For 10 years, Olivia Page-Pollard was a serial New York renter, hopping from neighborhood to neighborhood, almost always in Brooklyn, never staying in one place for more than three years.
In 2021, she moved to Chinatown for a pandemic deal, “because I felt I would never have the opportunity to live in Manhattan due to rents going up,” she said. But she found moving so often — seven times in 10 years — to be too unsettling. And she never stopped saving for a down payment.
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Ms. Page-Pollard, now 31, began her career as a legal assistant at a nonprofit. “The pay was not enough to live on the way I wanted to live as an adult,” she said. So she worked part-time waiting tables, and later matriculated at CUNY School of Law. She is now an immigration lawyer at a nonprofit.
By last year, she was rooming with a friend in Park Slope, paying $1,300 for her share — until the friend moved away for work. “I needed a place that I knew was stable, where the rent was not going to skyrocket or my roommate was going to have a life change,” she said. “I needed something that was mine.”
For her first purchase, Ms. Page-Pollard abandoned Brooklyn for Queens. She had friends there, she loved the restaurant scene, and she knew she could find a suitable and affordable co-op in Jackson Heights.
“Jackson Heights is gorgeous,” she said. “The streets are tree-lined and there’s a ton of great small businesses. You can get Nepalese momos down the street from Colombian empanadas and Peruvian ceviche. It’s a microcosm of the whole world in terms of cuisine, and it’s one of the most diverse places in the country.”
With around $300,000 to spend, she sought a place with good light and a low monthly maintenance fee. She was undeterred by the relatively long commute to her office in the financial district, though she often commutes by bicycle, so bike storage was a plus. “I was not looking for space,” she said.
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