Adam and Mariana Weinstein spent a fruitless year in search of a spacious apartment in Brooklyn, where they had assumed they could find an affordable place in a nice neighborhood. Instead, they found themselves priced out of places such as Park Slope, and subjected to vicious bidding wars for the few affordable units on the market.

“We made offers in Brooklyn. They all wanted more than the asking price,” Mr. Weinstein, a property manager for a cinema marketing company, said. “Other people would overbid by $50,000 and you had 15 people bidding on the same places.”

One recent weekend, the couple took the A train uptown to Hudson Heights. The neighborhood, in the Northwest section of Washington Heights, was exactly what they were looking for.

“We took a chance and came up here one day,” Mr. Weinstein said. “I didn’t even know it existed. It had twice the space for a couple hundred thousand less than Brooklyn.”

The Weinsteins, who moved into an apartment in the Hudson View Gardens complex two weeks ago, are among the many young couples discovering Hudson Heights. The area, bounded by the J. Hood Wright Park in the mid-170s to the south and Fort Tryon Park to the north, has been attracting professionals for the past few years. Recently, with the Brooklyn real estate market growing pricier, even more buyers are turning to Hudson Heights.

“This is the only area in Manhattan where you can get space for an affordable price,” the sales director at Fort Tryon Garden on Fort Washington Avenue, Scott Morrow, said. Despite going co-op almost 20 years ago, the 350-unit building is mostly occupied by renters. In the past few months, Clipper Equity, the company that owns the development, has stopped renewing leases with the intent of finally selling the shares.

“The company has owned the units since 1985, went co-op in 1989. We kept them affordable until the period when they became sellable,” Mr. Morrow said.

With many other buildings in the neighborhood converting into co-ops from rentals, and its realty offices growing increasingly crowded with potential buyers, Clipper Equity is trying to turn over units as fast as it can. Almost 60 apartments have been sold or are under contract, with many others under construction.

The draws of Hudson Heights are many: There are fashionable restaurants and even a gourmet supermarket along 187th Street; several parks and green areas, and easy access to Midtown via the A train. Neighbors are “amazingly friendly” and children and pets are very welcome, locals say. The terrain is rocky compared with the rest of the city, and it boasts the highest natural point in Manhattan — 265 feet above sea level — in Bennett Park. Fort Tryon Park is also home to the Cloisters, the castle-like museum housing the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s medieval art collection, a popular picnic spot.

While there are many spots to recommend in the area, Hudson Heights is also the site of the wall collapse that crushed cars and disrupted traffic for months along the Henry Hudson Parkway in May 2005.

Castle Village, a housing complex, opened a new lawn with long-reaching views of the George Washington Bridge and the Palisades as part of their efforts to rebuild after the collapse.

Hudson Heights was settled by German Jews after World War II, and was nicknamed “Frankfurt-on-the-Hudson” because of the tight community established there. As the German Jewish population got older and either moved out or died, the neighborhood changed, and by the 1980s and 1990s the area was mostly Dominican, and crime rates soared.

When the president of the Hudson Heights Owners Coalition, Elizabeth Lorris-Ritter, moved to Castle Village on Pinehurst Avenue in 1991, the neighborhood had “a lot of drugs and illegal activity” in the neighborhood and the parks. Over the years, she’s seen the area change, and she cited the restoration of the parks and the city’s growing economy.

There is also the burgeoning trend of young couples who want to remain in Manhattan rather than move to the other boroughs or the suburbs, Ms. Lorris-Ritter said. Young working couples, and even some singles, can afford to buy in Hudson Heights.

Lee and Jessie Weinberg, who were living in the West 90s, were looking at two-bedrooms on the Upper West Side priced at $850,000. In Hudson Heights, they found an apartment on Pinehurst Avenue for about $600,000. “It was 25% larger for 25% less money,” Mr. Weinberg said. “My wife is a native New Yorker, but I grew up in the suburbs. This was the perfect middle ground. We loved all the parks and that it wasn’t just a built up with a lot of condos, that the buildings have character.”

The couple moved into the space in June, after a seven- or eight-month search. Even in the short time the couple has lived in the neighborhood, they have noticed the area developing.

“With every month that passes, it gets more and more crowded — in a good way,” Mr. Weinberg said. “I think the neighborhood has fallen under the radar for a while, but I suspect that’s changing.”

The friendliness and the mom-and-pop feel of the community were attractive features to the Weinbergs, but they do miss a few aspects of living downtown. Parts of the neighborhood are still somewhat underdeveloped.

“Every essential is there — a bank, drug store, pub — but there’s only one of everything,” Mr. Weinberg said. “You don’t have your choice of four. And a couple of cuisines are missing. But it’s really the retail stores — there are no bookstores, clothing stores, no stores. That’s the one trade-off.” Realtor Simone Song is quick to point out the progress the neighborhood is making in terms of amenities, such as the K.B. Gallery, a new art gallery that opened last month on West 181st Street, and the growing number of restaurants on West 187th Street.

“It was a big joke up here: Until a few years ago, we only had a diner,” Ms. Song said. “We’re so pleased to have some restaurants now.”

Although Park Slope may have a few more choices of cuisine and bookstores, Mr. Weinstein said he is happy he’s not living in Brooklyn.

“It has to be said, it’s only a 30-minute commute. It’s so much closer than being all the way out in Park Slope. And this has all the good things I liked about Park Slope: good schools, a community feel, lots of kids and carriages on the sidewalk.”