The Hunt
A Family Trio Starts a New Chapter in the City. Where Could They Find Three Bedrooms?
After years in Quebec, a single mother charts a new course for herself and her teenage twins. But buying sight unseen in New York would be a challenge.
Anne Secor was in her three-bedroom co-op in the TriBeCa neighborhood of Manhattan when the planes hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
Ms. Secor, a design consultant, looked out the window at Broadway and saw a stream of people fleeing north. Seeking a respite from the chaos and confusion that followed, she and her then-boyfriend headed north to Canada, settling in a friend’s rented apartment in rural Quebec.
They wound up staying, marrying in 2004 and building a home on a five-acre plot in Morin-Heights, a small town in the Laurentian Mountains. Ms. Secor sold her TriBeCa co-op in 2005, and the couple welcomed twin girls, Romy and Naia, in 2006.
But Ms. Secor had lived in New York for more than a decade before 9/11, and she missed the city. “New York is the promised land,” she said. “It’s my place.” She visited regularly over the years, and Romy and Naia, now 17, loved it, too.
So when her marriage ended in 2022, Ms. Secor decided that she and her daughters, who were set to begin their junior year of high school, would return to New York.
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She reached out to Simonne Hill, an agent with the New York-based Bizzarro Real Estate Agency, hoping that Ms. Hill could work with her remotely to help find an apartment to rent.
But Ms. Hill had different advice. “I told her it would make a lot more sense for her to actually purchase something,” she said. “Getting a rental was going to be hard for her because she didn’t have an American guarantor.”
Ms. Secor wanted a place with three bedrooms and laundry in the building, and she was hoping to avoid parking her car on the street. Her plan was to sell a handful of investment properties that she had bought in Canada, bringing her budget up to around $625,000. She wanted a lively neighborhood with access to public transit, but at that price most of central Manhattan was out of reach, so she started searching in Harlem and Flatbush, Brooklyn.
“I pretty much knew I would not get into the meat of that sandwich,” she said, referring to all points between.
Most important, she would have to be able to complete the purchase from abroad. “I didn’t want to have to move twice,” she said.
Ms. Hill found some condos that fit the profile, streaming her visits on FaceTime so Ms. Secor could see them from Quebec. Among the properties considered:
No. 1
Corner Condo in Flatbush
Ms. Secor loved the location of this 1,100-square-foot, fourth-floor walk-up: on a buzzy corner a block from the subway and close to restaurants and shops. The apartment had three good-size bedrooms, in-unit laundry and high ceilings, and the multiple windows filled it with light. But there was only one bathroom, no dishwasher, and the floors and walls were in need of repair. Also, there was no parking lot. The asking price was $595,000, with about $900 a month in taxes and fees.
No. 2
Roof Deck and Parking in Flatbush
This condominium was in a building with amenities like indoor parking, a roof deck, a gym and in-unit laundry. Ms. Secor was drawn to the luxuries, but the 1,075-square-foot apartment had only two bedrooms, so she would have to partition one of them to give her daughters their own spaces. It was priced at $675,000, with about $830 a month in taxes and fees.
No. 3
Extra Bedroom in Harlem
Room to spread out was the main draw of this four-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bathroom apartment across from Morningside Park. It also came with an office space, and the renovated open kitchen was appealing. So were the washer and dryer and the common outdoor space. But there was no parking lot, and some of the windows looked out onto the walls of other buildings, making the space feel dark. The apartment was listed at $600,000, with monthly fees of about $650.
Find out what happened next by answering these two questions:
Which Would You Choose?
Corner Condo in Flatbush
Roof Deck and Parking in Flatbush
Extra Bedroom in Harlem
Which Did She Buy?
Corner Condo in Flatbush
Roof Deck and Parking in Flatbush
Extra Bedroom in Harlem