Shortly before Covid hit, Danielle McCullough moved to the East Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan. “It reminded me of home,” said Dr. McCullough, who is from Baltimore. “There are familiar things there, being around other people of color.”
The two-bedroom, two-bathroom brownstone apartment she rented cost $3,400 a month and had space for guests and for her beagle, Penny. She had previously spent eight years in hospital housing on the Upper East Side, first as a medical student and then as a resident in anesthesiology.
Dr. McCullough, now 38, was also in a new relationship with Lorne Behrman, whom she had met online. “It was two people who look very different on paper, and we ended up having this deep soul-type connection,” she said.
Mr. Behrman, 48, a musician and copywriter from California, had been divorced for several years. He was renting in Midwood, Brooklyn, paying around $1,750 a month.
“I was kind of lost as a person, to be honest, trying to figure out my life,” he said. “I knew Danielle was the one. Everything changed. My heart opened.” He (and his cat, Numi) joined her in East Harlem, and the two married last year.
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When Dr. McCullough was growing up, money was tight and her family had to move a lot. “Part of my ambition to succeed was having a place that I owned, that felt very secure,” she said.
Last spring, working the overnight shift as an obstetric anesthesiologist, she had an “aha moment,” she said, and realized that she and Mr. Behrman were financially able to buy a home. They briefly considered Westchester, where Mr. Behrman’s teenage daughter lives with her mother, but the area didn’t feel right.
So Mr. Behrman called James M. Armstrong, a friend and salesman with the Corcoran Group. “They were overwhelmed and feeling pessimistic about the whole experience,” Mr. Armstrong said. “But Danielle had been pre-approved for a physician mortgage” — which allows for a low down payment — “so I knew they were in good shape.”
With a budget of up to $1.2 million, the couple dreamed of finding a three-bedroom house “where we could spread out and make noise and be a family,” Mr. Behrman said, with a grassy yard for the dog and a reasonable commute on public transportation to Dr. McCullough’s Upper East Side hospital.
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