- Year built
- 1927
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 17
- Floors
- 15
- Landmark
- No
- Financing
- No maximum financing percentage is published. Do not assume a co-op default here — get the ceiling in writing before you offer
Every recorded sale at this building, 2003–2026
Price-per-square-foot over time, the line- and floor-premium curves, and every recorded sale.
- Median $/sf
- $998
- Listing discount
- 3.6%
- Recorded sales
- 28
- On record
- 2003–2026
Empire State Lofts is a small, plain-spoken loft cooperative in a stretch of NoMad that spent a century as manufacturing and wholesale space and is still, block for block, more commercial than residential. The building went up in 1927 as a garment manufacturing loft on a fifty-foot lot between Fifth Avenue and Broadway, rose fifteen stories with the setback profile the 1916 zoning resolution imposed on tall buildings of the period, and was converted to residential cooperative use in the 1980s.
Seventeen apartments is a very small share pool, and that is the building's defining commercial fact. Turnover is low, comparable sales are scarce, and pricing in any given year is driven as much by which floor happens to trade as by the market. Several apartments are full-floor; management-sourced records describe lofts with roughly fifty feet of frontage on the south side. Ceiling heights approaching eleven feet and oversized industrial windows are described consistently in listing records, though they vary by floor and should be measured rather than assumed.
The building's most distinctive policy is its live/work posture. Per management-sourced records the board affirmatively permits shareholders to run a business from the apartment with up to two employees — a rule that survives from the building's manufacturing past and its mixed residential-and-commercial certificate of occupancy. For a designer, therapist, small studio or one-person practice, that is a genuinely scarce permission in Manhattan cooperative housing, and it is a reason buyers seek this building out specifically.
The commercial component is real and worth understanding. Roughly 7,800 square feet of the building's 62,091 is non-residential, and Department of Buildings filings over the past two decades record ground-floor restaurant and wholesale retail tenancies, plus office space on lower floors. A separate 2015 filing created an opening in the demising wall between 11 West 30th Street and the adjoining building at 7–9 West 30th Street — the two structures are connected at some level, and the terms of that arrangement are a legitimate diligence question for a buyer's attorney.
Architecture and unit composition
Fifteen stories of masonry loft construction on a fifty-by-ninety-nine-foot lot, with the mass stepping back as it rises. The setbacks produce the building's best feature: private outdoor space on the upper floors, with south-facing terraces from the eleventh floor and north-facing terraces from the ninth, per listing records. Unit designations in recorded transfers run on an F (front) and R (rear) convention through the middle floors — 6F and 6R, 9F and 9R, 11F and 11R — with full-floor apartments above, which is consistent with a building that was cut two-per-floor in the lower stack and left whole higher up. A 2016 filing combined 6F and 6R into a single apartment, and city records show the residential count sliding between 17 and 18 across the period, so the current mix should be read from the current certificate of occupancy rather than from any aggregated feed.
City records currently map the lot in a paired manufacturing-and-residential zoning district (M1-8A/R12), a designation applied to this part of Midtown South comparatively recently. It has little practical effect on an existing residential cooperative, but it governs what can be built on the lots around it — relevant to light and view on the lower floors.
Building operations
This is not a full-service building and should not be underwritten as one. There is no published doorman, no gym, no amenity package. What the building does offer, per management-sourced records, is a private storage room for every apartment, located off the hallway on the same floor, many of them plumbed with running water — an unusually generous arrangement that reflects the loft floor plates.
No audited financial statements for Empire State Lofts Limited are on file with us. That means the things that most determine carrying cost in a small loft co-op — the underlying mortgage balance and maturity, the reserve position, any live assessment, the commercial lease rollover schedule, and the building's Local Law 11 facade cycle — cannot be established from public records and must come from the managing agent. Given that commercial rent is a meaningful share of income in a building with 7,800 square feet of non-residential space and only seventeen apartments to spread costs across, the commercial lease schedule is the first document a buyer's attorney should ask for.
