After they met in early 2021, it didn’t take long for Rahul Barua and Winnie Wong to decide that they were in it for the long haul. By mid-year, they were already looking for a place to live.
“We met later in life and we just knew we were going to be a thing,” said Mr. Barua, 40, director of climate finance innovation at Salesforce. “After only like three or four months of being together, we started.”
The couple, based in Los Angeles, initially looked for a home in Southern California. But when a wildfire ravaged an area where they’d recently been camping, doubts began to creep in. That summer, they visited the East Coast on a road trip through the Hudson Valley, Vermont and Connecticut. It was Ms. Wong’s first time in Connecticut, but Mr. Barua had grown up in West Hartford, Conn., where his parents still owned a rental property.
The house was in rough shape, so Mr. Barua and Ms. Wong tackled the project themselves, living in the house while refurbishing it.
“For three to four months, we spent every single night, every single weekend renovating while we worked our full-time remote jobs,” said Ms. Wong, 41, a former freelance film producer and now the marketing and communications director for a nonprofit that supports contemporary artists.
