Rent the Brooklyn Duplex, but First, Meet the Upstairs Neighbors

After a decade in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Chaitanya Harshita Nedunuri Kahn and Zachary Kahn knew they wanted a change. They set their sights on Red Hook, a waterfront enclave that has scarce transit access and is largely cut off from the rest of the borough by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

They toured a spacious duplex apartment on the lower two floors of a two-family townhouse in January 2023, but with a big trip to visit family in India and other commitments coming up, they didn’t think it’d be feasible to move in time.

But the apartment was still available months later. And when the Kahns began the approval process for the apartment, they were a bit surprised to be asked to meet the neighbors who owned the apartment on the upper floors.

The owners of the lower duplex — the Kahns’ future landlords — knew the walls between the units were thin and that sound carried. Plus, the fuse box for both units was in the Kahns’ living room, and the apartments had the same keys.

Ms. Nedunuri Kahn, a designer and researcher, and Mr. Kahn, an equity derivatives trader, clicked with the upstairs family — a couple and their two teenagers — and by April 2023 moved into the two-bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom apartment. (They haven’t changed the key situation, out of “mutual trust,” Ms. Nedunuri Kahn said.)

From the lowest floor in their duplex, the couple can hear their neighbors in the apartment above. That’s why the landlords of the duplex “were looking for a couple who would get along with neighbors,” Mr. Kahn said. Now the two households are close.Credit…Clark Hodgin for The New York Times