Seeking Some (Relative) Peace and Quiet in Brooklyn for Less Than $800,000

Selene Plastiras, an in-house lawyer for an engineering firm, arrived in New York from California in April 2022 to fill in for a colleague on maternity leave. Her company put her up in corporate housing in TriBeCa for a few months. Within a week, she knew she wanted to stay.

“New York was such a good fit,” she said. “It was the energy I was missing. The people are really friendly because a lot of people are transplants and no one is sitting in their cars.”

It was easy enough for Ms. Plastiras, a Bay Area native, to transfer to the city permanently. After the TriBeCa place, she rented a one-bedroom in a fifth-floor walk-up on the Upper West Side for herself and her dog, Hula, paying just under $4,000 a month.

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That’s when she learned what didn’t fit: She thought she’d get used to the stairs, but never did. Her portable air-conditioner was no match for the summer heat. The windows faced Columbus Avenue, filled with sirens, garbage trucks and crowds. And at the trendy corner ice-cream shop, “there was always a line no matter what the season,” she said.

So last spring, Ms. Plastiras, 36, considered moving to the relative calm of Brooklyn. “I’ve been on the East Coast for only two and a half years, and it seemed like half of the friend group left New York and the other half left Manhattan for Brooklyn,” she said.

When she investigated the costs of buying, she found that with a budget of between $600,000 and $800,000, her monthly outlay would be roughly the same as rent. Online, she saw reasonable options with outdoor space, which she craved.

In New York, she said, “you’re not in nature much and it’s hard to get out of the city.”

When she had owned a condo built in 1974 back in Marin County, Ms. Plastiras had endured replacement projects for the roof, elevator and railings, with their accompanying assessments. So she wanted a building that was brand new. With the help of Tami Kurtz, a licensed salesperson at The Agency, she hunted in and near Bedford-Stuyvesant, filled with new condo developments with sponsor units for sale.

“The units were pretty cookie-cutter and looked pretty similar,” Ms. Kurtz said — boxy one-bedrooms in boutique buildings.

Ms. Kurtz warned Ms. Plastiras against first floors, because of flood risk. “Even if you don’t have a flood, every time there is a leak in the building, it ends up worse for the first-floor unit,” she said.

Among her options:

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