The beach has always been Sharon Lew’s happy place. She grew up on the South Shore of Long Island, sailing with her father and cherishing the smell of the salt air.
“My dad had a boat business and I grew up on boats,” said Ms. Lew, 59, who runs a talent management agency. “I love the beach. I love boat traffic.”
That’s why, even as she lived for 35 years in Manhattan — first in Chelsea, where she raised two daughters, then in a one-bedroom rental on the Upper West Side, where she moved a decade ago after her divorce — she kept a house on Fire Island, just across the Great South Bay from her hometown of Bay Shore, N.Y. It had always felt like an escape from the city and a link to her childhood.
In March 2020, as Covid-19 overran New York, the house became a refuge. She gave up her Manhattan lease and headed there full-time — but she wasn’t planning to stay. In fact, she was so intent on coming back to the city that she put the vacation house up for sale while living in it.
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“I figured I’d sell the house so I could buy something in Manhattan,” she said. “And I figured I’d get one full summer there before I sold.”
But a buyer got cold feet as the virus spread across New York. August turned to September, and as the cold set in Ms. Lew was still in a house that wasn’t designed for winter. In November, she headed back across the bay to her childhood home, where her 83-year-old mother was living.
As 2020 dragged into 2021, she discovered a new passion: home renovation. She took a webinar on flipping houses, then set her sites on an old boathouse that had belonged to her late father, converting it into a one-bedroom guesthouse.
That’s when she realized she didn’t want to go back to Manhattan, but she also didn’t want to stay quite so far away. “I knew the suburbs weren’t for me,” Ms. Lew said. “But I also knew I was going to miss the beach. I honestly had no idea where I wanted to go.”
She began searching online for options and landed on the Rockaways. She didn’t know much about this peninsula in southern Queens, but it seemed to tick all of her boxes. “I wanted to be closer to Manhattan than I was on Long Island,” she said. “And I loved the surf vibe.”
After the Fire Island house finally sold for $795,000, she figured she could spend up to $800,000, although she hoped it would be much less.
“I knew I had to be as smart as possible with the money from the Fire Island house,” she said. She was confident she could either find a one-bedroom apartment in great condition or a fixer-upper she could renovate, and still have money to spare. Opting to forgo a broker, she set out to visit some listings in February 2021.
Among her options:
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