In New York, buying an apartment often feels out of reach to anyone without a trust fund or a giant salary. In Brooklyn, the average home sale price in 2017 was $993,955 (the median was $770,000), so you can understand why a woman making $57,000 as a librarian would think real estate was beyond her means. But with a lot of determination — and a willingness to compromise on size and neighborhood — she bought her own studio apartment in 2015.

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