designer and stylist<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019ve always been really good with numbers,\u201d said Ms. Walker, who worked as a math teacher in Brooklyn for over 35 years. \u201cAnd I never spent any more than I had to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Flood, 58, called her mother a \u201cleona,\u201d or lioness. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t spend any money,\u201d she said. \u201cShe saves everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think she\u2019s had the same three outfits since I was 5,\u201d said Inali Dreyer, Ms. Flood\u2019s daughter, who calls Ms. Walker \u201cAbu,\u201d short for \u201cabuela.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two years ago, Ms. Walker decided to get her affairs in order. She still owned a studio apartment in the West Village that she\u2019d bought in the late \u201980s, and wanted to leave it to Ms. Dreyer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was really grateful that my Abu wanted to leave that apartment for me, but even though she owned it, the co-op fees and bills for it were really high, and they only kept getting higher,\u201d said Ms. Dreyer, 23, an investment banking analyst in Manhattan.<\/p>\n
Instead, Ms. Dreyer, who was living with Ms. Flood in an apartment in Midtown East, suggested her grandmother sell the studio so all three women could pool their resources and buy a house together outside the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew the house needed to be able to fit all of us together: my husband, my mother, my daughter and our dog, Harry Styles,\u201d said Ms. Flood. She also has three stepchildren with her husband, George White, so maximum space was crucial.<\/p>\n
Collectively, they could spend up to $1 million. They wanted to be in a town that was close to the water and somewhat walkable, since Ms. Walker doesn\u2019t drive. After briefly considering Greenwich, Conn., they pivoted to New Rochelle, in Westchester County, which was much more affordable and would make for an easy commute to Grand Central Terminal.<\/p>\n
To fund a down payment, Ms. Flood and her mother sold a house they co-owned in Massachusetts. Ms. Walker decided to keep the West Village studio for another year, buy the new house with a mortgage, and then use the proceeds from the studio sale to pay off the loan. \u201cI wanted to give Inali a house with no mortgage,\u201d she said. Ms. Flood and Ms. Dreyer would handle taxes, home repairs and insurance.<\/p>\n
Their agent, Rose Bulfamante at Houlihan Lawrence, had worked with the family in the past. \u201cI knew they would only want to see houses that had some character to it,\u201d she said. \u201cEspecially with Michelle\u2019s work, I knew architectural design would play a big role.\u201d<\/p>\n
Find out what happened next by answering these two questions:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Maria Walker moved to New York from Ecuador in 1962, she had never allowed herself to dream…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101956,9,11,10,578,21091],"class_list":["post-262954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-rochelle-ny","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-real-estate-and-housing-residential","tag-westchester-county-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}