Randa Jaafar collapsed while running on the treadmill in her Manhattan apartment last April.
Dr. Jaafar (42), an anesthesiologist trained at Cornell, felt healthy and fit up to that point. She divided her time between East Hampton (N.Y.) and Manhattan, NY, where she maintained a private pain management practice. Within hours, however, she was being prepared for surgery. Her doctors informed her that there was a malignant mass on her chest.
“I always knew life was short, but I realized it’s even shorter than I thought,” Dr. Jaafar spoke. “It started to make me really think about what really matters in my life, and what doesn’t.”
Her pain management practice in Midtown Manhattan, (she also has one in Lower Manhattan) became less important. Her house in East Hampton was also in constant need of repair. She decided to get $2.8million when she sold the house. Just after she did, a doctor’s second opinion came in: The mass that had been removed from her chest was benign. She was now cancer-free.
“I had a new lease on life,” Dr. Jaafar spoke.
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She closed her Midtown offices and opened a medical center, FILD Studios, in SoHo. The spa specializes in Botox, and skin care. And she began to dream about a second location in the Hamptons, where she hadn’t seen as many medical spas popping up, despite all the potential clients.
“The Hamptons isn’t saturated like the city,” She said “And I think it elevates the brand to be out east.”
She needed to first find a new Long Island house as her base. She began searching late last year with the hope of spending less than $4,000,000. Dr. Jaafar likes to entertain her Michigan-based extended family and friends, so she needed a house with at minimum four bedrooms.
She enlisted the help of Peter Cook and Alba Jancou, real estate agents with Saunders & Associates. “Randa has a lot of friends, and her close friends don’t have homes out here,” Ms. Jancou says. “Her family is in Michigan, and she is very close with her niece and nephews. She wanted room to host everybody.”
Dr. Jaafar hoped to find a house that had a pool and didn’t need repairs. And while she wasn’t ready to give up her Manhattan apartment yet, she wanted “a year-round house,” She said. She said.
She was able to find several homes that she could afford.
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