When Jayesh Srivastava rented a one-bedroom railroad apartment in the East Village of Manhattan, the lack of a bathroom sink didn’t bother him. He signed on just before the pandemic dip in rent, paying nearly $3,000 a month.
“When I was looking at the apartment, it was kind of charming,” Mr. Srivastava, 37, said. But as he took up pandemic cooking, his distaste for bathroom-sink-free living grew. He longed for a dishwasher. Friends found the configuration bizarre; he found it embarrassing.
Mr. Srivastava — who was born in Delhi, India, and grew up mostly in Qatar and Toronto — came to New York for work as a design strategist after earning his Ph.D. in behavioral sciences at the University of Toronto. He now works as a product director for digital innovation at a media company.
He had been saving to buy a home, and had a budget of up to $1 million. He was hoping to find a one-bedroom with a reasonable subway commute to his office near Penn Station, preferably in a relatively new condominium building. “I didn’t feel established enough for a co-op board,” he said.
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His agent, Phillip Salem, at Compass, reminded him that buyers must stay realistic about their budgets. “They want a two-bedroom condo in the West Village for a million,” he said. “If I were Houdini the magician, I could find you that.”
So Mr. Srivastava looked beyond places near his rental, expanding his search into Brooklyn. Among his options:
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