The Hunt - Filling a Family's Tall Order FOR four years, since shortly before their marriage, Kristina Frantz and Pierre Alexandre lived in a spacious three-bedroom duplex in a two-family house in Carroll Gardens. Each of their girls - Cielo, Ms. Frantz's daughter from a previous marriage, and baby Amélie - had her own bedroom. The family had a backyard, a washer-dryer, a fireplace, a dishwasher and an abundance of three-prong outlets - "and it wasn't a four-story walk-up," Ms. Frantz said. The rent was around $3,200 a month. The couple toyed with the idea of buying a place. Then, late last year, they learned their building was for sale, and were forced to take action. The building needed structural repairs. And its location near the aboveground F train, which is in the midst of a long-running rehabilitation project, meant they had to endure constant construction. "We had thick dust over everything in our garden," said Ms. Frantz, who works as a digital product consultant. So moving was an easy decision. In the end the house sold for $1.25 million; their price range topped out just under $1 million. The couple briefly considered a huge condominium at Lofts on Lex, at the border of Clinton Hill and Bedford-Stuyvesant, listed at $649,000, with monthly charges around $600. "You literally could have Rollerbladed in it," said Ms. Frantz, who is 42. But they decided against a condominium, figuring that a building with a rental unit was a better investment. "The problem we have with apartment buildings is you have to buy the place and you have to pay the maintenance," said Mr. Alexandre, 48, a French journalist. The two were introduced through a schoolmate of Cielo's whose parents came from France. We prefer to buy something maybe more expensive, but not with the maintenance. The couple wanted at least three bedrooms, outdoor space for their dog and three cats, and an area "where Cielo could walk down the street and get ice cream from the deli," Ms. Frantz said. But she preferred prewar charm while Mr. Alexandre wanted new construction. It was hard to find a place that pleased them both. In Greenwood Heights, they went to see a nicely renovated two-family house, listed for $895,000. But the building, 17 feet wide, seemed uncomfortably narrow. They couldn't figure out how to configure the bedrooms or fit in their furniture. And the neighborhood didn't have quite enough to do within walking distance. The house, which later went for $832,500, sold so quickly it worried them. "We thought maybe when you find something you like, you need to go fast," Mr. Alexandre said. From there, it was back to Carroll Gardens, to a house on Dennet Place (sometimes spelled Dennett), a unique one-block street. "The fun thing about Dennet Place is it has all these teeny-tiny doors," Ms. Frantz said. They called it "Munchkin alley." The house, a two-family for $975,000, was adorable but just too small. They were drawn to gritty, industrial Red Hook, on the waterfront in South Brooklyn. There they found a two-family house on Pioneer Street, listed for $995,000. But they weren't quite sold on the style of the renovation and didn't think that income from the rental unit, a one-bedroom, would be high enough to offset their costs. And then, on Van Brunt Street, Red Hook's main drag, they saw a listing for a three-family being turned into a two-family. The mixed-use building included a storefront, and Ms. Frantz had a hankering to open a cafe. The price was $999,000. "It was a mess, it was like a bomb hit it, but Kristina loved it - she had a vision," said the listing agent, Mary Gaglio of Realty Collective, noting that there was a great deal of interest in the house. "It was horrible," Ms. Frantz said, "but I thought it had a lot of potential." They met with the builder and owner, Gino Vitale, who took them to some of his finished properties and explained his plans. "We knew he cared about preserving as much historic value as he could," Ms. Frantz said.