110-11 Queens Boulevard (Kennedy House)

Apartments run from large studios through three-bedroom, two-bath layouts, and most have terraces — the banded balcony courses that give the building its horizontal reading are, unit by unit, private outdoor space. Birnbaum's plans favor room dimension over circulation, which is why the layouts feel larger than their room counts and why the studios and one-bedrooms compete well against newer, tighter product on Austin Street. Central air with individual room controls was part of the original specification. The lobby is the set piece — two stories, domed, entered under a colonnade marquee past a driveway.

Kennedy House is a full-service, union-staffed operation; payroll and union benefits are the largest budget line, which is why maintenance here has limited downside flexibility. The corporation also runs an unusually diversified revenue base for a Queens co-op — audited statements on file show income from the attended garage (roughly half a million dollars a year), plus commercial rent, laundry, storage lockers and pool fees, which is why maintenance increases have been intermittent rather than annual. The city's cooperative and condominium tax abatement is passed through to shareholders as a credit a listing sheet may not reflect; reconcile maintenance, any assessments and that credit for the specific apartment.

Capital posture is the thing to underwrite. Per audited statements on file, the corporation refinanced its underlying mortgage in December 2019 into a $16,500,000 facility at 2.999 percent, monthly principal and interest of $69,555, maturing January 1, 2030, replacing a $12,500,000 loan at 5.17 percent. Excellent rate, hard date: the amortization schedule leaves the great majority of principal outstanding at maturity, and refinancing it, on terms not yet known, is the largest known future call on this budget. The same statements disclose that no reserve study had been conducted and that the governing documents do not require reserve accumulation; cash and investments stood in the low seven figures at the most recent year-end on file. These are the positions in the statements on file, not a current position: ask for the current statements and whether a reserve study has since been done. The statements on file point to capital work funded through borrowing, assessment or deferral rather than from reserves; confirm the board's current approach with the managing agent.

Financing. No more than 75 percent may be financed. This is the most consequential board term here, and it prices out part of the first-time buyer pool the studio and one-bedroom inventory would otherwise serve.

Board package. One unbound original plus six copies in three-ring binders with a numbered table of contents, two years of federal returns, three personal and three business references per applicant, and a ten-year work and school history. Heavier than the Forest Hills norm; build the timeline into the contract.

House rules of note. Terraces may not be enclosed or used for storage. At least 80 percent of floor area in each room must be carpeted or equivalently sound-treated; failure is a material default under the proprietary lease.

Subletting, pied-à-terre and post-closing liquidity requirements are not documented in materials on file. Do not assume the Forest Hills default.

Recent sales

Recent transfers at this building, from The Roebling Research Library. 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.

Market read. Most recent trades (2026 to date) cleared a median $581/sf (floor-adjusted) across 15 sales. Floor-adjusted means each sale is restated to a constant mix of floors, so the figure can differ from the plain median of the sales listed above. Median listing discount 1.1% from the last ask — a recurring negotiation gap worth pricing into any offer or listing strategy.

Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 4-02237-0001). Apartment-level facts (line, condition, asking-price context) curated and cross-verified in The Roebling Research Library. 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.

The 25 percent down requirement is firm and it is the first qualifying question.

Ask for the current audited statements and the refinance plan. The underlying mortgage, at 2.999 percent, matures January 1, 2030; the replacement rate is not yet known, so model more than one.

Normalize the maintenance for included utilities and the abatement pass-through before comparing to anything else in the neighborhood.

Confirm the sublet policy in writing. It is undocumented, and it determines whether the apartment has an exit other than resale.

Sellers: price against the line, not the building, and expect a longer board process than the neighborhood norm.

• Lane Towers (107-40 Queens Boulevard) — 1965 doorman building at the 71st Avenue subway; the closest peer on the corridor
• 70-25 Yellowstone Boulevard — large postwar cooperative inventory
• 61-20 Grand Central Parkway — large cooperative; parkway-facing
• The Forest Hills Inn (1 Station Square) — the 1912 prewar alternative inside the Gardens
• Shore Towers (25-40 Shore Boulevard) — Astoria waterfront condominium with a comparable resort amenity package, with no co-op board admission