Public records do show two facade cycles: a 2007 sidewalk shed and remedial repair program, and a 2017 facade and roof repair filing accompanied by a sidewalk shed. Both are consistent with a building meeting its statutory facade inspection obligations.
Policy framework
- Subletting is permitted after one year of owner occupancy, capped at two years in any four, with a sublet fee of 10 percent of monthly maintenance. A subtenant application fee of $250 and a refundable $1,000 move-in/out deposit apply, per management-sourced records.
- The flip tax is 2 percent of the purchase price and is paid by the seller.
- Live/work is permitted, with up to two employees per unit.
- No maximum financing percentage is published. This is the single most important open item in the file. A prospective buyer should obtain the board's current financing ceiling and post-closing liquidity expectation in writing from the managing agent before making an offer, because both are set by board practice rather than by any published document we can verify.
- Pet, pied-à-terre, trust and LLC policies are not published. We do not infer them from building type.
Local Law 97
- 2024–2029 annual penalty
- $0 (under cap)
- 2030–2034 annual penalty
- $46,374/yr
- Per unit / month range
- $0 – $227
Source: NYC LL84 benchmarking and PLUTO · The Roebling Research Library. City record last verified September 2026.
See full Local Law 97 analysis — emissions history, scenarios, methodology →Facade safety — Local Law 11
The latest available FISP filing classified the facade as Safe — no repairs were required at that inspection. Facade inspections run on a fixed five-year cycle; future inspection, repair, and any assessment decisions remain building-specific.
How to read this, and where it comes from
QEWI = Qualified Exterior Wall Inspector — the licensed engineer the city requires to sign the report (the independent expert, not the managing agent).
Source: NYC DOB facade filings (FISP) · The Roebling Research Library. City record last verified September 2026.
Recent sales
Apartments here transfer as cooperative share transfers — ACRIS records twenty-four share-transfer instruments against this tax lot, confirming that individual apartments have changed hands to separate buyers over time rather than being held by a single owner. With seventeen apartments and a thin trading history, per-room and per-square-foot readings from this building alone are unreliable in any single year; the honest way to price a unit here is against the broader NoMad and Flatiron loft co-op set, adjusted for floor, frontage, terrace and the live/work permission, which is worth something specific to the right buyer. Market statements are indexed to the last complete year. Unit-level transaction history is maintained in The Roebling Research Library and shared with clients during diligence.
Recent transfers at this building, curated by The Roebling Team research desk. Prices are the transfer amounts recorded with the NYC Department of Finance; apartment-level detail is checked against the building’s own file in The Roebling Research Library before publishing.
| Date | Unit | Apartment | Price | PPSF | vs. Ask |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 20, 2026 | 8F | 3 BR · 2 BA · 2,150 sf | $1,995,000 | $928/sf | -5.0% |
| Apr 7, 2026 | 14 | 3 BR · 3 BA · 3,229 sf | $3,200,000 | $991/sf | -8.4% |
| Jun 24, 2025 | 10S | 3 BR · 2 BA · 2,059 sf | $2,200,000 | $1,068/sf | -12.0% |
| Mar 19, 2024 | 11F | 3 BR · 2 BA · 2,400 sf | $3,310,000 | $1,379/sf | -9.3% |
| Jan 29, 2024 | 5 | 2 BR · 1.5 BA · 4,438 sf | $3,310,000 | $746/sf | -5.4% |
| Jul 19, 2023 | — | 3 BR · 2.5 BA · 3,000 sf | $2,960,000 | $987/sf | -1.2% |
| May 25, 2023 | 12R | 2 BR · 2 BA · 1,890 sf | $1,637,500 | $866/sf | -3.4% |
| Mar 17, 2023 | 9F | 2 BR · 1 BA | $1,300,000 | -13.0% |
Market read. Most recent trades (2026) cleared a median $998/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount 3.6% from the last ask — a recurring negotiation gap worth pricing into any offer or listing strategy.
The retrade record
Lines that have traded more than once in the public record — the building’s appreciation arc, apartment by apartment.
