Julia Bumke and Kevin Laskey met as members of the Princeton University Orchestra — she played the French horn; he played percussion. The two bonded over a mutual love of Princeton Record Exchange, the local music spot.
“I would go every week,” said Mr. Laskey, 33. “It was always something I did on my own.”
When his studies took him to Philadelphia for a Ph.D. in music composition at the University of Pennsylvania, the couple shared a rental apartment and married along the way.
The goal was to end up in New York, where they had friends and work contacts. “The perk of the Philly time was that we were able to really save up,” said Ms. Bumke, 32.
Two years ago, they moved to a sunny junior four on Claremont Avenue in Morningside Heights, a Manhattan neighborhood that Ms. Bumke knew and loved from the days when her older sister attended Barnard College there. The apartment had leaks, water bugs and “a tiny bathroom with a big hot-water pipe in the middle that you could burn yourself on,” she said. The rent was $2,755. They walked their dachshund mix, Shosti, in Riverside Park.
Intent on finding a more permanent and less hazardous home — preferably in or near their neighborhood — the couple contacted Peter Cohen, a real estate agent with Brown Harris Stevens, through a referral from a colleague of Ms. Bumke’s.
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“We were excited to talk to someone who knew the system, because we were daunted,” Ms. Bumke said. “We had no experience doing something so labyrinthine as buying.”
They wanted a two-bedroom or a large one-bedroom in an elevator building, in part so that Shosti, whose short-legged breed is prone to spinal problems, could avoid stairs.
In Philadelphia, “we had gotten used to a certain quality of life, where we had a washer-dryer and a garbage disposal — silly stuff, but things you get into the rhythm of,” Ms. Bumke said.
They knew they might have to compromise on such luxuries in Manhattan. “Matching budget and expectations is the challenge,” Mr. Cohen told them.
Their price range for a co-op was around $600,000 to $800,000 — depending on the monthly maintenance, which they wanted to keep under $1,500. They didn’t find much in that range in Morningside Heights. “Columbia is the landlord of that neighborhood.” Mr. Laskey said, with much of the area’s housing occupied by faculty and staff.
They also considered South Harlem, aiming for a straight subway shot to Midtown and Lincoln Center. Ms. Bumke works remotely as a creative producer and the executive director of the Manhattan-based nonprofit JACK Quartet; Mr. Laskey, a composer and percussionist, teaches music theory at New York University.
They discovered that if asking prices were low, monthly fees often turned out to be high. “We got used to reading bring-your-architect listings,” Ms. Bumke said, but they were reluctant to take on a renovation.
Among their options:
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