Halstead Property

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Isaac Halpern
Village Office

The Hunt When Nothing Compares

Photo: Glenn Hill, left, and Peter Rider are settling into two spacious floors.

By Joyce Cohen

LATE last summer, curiosity led Peter Rider and Glenn Hill to an open house in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. On a block where friends lived, they spotted a sandwich board advertising the Sanctuary, a condominium converted from a church and rectory, so in they went.

“We are both kind of real estate Peeping Toms,” Mr. Rider said. They even visit open houses in other cities, resulting in “real estate envy,” he said. “So much of the New York value is not about what you find in those four walls.”

At the Sanctuary, they liked one of the big duplexes, though they weren’t quite ready to buy a place....

Throughout the fall, they kept an eye on the Sanctuary, on Cumberland Street, assuming “their” unit would sell quickly. Just weeks after they saw it, the credit markets crashed. They were surprised but pleased that the unit remained available.

So this past winter, they visited the Sanctuary again, “to see if our memory of how nice it was was valid,” Mr. Hill said. He found that “we weren’t over-romanticizing how great the apartment was.” At $925,000, it seemed reasonably priced, too.

Their agent, Isaac Halpern, a vice president at Halstead Property and a business school friend of Mr. Hill’s, told them they must see other apartments “so you are really sure.”

Friday, June 12, 2009