Claire Breedlove was happy in her Harlem neighborhood, though not in her rental, which was in a poorly maintained building. Last winter, she decided to buy a place of her own, but was immediately disappointed when she was outbid on a nearby one-bedroom condominium with a terrace.
Her parents, who live downtown, suggested she contact Bridget Harvey, an associate broker at Compass who was recommended by their own agent from 25 years ago. On a whim, Ms. Breedlove told Ms. Harvey her dream, which seemed thoroughly unrealistic — that she and her dear friend Charlotte Renfield-Miller, who was renting in East Harlem and was also considering a purchase, could find a Harlem townhouse to buy together.
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Both women are native New Yorkers and met 10 years ago at a training session in Washington, D.C., when they worked for an international development nonprofit. They became fast friends. Each later returned to the city. Ms. Breedlove, 37, now works in cybersecurity, while Ms. Renfield-Miller, 36, works at the nonprofit.
“We talk at least once a day,” Ms. Breedlove said. “We had ‘our bus,’ the M102, which perfectly connected us between our two apartments.”
One evening, riding the train home from a hockey game on Long Island, they started checking listings and batted around the idea of buying a townhouse together. The ideal place would be in a specific slice of Central Harlem, a few blocks around Marcus Garvey Park near 125th Street, so Ms. Breedlove could take the 2/3 train to visit her parents in Greenwich Village and Ms. Renfield-Miller could take a bus to visit hers on the Upper East Side.
Ms. Breedlove and her boyfriend, Christopher Long, 43, were also in the habit of checking listings. As they learned more about the area’s residential rowhouses— at least some of which seemed livable, without needing gut renovations, within their price range of $2.6 million to $3 million — the plan no longer seemed quite so unrealistic.
A two-family home would work best, though a three-family would allow both parties to bring in some rental income from the third unit.
“It was important that everybody understood we were not roommates but had two distinct units connected in a home,” Ms. Breedlove said. “We plan to live as neighbors, not roommates.”
Both sets of parents were on board and willing to help with the down payment. “We were kind of waiting for everyone to tell them no, it was not a good idea, but it was the complete opposite,” said Mr. Long, a filmmaker originally from Oklahoma, who would be joining Ms. Breedlove in the new house.
The friends wanted a rowhouse with character that could still be improved. “I like to do D.I.Y. projects,” Ms. Breedlove said. “My dad taught me and my sister to be very handy, so the idea of doing smaller home renovations was appealing to me.”
They also planned to create an L.L.C. for the purchase. “We tend to see eye to eye,” Ms. Renfield-Miller said, but “we wanted some sort of legal structure to make sure our friendship was never going to suffer because of a co-purchase.”
The agreement would cover assorted future possibilities, like if one wanted to rent out her half or sell. In the case of a potential sale, the other friend would have the right of first refusal. “If anything does arise, we already know what the plan is without having to come up with it on the spot,” Ms. Renfield-Miller said.
They agreed on how to cover common costs, and Mr. Long would pay his share: half of Ms. Breedlove’s half.
Among their options:
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