The Hunt: Outbid, but Not Down or Out
The Buyers Amber Krause and Deepak Rao don’t miss the second bedroom they did not get.
For two years, Amber Krause and Deepak Rao were happy in a one-bedroom with a view of the American Museum of Natural History. Then the rent rose from $3,100 a month to $3,600. “Renting wasn’t very economically sound for us,” Mr. Rao said. “We were paying more for the location and the view than for anything else.”
So last fall, they decided to buy a two-bedroom — a place they could “plan to stay forever,” Ms. Krause said. With little knowledge about purchasing, they made an appointment at the Corcoran Group’s West Side office and met an agent there, Michelle King.
Ms. Krause wanted a nice kitchen and room for a dining table. Mr. Rao wanted abundant light. The two liked the Upper West Side, but were also interested in parts of Brooklyn. Beyond that, “we were trying to be as flexible as we could,” Ms. Krause said. Their budget was up to $800,000.
By late last year, the couple were attending open houses every weekend. The hunt soon became like a second job, said Ms. Krause, who works for CarrotNewYork, an education marketing company. Mr. Rao, who like Ms. Krause, is in his early 30s, is a software developer for a financial analytics company.
“I would research apartments nonstop and figure out how many apartments we could see on Sundays, with Michelle making appointments for us during the week,” Ms. Krause said. On Saturdays, they visited open houses in Brooklyn.
They ruled out tiny second bedrooms and shabby kitchens. Mr. Rao disliked dark places that “needed to have a light on during most of the day.”
A two-bedroom in a postwar co-op building on West 103rd Street was “the first apartment we felt comfortable with and excited to make an offer on,” Ms. Krause said. It was larger than most, with nearly 1,000 square feet. The asking price was $699,000, with maintenance of almost $1,400 a month. The couple offered $720,000, worried they were overbidding.
But they were outbid, and the apartment sold for $740,000.
On the Bushwick edge of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, they found a duplex of nearly 1,000 square feet in a boutique condominium building. With a price of $795,000, it included three outdoor spaces. Monthly charges were a bit more than $300.
The couple arrived early for the open house, finding “a line of people standing outside in the snow,” Ms. Krause said. “It was by far the nicest apartment we had ever seen. We didn’t know a lot about the neighborhood, and what we saw wasn’t necessarily charming, but the apartment more than made up for its surroundings.”
That one had 17 bids and sold for $995,000. The couple were stunned.
It was shortly after the holidays and “the market took off like crazy,” Ms. King said.
In any event, the couple preferred Park Slope. “The things we liked about the Upper West Side, we figured we’d like in Park Slope,” Mr. Rao said. Another similarity: “Park Slope is really expensive.”
They were outbid on three places there: a new condominium building on Fourth Avenue, and two walk-up buildings.
Back in Manhattan at the West 103rd Street building, they visited an apartment in the same line as the one that got away, but on a lower floor, also for $699,000. Monthly maintenance was in the low $1,300s. The kitchen wasn’t quite as nice. Ms. Krause thought, “O.K., if we didn’t get the first one, we could get the second one.” Again, they were outbid. That one sold for $750,000.
At this point, the couple had made six offers. “They were despondent,” Ms. King said. “For every single one of them, they bid over ask and some went significantly over ask.”
They were worried, too. “I am a planner,” Ms. Krause said. But in this case, “I had no control, so it was hard for me. It was discouraging because we were hearing from Michelle that we were solid candidates in terms of our finances.”
So they downsized. “We had to seriously consider one-bedrooms because we were essentially priced out of two-bedrooms,” Ms. Krause said.
Most two-bedrooms were about 800 square feet — and so were many one-bedrooms. For the same square footage, “you could get five smaller rooms or four larger ones,” Ms. Krause said.
One possibility was a one-bedroom in a prewar co-op building in the West 90s. The kitchen was large and the closet space ample, though the bathroom was small. The price was $690,000, with maintenance around $1,100 a month.
“When Amber saw the kitchen she was pretty much sold,” Mr. Rao said. The light was almost right. They first visited in early afternoon. “I guess I know why they had the open house at that time,” Mr. Rao said. “On a sunny day it actually gets really bright.”
Though the windows faced the back, “it was a great apartment and didn’t require a lot of work,” Mr. Rao said. “If I want the views, I can always go up to the roof garden, so at the end of the day this turned out to be a really good option for us.”
They bid $700,000. “When Michelle called to tell us we got it, I was stunned,” Ms. Krause said.
They arrived earlier this summer. They haven’t yet missed a second bedroom. Visitors sleep on the couch or an air mattress, as they did before.
With room for a dining table, “I get to have actual dinner parties, as opposed to people standing around holding plates in their hands,” Ms. Krause said. “We joke that Deepak will be talking in the kitchen and I am in the bedroom and I can’t hear him. That never happened before. It was a struggle but we are happy in the end.”
Copyright © 2013 The New York Times Company. Reprinted with Permission. Benjamin Norman/The New York Times.