FOR Daniel Laufer, a job offer from Yeshiva University meant a relocation to New York from Cincinnati. He went about his task methodically, making a list of everything he wanted in a new home: doorman, laundry, gym. He bought books about relocating to New York, and contacted colleagues in the city for advice.

Though Dr. Laufer, 41, had spent his childhood in Flushing, Queens, at age 12 he moved with his parents to their native Israel, to the small town of Zukay Yam, near Netanya. After four years in the Israeli Army, he studied accounting at the State University of New York at Buffalo, received a master's and a Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin, and then moved to a teaching post at the University of Cincinnati.

In the summer, he was offered a position as an associate professor of marketing at Yeshiva. He had a month to find a new home.

“After talking to friends in New York and hearing what a nightmare it is to find a place, I was very worried,” he said. “From my years being in the Israeli Army, you are trained to expect the worst. So I was expecting the worst.”

Before he even came to New York, one colleague, who lived in the Bronx, mentioned the tranquillity of Hudson Heights, the up-the-hill part of Washington Heights, within walking distance of Yeshiva. “My view of New York was more Midtown