Welcome to It Happened One Weekend, our weekly roundup of The New York Times real estate section...
Every "The Hunt" column begins with the Hunters describing the apartment they want, and ends with them rationalizing whatever they came away with. This is The Hunt: Dreams vs. Reality
The Hunter: An artist and art teacher looking to move from a renting to owning
Price
Dream: $400,000 to $500,000
Reality: $526,000
Neighborhood
Dream: The Bronx
Reality: Cypress Hills
Amenities
Dream: A small industrial building
Reality: A two-story house with a basement
Summary
This week's Hunter is a man who moved to the city from Southern California 27 years ago. An artist and art teacher, his life was split between two boroughs. He had a studio in Brooklyn, but lived in three different rentals in Midtown West. He decided it was time to consolidate that life under one roof. He wanted a small industrial building in the Bronx, but found the prices to be in the unaffordable $1 million range, plus they had ground floor tenants. He found a six-bedroom house in Morris Park, but that turned out to be too much work. He looked at a two-story home in Flatlands, Brooklyn (which he'd never heard of), but it was too far from the train. Finally, he found just the right thing: a nondescript house in Cypress Hills (which was also a new place to him) not too much above his initial budget. He is still setting the place up, but has plenty of room to paint and has only a couple of complaints: firecrackers going off for a month after July 4th and the crowded J train.
· The Hunt/A Bed and an Easel Under One Roof [NYT]
· It Happened One Weekend archives [Curbed]