Sizing Up to a House in Jersey City: How Much Work Was Too Much?

October 2020 was a huge thirty day period for Emily Oppenheimer and Julian Agin-Liebes. They have been married in a park in Jersey Metropolis, N.J., right before a handful of shut pals and family members. Dr. Agin-Liebes, a neurologist, realized he experienced been positioned at the Columbia University Irving Health care Middle for his fellowship education. And the pair, now armed with added hard cash from their scaled-down pandemic wedding day, decided it was time to set down roots.

Ms. Oppenheimer, 35, and Dr. Agin-Liebes, 34, had moved to Jersey Metropolis from Harlem in 2017, leasing a two-bed room downtown. They beloved the building’s rooftop garden and the proximity to the Path practice. Ms. Oppenheimer, a software supervisor for a New York City public-well being middle, experienced learned her green thumb when she moved to New Jersey, getting on the purpose of gardener for the constructing. Then the pandemic turned the communal area into a restricted one particular, with time scheduled in progress.

“As considerably as we beloved sharing, in the course of Covid every person bought a little possessive about their outside time,” Dr. Agin-Liebes reported. “And we have been both equally functioning from home, sharing this 1 desk.”

They hoped to obtain a dwelling with some character, but had been initially discouraged by what they identified for their $750,000 spending budget — far too quite a few illustrations of the so-called “Bayonne box,” the chunky, often vinyl-clad multistory condominium buildings common in Jersey Town and neighboring Bayonne, N.J.

“No shade, but it wasn’t very what we preferred,” Ms. Oppenheimer stated. “It has a garage and it’s perfectly fine, but it is all that was obtainable in our selling price variety.”

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They did not want to remain in downtown Jersey City, which, irrespective of its advantage, had started to truly feel far too congested. They hoped to obtain in or in the vicinity of the Jersey City Heights community, the place they appreciated to go out to try to eat, check out their most loved bicycle shop and consider in the Manhattan skyline from Riverview-Fisk Park.

“We were like, ‘Why do we hold coming right here to do the issues we want to do? Let’s consider about living listed here,’” Dr. Agin-Liebes mentioned.

By way of a mutual good friend, they connected with Katrina Spiratos, a actual estate agent with Corcoran Sawyer Smith, and used a number of months scouring the spot for homes in their selling price variety with the proper combine of character and outside house.

Among their solutions:

Locate out what happened following by answering these two queries: