Aya Maceda and Kurt Arnold really didn’t want a second home in the country — or so they thought. But that was before the pandemic coaxed them into sampling rural life in upstate New York.

“It was never this attractive thing for us,” said Ms. Maceda, 45, a founder of the Brooklyn-based architecture firm ALAO. “I thought it would be so tedious to pack up your family, go on the weekend, and then have to come back to the city.”

But in 2020, when Ms. Maceda and Mr. Arnold, 46, who works in records management at a bank and as a photographer, were largely confined to their 660-square-foot Brooklyn apartment, they began to waver. Stuck in such a tight space with their children, Kosi, now 14, and Lulu, 8, they decided to rent a house for a week in Bethel, N.Y.

ImageMr. Arnold and Ms. Maceda on the porch with their children, Lulu and Kosi.Credit...Kurt Arnold

Spoiler alert: They absolutely loved it. So did the couple’s friends, Ana and John Divinagracia, and their two children, who they invited to visit.

As the adults sipped cocktails one glorious summer afternoon in Bethel, Ms. Maceda and Ms. Divinagracia, who are longtime friends with family connections in the Philippines, started musing about what it would be like to buy a weekend property together.

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