miller said. He said that despite the spiking prices, investors should not be concerned about how the high-priced property will appreciate in their investment portfolios.

“A couple years ago, we said the exact same thing about the Manhattan real estate market. It just doesn’t happen in a gradual increase,” Mr. Miller said.

“It just goes to another level and rewrites all the rules.”