The Hunt - A Home Base for a Touring Musician - NYTimes.com IN the mid-1990s, Dana Fuchs arrived in New York from Florida - alone, broke and hoping to find success as a singer and musician. She worked odd jobs, became a secretary, and in 2003 took over the role of Janis Joplin in the off-Broadway musical "Love, Janis." Her throaty alto soon led to voiceover jobs for MTV. She landed in a one-bedroom rental in a fifth-floor walk-up on the Upper West Side. In a restaurant one night, a friend overheard her talking about wanting to buy a place. He connected Ms. Fuchs with his sister, who was selling her one-bedroom co-op apartment on West 96th Street and moving upstate. Ms. Fuchs saw the apartment the next day in the pouring rain. It smelled like cigarettes. The owners had added walls and doors. But, with its prewar details and prime location, "I knew the place was a steal," Ms. Fuchs said. I am a stasher, not a shopper. A purchase, she said, meant security, especially because "I came from a family that didn't have much of anything." Ms. Fuchs and her boyfriend bought the apartment for $662,500, and eliminated all the added doors and walls. When the elderly renter in the two-bedroom next door died two years later, they bought her place for $773,000. Ms. Fuchs figured the combination would be either a dream home or a great investment. They connected the apartments through a closet, and Ms. Fuchs stored her music gear and CDs in the two-bedroom, which also housed two litter boxes for the cats, Junebug and Jitterbug. Upkeep, however, was costly. "We found ourselves with an overhead that was just outrageous," Ms. Fuchs said. The two maintenance fees totaled around $2,900 a month. We were in way over our heads. Everything was peeling and decaying. It was in shambles and looked like a haunted mansion. We saw the tab rising on the renovation," an estimated $300,000. The overhead was becoming an albatross. Last fall she decided to test the market for the combined apartment, which covered more than 2,100 square feet. Her agent, John A. Herbst of Prudential Douglas Elliman, who was referred through a friend, listed the property at $2.3 million. "Everybody said, "You're crazy," " Ms. Fuchs recalled. " "No one is going to come close, you're asking too much." Within four days, we had a bidding war. I was like, whoa, we've got to hold them off. The place sold for the asking price. Now, Ms. Fuchs, who spends a lot of time touring with the Dana Fuchs Band, needed to find a place quickly. She hoped for a condominium with at least 1,500 square feet, good light and a price below $1 million. She had not considered Harlem until Mr. Herbst brought it up. "I knew there was value to be had in Harlem," he said. There are beautiful town houses that have been converted, and beautiful new construction. In Harlem it was possible to find views and light, Mr. Herbst said. The view from the old place was of adjacent rooftops, except for a street view from the kitchen. At Fifth on the Park, a new building on the edge of Marcus Garvey Park, Ms. Fuchs loved a 1,500-square-foot three-bedroom apartment listed for $929,000, with monthly charges in the mid-$700s. With big windows overlooking so much greenery, "I was just wowed," she said. Still, she continued to hunt for other possibilities. Ms. Fuchs also liked the Windows on 123 Loft Building on West 123rd Street, where she visited an apartment that had 1,700 square feet plus a balcony. The listed price was $1.22 million, with a monthly maintenance charge close to $1,200. It was a bit too expensive. Egged on by friends, she considered Brooklyn. "The musicians I work with are all in Brooklyn," she said, "and everybody who wasn't really loaded was in Brooklyn." The Cathedral Condominium on Washington Avenue, once a seminary called the Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception, caught her eye. In the lovely courtyard, "I felt I was in the middle of Italy," she said. But the building was near noisy and busy Atlantic Avenue. The 1,600-square-foot duplex she saw had a narrow interior spiral staircase. That apartment later sold for $799,000, with monthly charges around $1,200. Her heart just wasn't in Brooklyn. And by comparison, Harlem looked better still. Whenever Ms. Fuchs toured a building in Harlem, she would go to the roof and see Fifth on the Park in the distance. Online, she checked out some of the building's bigger layouts. One three-bedroom, with nearly 1,750 square feet and a terrace, was listed for $1.2 million, with monthly charges in the mid-$800s. The price difference between this and the other one she had seen at Fifth on the Park was negligible, she said, so the larger one seemed like a better investment. It was on a higher floor, too, with open views and exposures to the south and west. "We kept coming back to Fifth on the Park, and we didn't see anything Dana liked better," Mr. Herbst said. "She was getting nervous" that another buyer would swoop in. She and her boyfriend bought the apartment for $1.175 million. They arrived over the winter, spending about $30,000 on renovations because "we wanted to customize it," Ms. Fuchs said. It was a little cookie-cutterish. It reminded me of a hotel, and since I've been living in hotels on the road, I wanted it to feel like home. She had the kitchen floors and counters replaced, and chose a bowl sink with a cabinet beneath to replace the pedestal sink in the bathroom. White walls were painted in colors. Ms. Fuchs would like to see more grocery stores and restaurants in the neighborhood, which has many empty retail storefronts. "I wish they would clean up Marcus Garvey Park a little more," she said. But her apartment is within bicycling distance of yoga and her voice coach, and fairly close to airports. When there are fireworks in Central Park, she has a front-row seat. For the price, "this is beyond what I thought I could have in Manhattan," she said. Because of the cats, Ms. Fuchs is ambivalent about the terrace. Confronted with an open terrace door, both animals flee. "I hope they remain terrified of it," she said.