Anne Secor was in her three-bedroom co-op within the TriBeCa neighborhood of Manhattan when the planes hit the World Commerce Heart on Sept. 11, 2001.
Ms. Secor, a design advisor, seemed out the window at Broadway and noticed a stream of individuals fleeing north. In search of a respite from the chaos and confusion that adopted, she and her then-boyfriend headed north to Canada, settling in a buddy’s rented condo in rural Quebec.
They wound up staying, marrying in 2004 and constructing a house on a five-acre plot in Morin-Heights, a small city within the Laurentian Mountains. Ms. Secor bought her TriBeCa co-op in 2005, and the couple welcomed twin women, Romy and Naia, in 2006.
However Ms. Secor had lived in New York for greater than a decade earlier than 9/11, and she or he missed the town. “New York is the promised land,” she mentioned. “It’s my place.” She visited usually over time, and Romy and Naia, now 17, cherished it, too.
So when her marriage resulted in 2022, Ms. Secor determined that she and her daughters, who had been set to start their junior 12 months of highschool, would return to New York.
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She reached out to Simonne Hill, an agent with the New York-based Bizzarro Actual Property Company, hoping that Ms. Hill might work together with her remotely to assist discover an condo to hire.
However Ms. Hill had completely different recommendation. “I informed her it might make much more sense for her to really buy one thing,” she mentioned. “Getting a rental was going to be laborious for her as a result of she didn’t have an American guarantor.”
Ms. Secor wished a spot with three bedrooms and laundry within the constructing, and she or he hoped to keep away from parking her automobile on the road. Her plan was to promote a handful of funding properties that she had purchased in Canada, bringing her finances as much as round $625,000. She wished a full of life neighborhood with entry to public transit, however at that worth most of central Manhattan was out of attain, so she began looking out in Harlem and Flatbush, Brooklyn.
“I just about knew I might not get into the meat of that sandwich,” she mentioned, referring to all factors between.
Most essential, she would have to have the ability to full the acquisition from overseas. “I didn’t need to have to maneuver twice,” she mentioned.
Ms. Hill discovered some condos that match the profile, streaming her visits on FaceTime so Ms. Secor might see them from Quebec. Among the many properties thought of:
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