Stretching Their $700,000 Budget for a One-Bedroom in Lower Manhattan. Which Option Would You Choose?

Jesse Mico and Elliot Watson have been writing their American adventure for nearly a decade. After growing up in England, they met through a mutual friend and eloped to Las Vegas in 2013, lived briefly in Los Angeles and then returned home.

 

For the next chapter, they decided to become New Yorkers, starting off as renters in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, before moving into a tiny two-bedroom in Chinatown. “We wanted to live in a movie and be in the thick of it, so we moved to Manhattan,” Mr. Watson said.

 

Their $2,100 rental “was like a subterranean thing, and it was dark and cozy,” he said. One room got a sliver of sunlight once a day. Ms. Mico called it “the Chinatown cave.”

 

They always renewed the lease for one year rather than two, daydreaming about buying. Two years ago, Ms. Mico, who works as a video producer, and Mr. Watson, a freelance writer, contacted Bruce Henderson, an associate broker at the Corcoran Group and a former record-industry colleague of Ms. Mico’s father, who is American.