Five years ago, when Mayra Kirkendall-Rodriguez decided to buy a two-and-a-half bedroom apartment at the Walden on East 130th Street in Harlem, she says she was happy to find a place that offered the promise of space, light and air, a "lovely property" on a quiet, residential block in an up-and-coming neighborhood.
Richter, who has lived in her 3-and-a-half bedroom home for 39 years, lost her job directing a Chicago mental health services program for low-income senior citizens in June.
A smaller half-bedroom — which would work as a craft room — was carved out of the largest bedroom.
That was true, especially when Megan told her the rent in what she called a "one-and-a-half-bedroom apartment" would be split $1,050 and $900.
With a friend who inherited money, she said, she is negotiating to buy a modest, one-and-a-half-bedroom apartment near London's financial district.
This apartment, on the third floor of a brownstone between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, is listed as a one-and-a-half-bedroom — the half being only 6 by 10 feet.
And this month, that money was put to good use: she secured a three-and-a-half-bedroom apartment in Yonkers that the family moved into last weekend, just in time for Thanksgiving.
One couple who complained, Sharon and Keith Morgan -- she is a housekeeper, he is a truck driver -- paid $167,000 last year for a three-and-a-half-bedroom home in Staten Island after learning about First Home Brokerage through a newspaper advertisement.
He spent his 20s working construction jobs and living in more shoddy homes, including a North Hollywood ranch house that had what he described as "half-bedrooms," the bedroom equivalent of half-baths.
I've since cobbled together more home offices, in different homes: another hand-me-down desk crammed into another corner, or placed in one of those confusing nooks that real-estate agents breezily refer to as "half-bedrooms".
