The New York Times shows the lengths that divorcing New Yorkers will go to hang on to real estate.
Nadine Brozan writes (excerpt):
The difficulty of stretching the proceeds of one property to pay for two replacements prompted one couple, both of whom are architects, to come up with a creative solution. The couple, who have two teenage children and are separated, bought an entire floor of a six-story former industrial building in TriBeCa 20 years ago for $200,000 when the neighborhood was more gritty than chic.
“Today, one-third of one floor is worth $800,000, about the same that the entire building cost when we bought it,” said the wife, who like her husband was willing to give details of their arrangement but didn’t want to be identified by name out of a concern for their privacy.
Now their loft is estimated to be worth $2.7 million, but if they sold it, she said: “We would have needed two three-bedroom apartments, plus two offices. I didn’t look very hard. I knew we couldn’t afford to move.”
Instead, the wife moved into an adjoining space that they had rented out over the years. Because the wife does not have a spare bedroom in her quarters, when the children are with her they simply go next door to sleep.
“It is hard enough to separate,” she said. “To reduce your circumstances would be worse. Our mutual sense of poverty made this necessary.”
The compromise works, they agreed, because they have a generous amount of space — 3,000 square feet combined — and because they have maintained a reasonably amicable relationship. “And,” the wife added, “there is a certain New Yorkness about it.”