WHEN it comes to buying a home — to buying anything, really — a good value isn’t enough for Caroline Chiti. “Because of the type of person I am, I don’t want something good for a dollar,” she said. “I want something great for a dollar.”
Ms. Chiti, a marketing consultant who grew up on West 84th Street in Manhattan, had always rented apartments in Manhattan. But about seven years ago, after a sublet fell through, “I moved in with my mom to the room I grew up in,” she said.
She decided to begin hunting for a co-op in Jackson Heights, Queens, a neighborhood she could afford. Meanwhile, on vacation in Dublin, she met Ian Hardies, a Belgian who had grown up in Estepona, a resort town on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. They married after a long-distance courtship of a year, and bought the one-bedroom co-op in Jackson Heights she had chosen. They renovated before moving in, and their home nearly quadrupled in value by the time they sold it last spring.
Wanting more space, the couple began figuring out where they might replicate their success. But this time, with two-bedrooms nearby starting at around $350,000, “I felt hopeless,” Ms. Chiti said. “It’s not that we couldn’t have sold and upgraded, but I didn’t want to pay that price. I am skeptical of the market.”
They thought Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, with its lovely row houses, would be likely to grow in value. The couple checked out fixer-uppers there. The bigger, grander homes were at least $700,000; the smaller, narrower ones were well over $550,000.
Those 15-foot-wide brownstones were a problem for Mr. Hardies, who is a furniture designer. “It is very restrictive because the stairway takes up so much room,” he said.
Several of the brownstones were rooming houses, “so when we went to look, we had to knock on everybody’s door,” Ms. Chiti said. “It was weird going to someone’s apartment when they were in bed.”
She worried about overpaying. “Brooklyn is beyond on-its-way,” she said. “I wanted to find something that needed gut renovation that was very inexpensive.”
It was her mother, Judith Chiti, who suggested they consider the Bronx.
“In my head, the Bronx didn’t exist, even though my mother grew up there and I went to visit my grandparents there when I was young,” Ms. Chiti said. “It was a nonborough to me.”
But the couple listened. They visited nearly every weekend for months and decided the housing stock had real potential. About $400,000 to $450,000 could buy a row house ripe for renovation.
The Bronx “was at such zero in people’s minds it could only go up,” Ms. Chiti said — especially the High Bridge neighborhood near Yankee Stadium, poised for new stadium construction.
Mr. Hardies said, “I remember stories her mother told, looking at the Grand Concourse like it was Fifth Avenue.” He doesn’t quite agree, but “you can see the grandeur.”
They visited 811 Walton Avenue, a co-op building, where the space seemed small for the price — $220,000 to $240,000 for two-bedroom apartments with one bathroom. Besides, they were already beautifully renovated, Mr. Hardies said, and “I’d like to take a project on my hands.”
They were charmed by the area’s row houses, and considered a two-family house on Grant Avenue. The top floor was more of an attic, however, and renting out the apartment there would leave limited space for themselves. And it was imperative to have a tenant, for financial security. “I am always thinking of the worst-case scenario,” Ms. Chiti said.
But the one they really fell for was a two-family brick house on Walton Avenue.
They were never clear on who was selling the house. The owners had divorced, with the husband in a nursing home and the wife recently deceased. It seemed that her relatives, who had inherited her half, began to gut the place, intending to sell it, then stopped work.
The couple planned to offer $390,000. On one visit, though, the pipes burst. “We watched the basement flood,” Ms. Chiti said. “I still wanted it. It didn’t matter — I was like a dog with a bone.” They instead offered $360,000. Mr. Hardies drew up floor plans.
But the offer went nowhere. Overwhelmed after months of pestering the agent, they gave up.
Then they saw an ad for a Grand Concourse co-op building with apartments of varying sizes for sale. Ms. Chiti wanted to buy one of the two-bedrooms, which were listed in the $150,000 range.
“I am the logical one,” she said. “My husband is completely emotional and he had to have the three-bedroom. He nagged me. I am, like, forget it — it is too much money. He wouldn’t let go.”
Mr. Hardies liked the layout as much as the size. “For me, it is the psychology behind the floor plan,” he said. “When we saw the three-bedroom, I fell in love with it. Caroline thought it was too big.”
But the three-bedroom had a second bathroom, and “I started to research what two-bathroom apartments went for, regardless of bedrooms,” Ms. Chiti said. “I concluded that two bathrooms were a very good thing. In every borough you have a large number of two-bedroom, one-baths. Two bathrooms are not that easy to come by.”
In some cases, a two-bathroom place sold for nearly twice the price of a one-bathroom place.
That convinced her. In June, the couple bought their 1,800-square-foot apartment for $220,000. Maintenance is around $800 a month.
“When I told people where we were going, they looked at me in horror,” Ms. Chiti said. “The South Bronx? Everybody’s reaction is emotional. If it was factual, they wouldn’t have that reaction.”
The two were able to move into the building temporarily, renting a vacant one-bedroom for $900 a month while $50,000 worth of renovations are in progress. They are upgrading the wiring, rerouting the gas line and relocating a wall to enlarge the kitchen and shrink the dining room.
They added triple-paned windows in the master bedroom, which faces the street. One bedroom will be a home office, while the other will double as a workout room and workshop for Mr. Hardies.
“The neighbors are the nicest people I have ever met,” and feel passionate about the building, Ms. Chiti said. “I am really pleasantly surprised. I feel terrible for being so surprised, but I am.”