Now that I’m here, there are many reasons why I love my new home base, but that’s different from why I chose to live here in the first place. I had passed through, but did not know the area well. We ended up in Kensington, just south of Park Slope and Windsor Terrace, in a compact three-bedroom attached house with a porch and a small concrete-paved space in back. Our search spanned years, market booms and busts, and swaths of the outer boroughs, with a heavy emphasis on the one we knew best, Brooklyn.
We got married and had a kid, and various factors (an aging landlord, no lease, continual anxiety about how we'd remain in New York) moved us to look for a place to buy. I've lived in Park Slope and Prospect Heights. He's seen the Brooklyn boom from the vantage point of a rough around the edges but cheap and large three-bedroom share in Cobble Hill, where I eventually landed. For more than two decades, my husband and I have rented in various neighborhoods in Brooklyn.
