For six years, Ashleigh Kaneski rented a sunny studio in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The bare-bones kitchen had a mini-fridge; above it was the only counter space. She used the blender on the floor because the cord wouldn’t reach.
“Cooking was like Tetris,” she said. “I had to do it in phases.” The rent was $1,820 a month.
Ms. Kaneski, 37, often hiked with friends in the Catskills, and had become friendly with an Airbnb owner there who lived in Brooklyn and ran the Airbnb from a distance. “Why does everyone else have all the fun?” she asked herself. “Why don’t I try to do that?”
She figured she couldn’t afford to buy in the city, but she could keep her tiny rental and invest in a house upstate, renting it when she wasn’t there. So a year ago, she started hunting for a house in the Catskills, with a budget of up to $325,000.
[Did you recently buy or rent a home in the New York metro area? We want to hear from you. Email: thehunt@nytimes.com]
“I was looking at fixer-uppers, cabins, flipped places,” said Ms. Kaneski, who works as a user-experience designer in Manhattan.
One place had asbestos. Another smelled like mold. She fretted about snowstorms, septic tanks, electrical loads. She knew she would need a property manager. “It became a logistical nightmare,” she said. “I realized I needed a lot of help to do this. I didn’t even have a car.”
She found herself relieved when she lost a bidding war on a big house. “That was the nail in the coffin for the upstate dream,” she said. “The house had, like, five bedrooms, and I woke in the middle of the night thinking of all the mattresses I would have to buy. I am more of a minimalist and thought, ‘I can’t buy five mattresses.’”
So she switched her focus to one-bedroom Brooklyn co-ops, and realized she could afford to stop renting. “Owning a co-op is different from owning a house,” she said. “I decided to rethink my strategy. I could get something for $500,000 or $600,000 in Brooklyn. That big price tag originally scared me off.”
A colleague suggested she contact Chelsea Hale, an agent at Triplemint. “When Ashleigh started seeing listings in her price point, she was pleasantly surprised,” Ms. Hale said.
Hunting before the pandemic, Ms. Kaneski had few demands. She knew a Brooklyn co-op unit with a nice kitchen would come with a dishwasher, and the building would have a laundry room. “I wanted a lifestyle improvement more than anything — little things that I had lived without that seemed normal to everybody who lived outside of New York,” she said. “The No. 1 thing was not a mini-fridge.”
Among her options:
No. 1
Brooklyn Heights Walk-up
This one-bedroom, facing a churchyard from the fourth floor of a walk-up building, was nicely updated (including the kitchen), but with plenty of prewar detail. The bedroom was small. The price was $540,000, with monthly maintenance in the low $800s.
No. 2
Park Slope Walk-up
This rear one-bedroom, in a small walk-up steps from Prospect Park, had a unique renovation, with tall built-in closets and a Japanese-style platform bed in a sleeping alcove. The price was $519,000, with maintenance in the mid $800s.
No. 3
Brooklyn Heights With Elevator
This rear-facing one-bedroom in a six-story prewar elevator building had an updated kitchen and bathroom, plus garden views and a foyer with two closets. The price was $599,000, with maintenance in the mid $700s.
Find out what happened next by answering these two questions:
Which Would You Choose?
Brooklyn Heights Walk-up
Park Slope Walk-up
Brooklyn Heights With Elevator
Which Did She Choose?
Brooklyn Heights Walk-up
Park Slope Walk-up
Brooklyn Heights With Elevator
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An Apartment in Brooklyn or a House Upstate? She Had the Budget for One - The New York Times
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