When Crissy Spivey purchased herself a big one-bedroom, one-bath co-op in Brooklyn’s Ditmas Park neighborhood in 2018, she had all of the area she wanted. Shortly earlier than she closed, she met John Richie, who had simply moved to New York from New Orleans. Earlier than lengthy, he joined her within the condo.
The next yr, the couple’s daughter was born and so they reworked the place right into a two-bedroom with a small workplace. In the course of the winters, they had been joined by Ms. Spivey’s mom, Annie Spivey, who lives a lot of the yr in Syracuse, N.Y.
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Having tripled, and generally quadrupled, the inhabitants within the condo, Ms. Spivey and Mr. Richie felt more and more cramped. They craved extra room, one other toilet and even somewhat out of doors area.
“I’ve lived in New York for 22 years and by no means had a stoop to sit down on — nothing greater than a bench,” mentioned Ms. Spivey, who works in promoting. “I by no means even had a hearth escape that felt protected sufficient to face on.”
In order that they determined to seek for a single-family house, setting a funds of as much as $900,000. The couple, each of their mid-40s, hoped to stay in or close to Ditmas Park. They knew they couldn’t afford one of many neighborhood’s attractive Victorian homes. However they wished to be near their daughter’s faculty and the Q practice.
Even the locations they might afford wanted lots of work. “We noticed issues that had been like a time capsule,” mentioned their agent, Rachel Skumanich of Compass.
Ms. Spivey did a lot of the net looking, whereas Mr. Richie pounded the pavement. “I’d undergo a few of the neighborhoods and search for for-sale indicators,” he mentioned.
Off-street parking was an essential element. In the course of the pandemic, the couple purchased a automobile so they might drive to Syracuse and New Orleans. Now they use it to chauffeur their daughter to assorted actions. “When you have swim classes over right here or dance classes over there, it’s exhausting with public transportation,” mentioned Mr. Richie, a documentary filmmaker who’s in graduate faculty to grow to be a therapist.
As they hunted, in addition they wanted to stage their condo on the market and clear up for each open home, which they discovered aggravating. “We needed to take away the life from our life,” Ms. Spivey mentioned.
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