For years, Adam Stone and Jordan Fenlon were bicontinental — studying, working and living among assorted cities in the United States and Britain, their respective homelands.
Eager to set down roots, the couple decided to buy a place in London, settling on a two-bedroom, ground-floor flat in Walthamstow. But the sale was derailed by complications involving fire-safety documentation, a big issue in Britain after London’s devastating Grenfell Tower fire in 2017.
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So the two men, who were both born deaf, revamped their plans, deciding to settle in a different city where they could live comfortably: New York, roughly equidistant between England and California, where Dr. Stone grew up. “It comes down to the deaf community,” Dr. Fenlon said.
Last year, the couple, both in their mid-40s, rented a furnished studio in NoMad and began searching for a one-bedroom or two-bedroom co-op. Dr. Fenlon, who has a Ph.D. in linguistics, started work as a research scientist for New York City’s health department, commuting some days to Long Island City. Dr. Stone, whose Ph.D. is in educational neuroscience, works remotely as the director of analytics engineering for a data consultancy.
With a budget of $800,000 to $900,000, they aimed for a location near a subway station and a park — “somewhere to go for a run and have a dog,” Dr. Fenlon said.
A doorman would be helpful for receiving deliveries. “Often people will call you on the phone or ring the doorbell and you will miss it,” he said. They contacted Jackie Roth, a licensed associate broker at the Corcoran Group, who was also born deaf, and whom Dr. Stone knew through the deaf community. (Ms. Roth, like Dr. Fenlon, wears hearing aids, and all three navigate the hearing world with combinations of American Sign Language, ASL interpreters, voice-to-text transcription, captioning, lip reading and spoken, written or typed English.)
“We didn’t need interpreters every time we spoke to Jackie,” Dr. Stone said. “It was wonderful having full access, and that’s how it should be for everyone.”
The couple, who married in 2017, were unfamiliar with New York neighborhoods, so Ms. Roth had them go window shopping. “I wanted them to get a feel for what’s out there,” she said. “I didn’t want to waste their time and show them amazing places they couldn’t afford.”
Dr. Stone kept a detailed spreadsheet showing the 33 properties they viewed, marking each entry stoplight style according to how much they liked it — green, yellow or red, adding blue for their top picks. “I don’t know if I over-engineered the process,” he said.
He wondered whether a co-op board would approve them. “I was worried about discrimination,” he said. “I had nightmares that we would be rejected because we are deaf, but Jackie kept telling us that we were outstanding candidates.”
Ms. Roth also told them about the city’s housing stock, emphasizing that prewar co-op buildings, while generally less expensive than condos, often had assorted assessments or ongoing structural issues.
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