Nigel Campbell has spent most of his life moving \u2014 both his body and his home. Raised in the Bronx, he attended Juilliard for dance and went on to perform with companies around the world, including the Metropolitan Opera Ballet and the Saarl\u00e4ndisches Staatstheater in Germany.<\/p>\n
When he returned to New York a decade ago, he co-founded a nonprofit, MoveNYC, where he now serves as chief executive of programming and artist development. But settling in the city didn\u2019t mean finding stability, and Mr. Campbell, 39, bounced from apartment to apartment as New York grew ever more expensive.<\/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 \u201cI\u2019ve been moving every two years, because my rent keeps going up so much that I actually get priced out of the apartments that I\u2019m living in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n At his last rental, a one-bedroom on the Upper West Side, a looming $800 rent increase finally convinced him to consider buying a place. But he had no idea where to start. Neither of his parents are homeowners, \u201cso the concept was really far away and hard to grasp,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n His partner, Kyle Weekes, encouraged him to stay the course. The couple, who met five years ago, had been sharing the Manhattan rental and planned to keep living together, but Mr. Campbell would be making the purchase alone with his savings. Mr. Weekes, a vocalist, was deeply involved in the process, offering practical advice and emotional support.<\/p>\n \u201cKyle is my partner, and so of course I want to get his input and his thoughts and his ideas, because he\u2019s going to be there,\u201d Mr. Campbell said.<\/p>\n As with so many lucky breaks in New York, it\u2019s all about who you know. For Mr. Campbell, that was Ellen Gottlieb of Corcoran, who had attended many MoveNYC events and was excited to work with Mr. Campbell because \u201che\u2019s an inspiring human being,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n In February, they settled on a budget of up to $600,000 and started visiting two-bedroom, two-bath apartments around the city. Ms. Gottlieb entered the budget, desired locations and amenities into a Corcoran database, which would trigger alerts to Mr. Campbell about promising listings.<\/p>\n \u201cThings turned around after that fairly quickly,\u201d he said. \u201cThe access to the inventory was a totally different experience.\u201d<\/p>\n The couple was open to any neighborhood that was affordable. On their checklist: lots of closets, a kitchen with space to prepare food out of view of guests, pet-friendly for their German shepherd, and an elevator.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was a stipulation from my mother: no walk-ups,\u201d Mr. Campbell said.<\/p>\n Find out what happened next by answering these two questions:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nigel Campbell has spent most of his life moving \u2014 both his body and his home. Raised in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,8966,35160,29758,9,24,56,63,578,35161,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-67667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-cooperatives","tag-cypress-hills-brooklyn","tag-midwood-brooklyn","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-real-estate-and-housing-residential","tag-riverdale-bronx","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67667","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=67667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}