(Photo: Noah Sheldon)

CASE STUDY 2: HOLLY PARKER
Started with $56,000 down payment.

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1998: BUY
Parker, having moved to Manhattan from Boston, calculates that unless the market drops 20 percent, it’s cheaper for her to own. She puts down 40 percent on a Tudor City one-bedroom priced at $140,000.

1999–2000: SELL/ BUY
A year and a half later, she sells it for $180,000, a modest profit, so she and her then-partner can trade up to a two-bedroom for $315,000. It’s still in Tudor City—“a C location,” she admits—but it’s far more salable than the first, with three exposures and views of the Chrysler Building.

2003: BUY
Parker, sure that the market is still on its way up, rents out the place in Tudor City and buys a prewar condo loft on East 20th Street for $1.18 million. (Her reasoning: Prewar holds its value; condos are easy to unload.)

2005–2007: SELL/BUY
Parker tries to buy an apartment at 225 Fifth Avenue and is outbid—but she and her family buy another place in the building as an investment (her share: $52,000). Then the unit she wanted comes back on the market. She sells her other properties for $2.15 million to raise funds, and this time, she’s the high bidder.

TODAY: She’s still at 225 Fifth, and an apartment down the hall just sold for a per-square-foot price that suggests she could get $3.6 million.