For years, Aviva Maslow and her younger sister Elana casually joked about buying a home together. The two had grown up in a tight-knit family in Marin County, north of San Francisco, before going their separate ways for college and early careers. By the time Aviva, 34, and Elana, 32, circled back to the area around the COVID-19 pandemic, the difficulties of buying a home were setting in.

“We used to say that the only way we could afford a house is to get a duplex,” said Aviva Maslow, the assistant director of a nonprofit Jewish family camp near Yosemite National Park (the camp where both she and Elana met their future husbands years ago). “It was like a joke, but also not a joke. At some point, it began to morph into something more real.”

That point arrived in 2024, when Aviva and her husband, Noah Orgish, 33, an educational technologist, welcomed their first child, Aurora. Elana Maslow, a school social worker, and her husband, Gabe Lehman, had already begun looking for a home, but the market was daunting.

The couples had grown close over the years, so the idea of looking for a place together didn’t feel odd. “The family connection was great,” said Mr. Lehman, 32, a journalist. “The other reality was that neither of us could afford on our own to buy a house in much of the Bay Area.”

All four ultimately agreed on the outlines of a search, confined to a fairly narrow slice of the East Bay that included North Oakland and Berkeley, two coveted destinations with median single-family home prices north of $1 million. The couples wanted distinct living quarters that were roughly equal in size and value, ideally with three bedrooms and two baths each.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/04/23/realestate/bay-area-oakland-berkeley-real-estate.html?unlocked_article_code=1.dFA.IapV.Yn5HACsPRPVS&smid=url-share

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5859720&forum_id=2...#49836721)

the grifting withing the jewish community w these female makework jobs is incredible. the amount of donations to jew orgs that go to fund bloated staff of mrs jobs is incredible.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5859720&forum_id=2...#49836722)

They decided to offer $1.275 million, which was accepted. With a little bonus help from each of their families, the couples quickly converted their basements into office/bedroom spaces and added full bathrooms, boosting the square footage to roughly 1,300 square feet apiece.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5859720&forum_id=2...#49836729)