Full closing history with price-per-square-foot over time, the complete retrade record, and every line that has traded.
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 1-00832-0032) and verified listing data. Apartment-level facts (line, condition, asking-price context) curated and cross-verified by The Roebling Team research desk. Not all transactions cross-verify with ACRIS records — sponsor and LLC purchases sometimes record at stipulated values rather than market price; square footage on co-ops is not officially recorded, figures shown are approximate.
What to know if you’re buying
Get the financing ceiling in writing first. Nothing else in this file matters if you cannot clear the board's debt limit, and it is not published anywhere we can verify.
Ask for the financials and the commercial lease schedule together. Seventeen apartments carrying a building with 7,800 square feet of commercial space is a leveraged structure — favorable when the stores are let at market, painful when they are not. The underlying mortgage balance and maturity belong in the same request.
Resolve the conversion date and get the offering plan. Public records point to 1987; listing records say 1981. The plan settles it and also establishes the original share allocation, the proprietary lease terms, and whether the live/work permission is a plan-level right or a board practice that can be withdrawn.
Underwrite the live/work rule as a feature, not a guarantee. Confirm with the managing agent that your specific intended use — client visits, deliveries, signage — falls inside what the board actually permits.
Check the party-wall opening. The 2015 connection to 7–9 West 30th Street should be explained by the managing agent and reviewed by your attorney.
What to know if you’re selling
The live/work permission is your differentiator. Very few Manhattan co-op boards allow a shareholder to run a business with employees from the apartment. Market to the buyer who needs that, not to the generic loft buyer.
Lead with frontage, ceiling height and terrace. Those are the three variables that separate one apartment in this building from another, and they are measurable — so measure them and publish them.
Prepare the building documents in advance. In a seventeen-unit building with no published financing policy and no plan on file with third parties, the deals that die are the ones where diligence questions go unanswered for weeks. Have the financials, the lease schedule and the board's policy answers ready before you list.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 11 West 30th Street, also evaluate:
- 284 Fifth Avenue — the cooperative on the same block, at the Fifth Avenue corner; the closest possible comparison on location and share-pool scale
- 212 Fifth Avenue — 1913 office building converted to condominium; the full-service alternative two blocks south
- 225 Fifth Avenue — 1907 commercial building converted to condominium residences; the doorman-building alternative on Madison Square Park
- 1107 Broadway — conversion of a 1915 commercial building; NoMad loft-scale living at the top of the market
- 1182 Broadway — prewar loft converted to condominium; a direct read on loft-conversion pricing in the neighborhood
- 1200 Broadway — 1869–1871 hotel converted to cooperative ownership; the other NoMad co-op with genuinely prewar bones
- 11 East 29th Street — 2008 condominium; the new-construction comparison on the east side of Fifth
- 15 East 30th Street — 2021 new-construction condominium directly across Fifth Avenue; the top of the block's price range
- 241 Fifth Avenue — 2012 condominium; a boutique full-service alternative
The neighborhood
For the full corridor — architecture, schools, transit, and pricing across Flatiron — read The Roebling Team Guide to Flatiron.
The full playbook — what goes in the package, how boards read your financials, the interview, and the timeline — plus sample cover, reference, and personal letters you can adapt.
How to read the facts on this page. Items attributed to an offering plan describe the building as it was offered at that filing — unit mix, square footage, the amenity program as planned. They are not a statement about how the building operates today. Tax and compliance figures are sourced separately to current City records and carry their own dates. House rules, staffing and fee policy can change by board resolution without any public filing: treat every policy line here as a starting point for diligence and confirm it with the managing agent.
Considering a move at Empire State Lofts?
Request a private building brief with the relevant comparable sales, current and off-market availability, and an apartment-specific view of value.
Own an apartment here? See what it would sell for.
A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at Empire State Lofts would likely sell for today, what it costs to sell, and what you’d walk away with — reviewed personally against condition, exposures, renovation quality, and the competition actually on the market.