The Hunt - Wanted: A View, Preferably of Birds

THE BUYER After a long search, Rachel Klingberg and Jasper are content in their new quarters. Credit Katherine Marks for The New York Times 

In 1991, Rachel Klingberg moved to New York as a Pace University student. After a few rental apartments elsewhere, she landed in the heart of Greenwich Village.

Her 325-square-foot studio had a wood-burning fireplace but no real closet, and a sink so small that “every time I washed a cookie sheet, I would be drenched,” Ms. Klingberg said.

Her stabilized rent rose from around $1,250 a month in 2001 to almost $2,000. One increase had been for a major capital improvement, or M.C.I., “which I protested because they replaced the boiler,” Ms. Klingberg said. She maintained that hot water was a necessity, not an improvement, even though she knew that state law permits such an increase.

“That is not a cross that should be borne by the tenants,” she said.

New boiler notwithstanding, it took many minutes for the hot water to heat up, if it heated up at all.

Ms. Klingberg, 42, who is from Long Island, was eager to buy a place, and her mother was in a position to give her the down payment.

Ms. Klingberg was determined to buy in a prewar walk-up co-op building. She had heard that during Hurricane Sandy, toilets in some high-rises did not flush. “I felt, to survive the zombie apocalypse, a prewar building is better,” she said.

Her home would also need to have a view, so that her cat, Jasper, could watch the activity outside. “I could live with facing a brick wall if I had to, but I wouldn’t put my cat through that,” she said. “My cat’s happiness is important to me.”

Ms. Klingberg, who is a web developer at Pace, began with a budget in the low $300,000s. Over nearly two years, “we saw the market change,” said her agent, Andrew Mapp of the Corcoran Group, a family friend. “We ended up at $400,000.”

Her mother steered her toward the Upper East Side, believing property values there would rise upon completion of the Second Avenue subway. But Ms. Klingberg found the neighborhood unexciting. People told her that if she didn’t like it, she could sell in 10 years. “But I didn’t want to live in an apartment I don’t like,” she said. Nor did she want to hunt again in 10 years.

Last spring, she visited a large studio, formerly a one-bedroom, on far East 14th Street, in a pretty row of six five-story attached houses. She was bemused that the listing called the busy crosstown thoroughfare a “wide, quiet, tree-lined street.” The top-floor unit had a skylight. It was listed at $365,000, with monthly maintenance in the high $500s.

The floors were peeling. Ms. Klingberg offered $330,000. “They were actually insulted,” she said. (The place later sold for the asking price.)

She especially liked a one-bedroom co-op in the far West 40s. The price was $400,000, with monthly maintenance in the low $300s; income for a one-person household was capped at $66,600.

The apartment faced a back garden and had a working fireplace, which was not uncommon in the type of apartment she was seeking. She offered the asking price, but was disappointed when the apartment was sold at that price to someone else.

That wasn’t the only income-restricted co-op she lost to a buyer with “stronger financials,” she said. “What a shame for affordable housing to be sold to the richest buyer — the exact opposite of its purported goal” of helping middle-income earners.

“I mustered my patience because it may be the home in which I spend the rest of my life,” she said. “Certainly most of my life will be spent paying it off.”

Ms. Klingberg soon came upon a sunny Kips Bay studio, facing a quiet street, listed for $328,000, with maintenance in the low $600s. She bid the asking price, but another buyer was chosen. She didn’t much mind, because she preferred the West Side, where most of her activities take place, including meetings of the Bartitsu Club of New York City, devoted to Victorian martial arts.

Prices were climbing “and I was feeling panicked,” Ms. Klingberg said, “like I might make a rash decision because indecision was so unsettling.”

Later, the agent for the Kips Bay place contacted her because the sale had fallen through. “It was weird that, in a matter of weeks, two sellers were willing to sell to me,” she said. By then she had found a one-bedroom in a 20-unit self-managed co-op building in the far West 50s.

The price had been lowered to $399,000 from $439,000, with a maintenance fee of around $300 a month. The apartment had an income cap of $96,000. It was in great condition, with “perfect cat windows” overlooking a big tree and a bird feeder that a neighbor kept stocked with suet.

“They did a nice job making what was once an old tenement into a modern, livable apartment,” Ms. Klingberg said. “The original shareholders remember when the bathrooms were in the hall.”

This time, her offer of the asking price was accepted. She and Jasper arrived in the fall. The neighborhood’s industrial feel suits her just fine. The closest merchant does car repair. The hot water heats up right away.

Jasper, when he is not perched at the window, “is playing more and eating more,” Ms. Klingberg said. Talking with friends about her new home, “I start to tear up because I am so happy.”

Copyright © 2014 The New York Times Company. Reprinted with Permission. Ruth Fremson/The New York Times. 

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