The Hunt - A Co-op With Elbow Room - NYTimes.com OVER time, in their Upper East Side rental, Evan Lapidus and Natalie Ings felt the walls closing in. Their 500-square-foot one-bedroom in a small walk-up building was bright and quiet. The rent, initially $2,300 a month, had dropped to $2,100. But "there was nowhere to put stuff," said Mr. Lapidus, who like Miss Ings is in his 30s. We found ourselves banging into each other or tripping over things. You had to navigate around the front door to get into the apartment. If we had more than two people over, it felt really tight. A larger rental didn't seem worth the price. With interest rates low, it was time to buy. The couple, who met five years ago when a friend of his became a roommate of hers, wanted to remain in the neighborhood. It seemed to have adequate street parking, and Mr. Lapidus, who is from Canada and works in strategic planning for a hotel company based in Stamford, Conn., drives to work. Miss Ings, who is from Australia, works for an Australian financial services firm in Midtown. They began the hunt a year ago, checking out one-bedrooms in the $600,000s. "I was coming to a realization that we didn't know what we were doing," Mr. Lapidus said. When you start looking for co-ops, it is very easy not to understand what you can afford. They learned they needed plenty of liquid assets - a down payment plus two years of mortgage and maintenance payments. Their price range fell to the $400,000s. Last spring, the couple visited two one-bedrooms across the hall from each other at an Art Deco co-op on East 77th Street. One was listed at $535,000 with a monthly maintenance fee in the $1,300s. The other was listed at $480,000 with maintenance of a little more than $1,000. The building also imposes a monthly charge for an overnight doorman. Both apartments were amply sized, with around 800 square feet. When Mr. Lapidus saw the higher-priced one, he thought, "Wow, this is much nicer - I can see why they are asking more." Still, it was too expensive, so they made an offer on the other one, but it sold to someone else. The price was $435,000. The couple liked the selling agent there, Peter Comitini, a senior vice president of the Corcoran Group, and enlisted his help. "You don't see a lot of 800-plus-square-foot co-ops in the low $400,000s," Mr. Comitini said, "so finding something at the size we were hoping for was hard." Mr. Lapidus objected to odd layouts with inefficiently used space. Miss Ings disliked small kitchens, especially as they rarely had windows. Nothing came close until the couple found a 750-square-foot one-bedroom, with bright southern sun, at a postwar co-op on East 67th Street. The price had been steadily dropping through the $400,000s, and the maintenance fee was a little more than $1,500 a month. Their offer of $390,000 was accepted. "The combination of size and light was attractive," Mr. Comitini said. We weren't seeing many view apartments. Most were on lower floors. The place needed sprucing up. The couple had a contractor come in, prepared a co-op board package and declined invitations to out-of-town weddings in case they were summoned for an interview. All summer, "we spent our weekends at Home Depot," Miss Ings said. They examined paint colors, bathroom fixtures, lighting and flooring. But because both are foreigners, they were going to have to put a year's worth of maintenance in escrow. And they sensed a lengthy wait for permission to do renovations, which they preferred to have completed before moving in. They opted out. The apartment remains on the market, for $410,000. Their mood brightened when they found two apartments in the same line at Charing Cross House, a postwar co-op on East 72nd Street. The higher-floor apartment had been on the market for a while, its price having dropped to $425,000 from $449,000. Maintenance was nearly $1,500.