A family needed more space but decided not to leave New York City. They bought a fixer-upper in Brooklyn and slowly went to work.

While many New Yorkers were busy leaving the city at the beginning of the pandemic, Hallie Morrison and Seth Frader-Thompson did the opposite: They doubled down on urban living by buying a townhouse in Brooklyn.

“A co-worker said, ‘What, are you crazy? Nobody’s buying real estate right now,’” said Mr. Frader-Thompson, 44, the chief executive of EnergyHub, a company focused on smart-grid solutions. “I was like, ‘That’s why we’re buying.’”

Hallie Morrison and Seth Frader-Thompson at home.Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

At the time, the couple lived in a two-bedroom co-op apartment in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, with Mr. Frader-Thompson’s son from a previous marriage, Sam, now 14. They had already been looking for more space, but were discouraged by a mix of tight inventory, apartments with high common charges and bidding wars on townhouses.

“We liked the neighborhood and were looking for possibilities,” said Ms. Morrison, 39, a landscape architect at Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects.

The home was previously cut up into four separate apartments. Ms. Kim took down numerous walls to open it up and convert it to a family home with a rental apartment on the garden level.Nick Glimenakis

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