A brooklyn renter reroutes his commute in New Jersey

“It was a great situation,” he said. “I couldn’t really ask for anything else.”

Time marched on. New roommates, almost always acquaintances, moved in and out. His share of the rent rose to $975 a month. Then last winter, when a roommate vacated, no friends of friends surfaced.

“Having to fill the spot was an added stress,” Baylock said. “I didn’t want this being part of my life, having to go through this process every year or two.”

Anyway, he had been thinking about buying a home. He discussed interest rates with a former roommate who had bought a place in Brooklyn. “My friend’s advice was what I needed to hear to finally break out of my comfort zone,” he said.

Baylock, 36, who is originally from New Britain, Connecticut, is a teacher and basketball coach at Newark Collegiate Academy, where he drives every day. He was reluctant to move deeper into Brooklyn and endure a longer commute, so he focused on Hoboken and Jersey City, where he could be closer to work and also near public transportation, such as the PATH train, for trips back to New York. He was hoping for a spacious one-bedroom condo for $300,000-$400,000.

“I was looking for something that was newly refinished and move-in ready,” he said. “I am not a handy person.”

Nor did he want to make “serious concessions” for space, location or finishing. “I would be kicking myself for the next however-many years I lived there for having bought it,” he said.

Through Zillow, Baylock connected with Bruna Santana, an agent in the Jill Biggs Group at Coldwell Banker’s Hoboken office. She showed him a large one-bedroom in a well-kept building on Madison Street in Hoboken, asking around $379,000. “It was what you would call newly refinished, but it wasn’t newly refinished last year,” Baylock said.

The apartment was in contract within a week and sold for $392,000. “I knew this was going to a bidding war,” Santana said.

Baylock quickly realized why it had been so appealing: Other places in the price range were smaller, often with railroad layouts and dated interiors. One exception was on Park Avenue, asking $390,000. The apartment, closer to the Hudson River, had high ceilings with a skylight and a postcard view of Manhattan from the kitchen.

But it was a fifth-floor walk-up and almost a mile from the nearest PATH station. “It was nice, but not nice enough to go to the top of my price range,” he said. It later sold for $385,000.

Baylock could not afford a place in one of Jersey City’s condominium high-rises or older row houses, but he could afford a modest apartment in Jersey City Heights, a couple of miles north of downtown. There, he saw a listing on Palisade Avenue asking $349,000.

He almost ignored it. The building did not look like anything special. The interior pictures were nice enough, “but a lot of pictures look nice,” he said. “I figured it must be in a terrible neighborhood or building for a place that size with that finish at that price.”

But the location — equidistant from the Journal Square PATH station and the Holland Tunnel — was convenient, so he decided to take a look. The apartment, with its pristine interior, was nearly 750 square feet. The ceilings were high, the kitchen open and the bedroom big.

The view from the bedroom was a brick-walled alley, but the living room view included the Manhattan skyline beyond a tangle of highways. “The view was a selling point,” Santana said. “You have to be on a specific street to have that view.”

Baylock researched the area and concluded it was ripe for appreciation. “Downtown Jersey City is no longer a steal, so I think this neighborhood could be that next spot,” he said.

He stopped by at night, drove the streets, walked to Journal Square and ate at Rumba’s Cafe on Central Avenue, the main strip. When he went for a second visit, the price had dropped by $10,000. He made the deal last spring for $339,000, with the condominium fee and taxes at around $500 a month.

He has been decorating with artwork by his father, Paul Baylock, an artist and former art teacher. But the exposed brick in his living room means “a whole wall I don’t have to decorate,” he said.

Baylock uses the basement laundry room and parks on the street. He does, however, miss his backyard in Brooklyn. The new building has a common yard, but the view is obstructed by the back of a billboard targeted at Holland Tunnel traffic.

He is also wistful for the walkability of Fort Greene. His new neighborhood “is not beautiful brownstones with a cafe at every corner,” he said. “There is no really nice park space right nearby. But after a 10-minute bike ride I am on the Hoboken waterfront.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.