By JOSEPH BERGER

New York Times

NEW YORK >> Raissa Fomerand grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and spent her early adulthood as a young striver in Carroll Gardens and Brooklyn Heights. She remembers those days fondly. So when her children were grown and out of her colonial in Larchmont, Fomerand, 71, divorced and retired, wanted to move back to New York City.

“Lots of things come easily in the suburbs, but what doesn’t come easily is the intellectual stimulation of being in an interesting neighborhood,” said Fomerand, who has lived in Westchester County for nearly 30 years. “I’d like to live near the Metropolitan Museum or a place of culture.”

A year ago she started hunting for an apartment in Manhattan, and the search proved unnerving.

Prices in Manhattan, as she put it, had “hit the ceiling,” and “everything was minuscule and expensive.” With the price of one-bedrooms in the more sought-after neighborhoods approaching — or surpassing — $1 million, she counted herself lucky when she heard of a studio on the Upper East Side for a bargain of $400,000, but then found out it had little more than 500 square feet. The two-bedroom apartment in Mamaroneck, New York, where she has been living since her divorce cost less than half that and has more than double the space.

For now she has decided to stay put.

“I don’t have two incomes, but I always felt there was some upward mobility involved in my living circumstances,” she said. “Now everything is so crazy in price. I feel that I’m stuck.”

Like many others in her sociological cohort these days — men and women whose children are grown and who want to trade those unused rooms in Tudor- and Victorian-style houses, as well as the steep suburban property taxes, for the city’s excitement and convenience — Fomerand finds herself stranded in the suburbs.

These empty-nesters have reaped the benefits of the suburbs: They sent their children to excellent public schools and raised them in safety and comfort, in backyards, playrooms and cul-de-sacs. And their houses have increased nicely in value. Now they would like to find apartments with doormen and elevators so they don’t have to climb stairs, shovel snow and schlep packages. They want a place where they can “age in place,” as the phrase goes. But they are finding that in the past 15 years, prices for such apartments in Manhattan and Brooklyn have risen far more than the values of their suburban homes, so much that they may never make it back to living in the city they always thought they would return to. Instead, they end up staying in their houses, or downsizing to smaller suburban homes or apartments.

To be sure, this is a problem largely felt by the comfortable: New Yorkers who have had the luck and income to live where they choose, who have had the luxury of planning and expecting a certain lifestyle when they grow older. These people could live less expensively in other cities, but often their family, friends and work are here, and they don’t want to leave the area.

“This is one of the most commonly discussed issues,” said Mark A. Nadler, director of Westchester sales for Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices. “People will say, ‘Yes, I’m moving to the city,’ but unless they’re wealthy, they end up resigning themselves to staying in the suburbs.”

James French, an agent who shows apartments in Manhattan for Douglas Elliman Real Estate, said that New York is “a highly desired place for couples who are over suburban living and looking to downsize and experience a more lively energy and change of scenery.” But he cautioned, “A budget of $1.5 million really doesn’t get you very much.”

“It’s hard for buyers, now more than ever, to rationalize spending that kind of money for 800 or 1,000 square feet,” he added, “after sitting on property three or four times that size in the suburbs.”

According to a Queens College study of data from the United States Census Bureau’s American Community Survey of 2009-13, the median price of an owner-occupied house or apartment was $518,400 in Westchester; $454,500 in Nassau County; and $451,400 in Bergen County, New Jersey. In Brooklyn it was $557,100, and in Manhattan it was $828,100. While prices in the three suburban counties rose 34 percent, 40 percent and 39 percent since 2000, they rose 80 percent in Brooklyn and 70 percent in Manhattan.

RealtyTrac, a real estate information company, recently named Brooklyn the nation’s least affordable housing market and Manhattan its third-least affordable (San Francisco was second), by comparing median incomes with median housing prices.

A couple living on pensions, Social Security and interest from investments might decide to rent in Manhattan or Brooklyn and use the profit from the sale of their suburban home to help finance their expenses. But they would find that on, say, the Upper East or Upper West Side, a two-bedroom apartment in a building with a doorman and an elevator would sell for more than $1.3 million (don’t forget the monthly maintenance charge) or rent for $5,000 or $6,000 a month. And if they chose not to give up the car they depended on so much in the suburbs, they might pay another $500 to $900 a month for a parking space.

Ruth Kaplan, a 60-ish real estate broker in White Plains, grew up near Ebbets Field — then the Brooklyn Dodgers’ baseball stadium — and lived in the city as a young wife for a dozen years. With three children, she and her husband moved to the suburbs, ending up in a four-bedroom house in Rye Brook, in Westchester, in a development with amenities including a swimming pool. But the children have grown and left, and she and her husband have divorced.

“I’m basically only using a few rooms for myself and not at all benefiting from the wonderful things here,” she said. “And the taxes are high — $22,000.”

Because she travels to Brooklyn every Friday to babysit for her granddaughter in Williamsburg, she began thinking of making her life simpler by scaling down to a place in Manhattan. She looked for ads for two-bedrooms she might buy on the Upper East Side. Stunned by Manhattan prices, she decided to settle for a one-bedroom or a studio. She even thought about renting.

But she is reconciling herself to the possibility that she may just stay in the suburbs, taking an apartment near the train station in White Plains, a 40-minute commute to Grand Central.

“The city is so expensive,” she said. “I can get more for my money in White Plains.”

© 2016 The New York Times Company