UPPER WEST SIDE
205 W. 84th St.
Three-bedroom co-op
Asking price: $1.3 million
Selling price: $1.26 million
Time on market: 5 months

LOVE NEST In this small, five-story building on West 84th Street, newly weds Clint and Heather Kollar recently bought a three-bedroom apartment and are about to close on a one bedroom apartment, one floor above their three-bedroom unit. Although the Kollars were hoping the one-bedroom would go on the market, they had not expected to be able to buy it so soon. Mr. Kollar is a hedge fund manager and Mrs. Kollar is working toward a degree in health and fitness at NYU.

Mr. and Mrs. Kollar, who are both in their late 20s, wed last Saturday and hope to return to the city next week to find their apartments in livable condition – they are doing gut renovations to combine their two recent purchases and have not yet moved into their new home.

“This is one big, brand-new wedding present for themselves,” Trina Harrison of Corcoran Group Real Estate, who represented the buyers and the sellers, said. The Kollars wanted a larger space so that they wouldn’t have to move if they decided to start a family, Ms. Harrison said. “The house is set up for having a growing family. This is their first purchase to gether.” The Kollars previously lived in a rental apartment on 12th Street in the West Village.

The parlor floor three-bedroom apartment the Kollars bought first is about 1,900 square feet, and the one bedroom space they purchased later is close to 550 square feet. The Kollars will now have a nearly 2,500-square foot three-bedroom apartment spread over three levels. They have transformed the basement into an entertainment room and a laundry area The parlor floor, or main floor, is comprised of a California kitchen, a powder room, a small bedroom, and an open living and dining room with access to the 600-square-foot deck and garden.

“It is one big, open, lofty space.The ceilings are 11 feet,” Ms. Harrison said. The second floor, which will be accessed by a newly built scissor staircase, will have two bedrooms.”It totally feels like a house,” the broker said.

The seller of the three-bedroom apartment, Elizabeth Teachout, is an opera coach and singer who moved upstate with her 3-year-old daughter. An administrator at Greenwich Academy in Connecticut, Angela Zini, was the seller of the one-bedroom unit, her first apartment in Manhattan. A few years ago, Ms. Zini, 34, got married and her husband moved in with her. She and her husband have now relocated to Long Island.

“Everyone was really sweet,” Ms. Harrison said. “The deal was pretty easy and the building is really nice and neighborly.”

EAST VILLAGE
30 E. 9th St.
Convertible two-bedroom co-op
Asking price: $749,000
Selling price: $745,000
Time on market: 14 weeks

TRANQUIL HOME An accountant in her late 30s sold this second-floor one-bedroom apartment in a postwar redbrick six-story building on East 9th Street. Though she thought she would never leave Manhattan, she relocated to Stamford, Conn., in 2005 for work, planning to live there for a year to see if she liked the area before she sold her East Village apartment.

Joseph Testone of Bellmarc, who represented the seller, said she decided to stay in Stamford in part because she wants to start a family. “She is buying a big house with a big yard and possibly trying to have a baby,” Mr. Testone said.

A man in his early 30s who was renting in the East 9th Street building bought the apartment, which is approximately 875 square feet. The buyer is an analyst with a securities and investment firm who got an MBA from Columbia in 2004 and has worked with the same firm since graduating. He “liked the building so much that he wanted to stay as an owner,” Mr.Testone said.

The buyer had lived on the third floor of the building with his girlfriend, but he decided to get his own place after their recent breakup. His ex-girlfriend is still living in the third-floor apartment.

The best thing about the apartment, perhaps, is that it has a window in every room, Mr. Testone said. The kitchen, which the buyer is going to renovate along with the bathroom, has two entrances. A closet connects the kitchen to the dining alcove, which is the only room that has both a southern and eastern exposure, and the buyer is going to turn that into a kitchen pantry, the broker said. The dining alcove is in a corner and off a spacious living room.

Even though the property is on the second floor, it has more pleasant views than one would expect, Mr. Testone said. “It has really sweet views of the courtyard gardens and the gardens next to the building. There are also really nice cityscape views, too.”

More than anyone else, young couples were interested in this space, he said.”It’s a very tranquil space and a super-sweet apartment – you hear the birds chirping. It’s really lovely.”