Growing up in the tight-knit neighborhood of Elmhurst, Queens, Yamil Burgos loved being part of his community. The elder son of Dominican immigrants, he played volleyball with friends in the parking lot next to his apartment building, and he devoured the local Latin and Asian cuisine, not to mention his mother\u2019s chicken empanadas.<\/p>\n
When Mr. Burgos started his studies at Baruch College in Manhattan, his father, a custodian, deposited $2,000 into his school checking account. But the teenager found ways to avoid spending that money through a mix of financial aid, scanning textbooks at the campus library, and commuting to classes from his family\u2019s home, where he shared a room with his younger brother.<\/p>\n
[Did you recently buy a home? We want to hear from you. Email: thehunt@nytimes.com<\/a>. Sign up here<\/a> to have The Hunt delivered to your inbox every week.]<\/p>\n \u201cThe money that I started with was very little,\u201d he said. \u201cIn college, I learned how to save.\u201d<\/p>\n After graduating in 2015, he opened an investment account and watched his nest egg begin to grow. Finally, at 23, he rented a one-bedroom apartment in a building in Elmhurst. It was his first taste of freedom, even if he was still only a 20-minute walk from his childhood home.<\/p>\n \u201cI spent pretty much all my life living in that apartment, in that room, with my family and my brother,\u201d said Mr. Burgos, 31, now a web engineer at a real estate brokerage. \u201cWhen I first started renting, it felt like the first time I could claim a space as my own.\u201d<\/p>\n He spent a lot of time at a local gym. While working out in 2018, he befriended one of the employees, Rafaela Ramirez, who also worked in real estate. Her advice: Invest in property. \u201cI pretty much told him to save up, and whenever he was ready, to call me and I will help him out,\u201d Ms. Ramirez said.<\/p>\n Seven years later, she got the call: It was time to move. Mr. Burgos\u2019s savings \u2014 now including a 401k \u2014 had grown, but so had his rent. And his apartment was right above the building\u2019s entrance, leaving him irritated by chatty neighbors, as well as cars and motorcycles that distracted him when he worked from home.<\/p>\n With a budget starting at $260,000, he was looking for a quiet place with good light, an elevator and a laundry room. He wanted to be near a gym and a subway line that would take him to his office in Midtown Manhattan. And he was open to branching out of Elmhurst into other Queens neighborhoods, like Jackson Heights and Rego Park.<\/p>\n Ms. Ramirez connected him with her colleague, George Segura of NYC Elite Homes, who sent Mr. Burgos listings for co-ops, confident that he\u2019d qualify for a mortgage with a 20 percent down payment. \u201cHe took care of his credit score, which is the most important thing,\u201d Mr. Segura said.<\/p>\n Find out what happened next by answering these two questions:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Growing up in the tight-knit neighborhood of Elmhurst, Queens, Yamil Burgos loved being part of his community. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[579,580,9,24,56,63,122,124,123,578],"class_list":["post-539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-elmhurst-queens","tag-jackson-heights-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-real-estate-and-housing-residential"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539","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=539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}