When Karina Peggau and Kain Lager-Lowe gave themselves a single weekend to find a new house in a city they didn’t know, they went in with open minds, but a few nonnegotiables. First on the list was enough space to accommodate a dog, three cats, 30 plants and 75 pounds of rocks.
The couple, who collect rocks as others might Delftware or midcentury glass, met in 2018 as earth science majors at Ohio State University. They began dating that summer at a geology field camp in Utah, where Ms. Peggau spotted a prize chunk of salt that now adorns their living room.
“One field site had an evaporated river of salt where we were able to take samples,” said Mr. Lager-Lowe, 30.
“Kain drove a boxful of samples, including the salt, to my childhood home in Chicago to give them to me because I couldn’t fly with them,” continued Ms. Peggau, 28.
Little wonder things got serious. After sharing a series of rentals, the two bought a 1930 cottage-style home in Columbus, Ohio, where Ms. Peggau enrolled in a master’s program for city and regional planning at O.S.U., while Mr. Lager-Lowe worked as a hydrogeologist and environmental project manager. By 2024, they were married and eyeing a new chapter.
Mr. Lager-Lowe would be pursuing a graduate degree in geophysics, and the University of New Mexico was his top choice. When he texted a photo of Albuquerque’s Central Avenue during a reconnaissance trip, Ms. Peggau saw something familiar: “It had a campus-y feel similar to High Street,” she said, referring to Ohio State’s main drag.
Willing to take the leap, she landed a job last spring in Albuquerque that accelerated the timeline. Rather than wait until August, when Mr. Lager-Lowe would begin his first semester, they would move in June so Ms. Peggau could start as a senior planner for Bernalillo County.
The timing became so compressed that they took a belated honeymoon in Costa Rica, sold their house in Columbus and scouted for a new one in Albuquerque all at once.
The couple worked with Shauna Huisman, a licensed associate broker at Realty One Group Concierge in New Mexico, who was referred by their Columbus listing agent, Jan Jedlinsky. “Their Realtor in Ohio knew them well, she knew me well, and thought we’d make a great match,” Ms. Huisman said. For starters, she wouldn’t balk at the two-day search window.
Ms. Peggau and Mr. Lager-Lowe had a $350,000 budget and no preconceived notions of where to spend it. New builds, historic neighborhoods — everything was fair game as long as it was turnkey and came with air-conditioning, a roomy garage, safe running paths and space for all the pets, plants and rocks. But they would have to act fast on anything they liked, Ms. Huisman said: “It was a seller’s market.”
Built in 1959, this remodeled Southwest-style home with 1,573 square feet had more than enough space. Beyond the extra-large kitchen, dining and living area, there were three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a laundry room that could hold a few litter boxes. The living areas had tiled floors, while the bedrooms were carpeted. The outdoor areas also were generous, with a patio, a small greenhouse, a shed, a nice lawn and two shade trees in the back. The one-car garage was small. The house was in “a great neighborhood close to the mountains,” Ms. Peggau said, though the commute times were longer than the couple had hoped for. The asking price was $325,000, with annual taxes of about $2,700.
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