Elliman Cares: How Hamptons Agent Julie Pinkwater Feeds Her Passion for Community

By Grace Cassidy

Julie Pinkwater has been passionate about philanthropy and charitable work for as long as she can remember. But it wasn’t until she left a career in media and magazine publishing to become a real estate agent, in 2015, that she was able to devote the time and energy she had longed to give to those passions.

In addition to building her real estate business in the Hamptons with her husband and partner, Will Metzger, Pinkwater has thrown herself into numerous philanthropic efforts. Not only has she served as the Co-Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees for God’s Love We Deliver, which has delivered tens of millions of medically tailored meals to New Yorkers in need since it was founded in 1986 in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, she also has worked to fight food insecurity and rescue animals in her community.

“This community needs support,” Pinkwater said of the Hamptons, where she and her husband moved to in 2020, just before the pandemic. “We have a lot of people who work here year-round: gardeners, housekeepers, people who were really food-deprived, especially during Covid.”

While shopping at the high-end grocery store Citarella, she inquired what happened to food that was past its sell-by date and learned that it had been shipped back to New York City. Pinkwater teamed up with her colleague Barbara Mattson, the branch manager of Elliman’s Bridgehampton and East Hampton offices, to propose an alternative. Citarella provides surplus food to Heart of the Hamptons, the Southampton Food Pantry and the East Hampton Food Pantry, as well as The Retreat, a shelter for victims of domestic abuse.

Pinkwater and Metzger are also involved in the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, or ARF. The no-kill shelter typically spends about $2,500 on average to spay and neuter animals, as well as perform medical tests and get animals into condition for adoption. Because adoptive animal parents pay only $500, the couple bridges the gap through donations of money and items such as food and towels. This year, they engaged all of Elliman’s offices in the Hamptons to raise over $7,000 to help offset the adoption preparation costs.

For Pinkwater, real estate and charitable work use many of the same muscles.

“It’s really about listening to and hearing people,” she said. “Whether in real estate or philanthropy, it’s about what they need and what they care about.”

That empathy clearly comes through in the work she and Metzger do as agents. In addition to ranking in the top 15% of agents company-wide, the Pinkwater-Metzger Team has earned a five-star rating on Zillow, with one client writing, “I enthusiastically endorse this remarkable couple, whose success and sincerity set them apart as the best in the business.”

Whether people need food, financial assistance or guidance in their real estate journey, Pinkwater said, “It’s about walking in their shoes and understanding.”