The Hunt Taking the TwoFamily Path Clinton Hill Housing Skillman Street

AS natives of Seattle, where they paid ,100 for a one-bedroom rental in a downtown neighborhood called Belltown, Brandon and Jette Starniri faced culture shock when they moved to New York three years ago and settled into a Brooklyn Heights walk-up.

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Though “we were used to newer, modern places,” they grew to appreciate the gracious brownstone on Henry Street, Mr. Starniri said. “It was cool to live in an older building with fire escapes and radiator heat,” he said, even though temperature control meant opening and closing the windows.

After two years there, they began hunting for a two-bedroom condominium to buy, something open and lofty. Outdoor space was important, too. In the summer, “we would sit out on the fire escape just to feel like we had a deck,” Mr. Starniri said.

The couple, who met as high school students when they worked together as cart attendants at the Golf Club at Echo Falls in Snohomish, graduated from the University of Washington at Seattle, and spent a year living in London in a tiny Bayswater flat. “It was the best thing ever,” said Mrs. Starniri, 26, who studied industrial design in college. They were forced to keep it organized and uncluttered.

They returned to Seattle, married and moved to New York, eager for big-city life.

Last summer, when they began hunting in Brooklyn, there was nothing they wouldn’t consider. Their price range was 0,000 to 0,000.

“It was frustrating, because we were paying ,800 a month for a one-bedroom and now we were looking at the same kind of place for a half-million-dollar mortgage plus common charges,” said Mr. Starniri, 28, an accountant for an advertising agency. “It seemed insane to be paying so much more for exactly what we had or smaller.”

After visiting open houses, they realized they needed help, so they made contact with Nahid Mollah, an associate broker at ReMax Today in Astoria, Queens, who had helped good friends of theirs find a house in Woodside.

“We looked at everything,” Mr. Mollah said. “They didn’t know where they wanted to be. It had to be a classic look or else something totally contemporary.”

At every turn, their price range seemed to jump. Even so, “it was, wow, every single apartment had something weird about it,” said Mrs. Starniri, who works as a catering director. “There is a compromise to everything here. There were weird things, like the fridge was in the dining room.”

They considered a two-bedroom sponsor unit in a brownstone building in Prospect Heights. But it cost around 9,000, with a 20 percent down payment. Their Woodside friends had put down just 5 percent nearly 18 months ago, so they had assumed they would do the same.

To Mr. Starniri, older places seemed “kind of dumpy.” So they began looking at new Williamsburg condominiums. The Maze Condominiums on Humboldt Street caught their attention, but a top-floor two-bedroom with a city view was 9,000. They just couldn’t afford it.

“I like walking out of my front door and I can go grab a pizza or a drink, and I like that whole neighborhood vibe,” Mr. Starniri said.

But the last thing his wife cared about was a hotshot neighborhood. “Everything with Brandon and me is a debate,” Mrs. Starniri said. “I told him I wasn’t a hipster, so I didn’t know if I could live there.”

A top-floor two-bedroom at 179 Monroe Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, for just 9,000, had possibilities. “It was gorgeous, modern, beautiful,” Mrs. Starniri said. “I said, ‘This is exactly what we are looking for,’ and Brandon didn’t agree.”

He disliked the barren neighborhood, which lacked even “a little minimart on the corner,” she said. There was no other construction in sight. She argued that the neighborhood would be reshaped in five years; he refused to wait.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Starniri was thinking about her Woodside friends. Their two-family house was affordable because of the top-floor rental unit. Her friends told her, “It’s not that hard — just make sure you take care of the building.” That was fine with her. Her father is a carpenter, so “I grew up in a wood shop,” she said. “I am like, no problem, I can do this, and Brandon couldn’t see it happening. He is a computer guy.”

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