1215 Fifth Avenue (Brisbane House)

Schultze & Weaver organized the building around a corner site with Fifth Avenue and cross-street frontage, which gives more apartments than usual a genuine two-exposure plan. The base is limestone through four stories, rusticated and detailed at the entrance; the shaft above is brick with limestone trim, and the top is capped by the campanile-form water tower that gives the building its silhouette from inside the park.

Apartments are lettered by line — A, B, C, D and beyond — with the A and B lines running along the Fifth Avenue front and the C and D lines behind them. Combined apartments carry doubled designations (AB, CD, EF) and are where the building's large inventory now sits: three- and four-bedroom homes of ten and eleven rooms, several with terraces at the upper floors, and a penthouse line at the top of the stack with private outdoor space. The unrenovated small units at the back of the building are the entry point and an option to compare with dated sales and actual carrying costs.

Prewar detail survives unevenly, which is normal for a building converted in 1978 and combined continuously since. Wood-burning fireplaces, deep foyers, staff rooms and original floors appear across the inventory; so do gut renovations that removed all of it. Condition, not line, is the primary driver of price here, and buyers should walk several apartments before forming a view of what the building "is."

Full-service but not lavish: a full-time doorman, a live-in resident manager, a fitness room, a central laundry, and private storage and bike storage. There is no garage and no roof club; the building's outdoor amenity is Central Park across the street. Maintenance runs across a wide band because the apartments do — from roughly $700 a month at the smallest studio lines to well past $8,000 on the largest combinations, according to listing records.

The building's façade has a long filing record of masonry and terra-cotta restoration — Department of Buildings filings record parapet reconstruction in 2003, masonry restoration in 2006 and 2009, and a full exterior restoration program with sheds and scaffold in 2015. Mechanical work is documented as well: a new liquid-propane gas service, boiler and burner in 2013 following a Con Edison-driven fuel conversion. Those filings show work was filed, not that it was completed or what condition the façade and plant are in today; that is the record a buyer's attorney should pick up from where our documentation ends. We do not currently hold audited financial statements or board minutes for this building; request the last two years of financials and the most recent Local Law 11 filing before contract.

Ownership form: Cooperative. Purchase requires a full board package and an in-person interview, and the board has broad discretion, limited by federal, state and city law and its own authority. Budget six to ten weeks from executed contract to closing.

Financing: 70 percent maximum on purchase; 30 percent minimum down. Refinancing is separately capped at 70 percent of appraised value, which matters more than buyers expect — a shareholder who bought at the ceiling has no room to pull equity later if values move sideways.

Post-closing liquidity: Not published. Boards at this financing level typically want to see meaningful liquid assets after closing, and this one screens carefully. Model it before you offer rather than after.

Pied-à-terre and secondary residence: Permitted per management-sourced records; confirm the current rules in the proprietary lease and house rules.

Structures the board declines: Parents purchasing for a child — employed or student — corporate purchases, and diplomatic purchases are all recorded as not permitted. Trust and LLC ownership is not separately addressed in the records we reviewed; assume it requires board consent and confirm with the managing agent before structuring.

Subletting: Hardship only, minimum one year, with board review at the one-year mark of a two-year sublet. The fee is 50 percent of monthly maintenance for the sublease term. This is an owner-occupant building by design; do not underwrite rental income.

Pets: Permitted with board approval. Smoking is not permitted. Short-term rentals are not permitted.

Flip tax: 2 percent of purchase price. Management-sourced records place it on the seller; some listing records describe it as buyer-paid. The distinction is worth several tens of thousands of dollars and should be settled with the managing agent, in writing, before an offer is accepted.

Real estate taxes: No abatement. The J-51 benefits taken in the early 1980s expired more than three decades ago.

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. $/sf is measured on the latest sales with reliable square footage (2023): a median $833/sf (floor-adjusted) across 1 sale. The building has traded as recently as 2026. Median listing discount 6.4% 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 1-01608-0001). 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 pied-à-terre allowance is the reason to look here. The building permits secondary-residence ownership. If that is your requirement, this building belongs on the list; confirm the current rules before contract.

Underwrite 30 percent down and real post-closing liquidity. 70 percent financing is the ceiling, not the expectation. Run the Co-op Board Qualification Calculator before you write an offer, and be prepared to show reserves well past the down payment.

Settle the flip tax in writing. Sources disagree on whether the 2 percent is charged to buyer or seller. Get the managing agent's answer before the contract is signed.

Verify the apartment, not the building. With combinations running through the stack since 1978, floor plans in this building do not repeat reliably. Confirm the actual room count, the actual square footage, and whether the fireplaces are working, against the building's own records.

Price the walk. The 6 at 103rd and Lexington is the nearest train and it is a real crosstown walk. The M1/M2/M3/M4 run down Fifth. Test the commute at the hour you will actually make it.

Ask for the capital picture. We do not hold financials for this building. Request two years of audited statements, the current Local Law 11 status, and any assessment history before contract — records show repeated façade filings and a 2013 boiler replacement filing; confirm completion and current condition.

Lead with the name and the architect, and market the pied-à-terre policy explicitly. Schultze & Weaver and Arthur Brisbane are real provenance that most listing copy in this corridor lacks, and the secondary-residence allowance is a documented building policy worth stating plainly. Buyers do not know either unless you tell them.

Large apartments need patient, realistic pricing. Listing records show the building's biggest homes taking long marketing periods and trading below ask. Price the combination against what large combinations here actually clear at, not against an aggregate per-foot number.

Be ready with the financing math. A 70 percent ceiling narrows the buyer pool. Qualify offers early and run the Co-op Affordability Calculator against the actual maintenance on your line.

If you're considering 1215 Fifth Avenue, also evaluate:

• 1200 Fifth Avenue — the converted former Mount Sinai building to the south on a different tax block; the nearest condominium alternative on the avenue
• 1212 Fifth Avenue — George and Edward Blum, 1925, converted to condominium in 2011; the closest prewar peer by vintage and outlook, with condominium rules instead of co-op rules
• 1170 Fifth Avenue — park-facing prewar co-op farther south; similar economics, tighter policy
• 1165 Fifth Avenue — prewar Fifth Avenue co-op at the Carnegie Hill edge
• 1158 Fifth Avenue — smaller prewar co-op on the same stretch of the avenue
• 1150 Fifth Avenue — prewar park-front co-op; an alternative farther south to compare using dated, adjusted sales
• 1235 Park Avenue — the Park Avenue alternative farther south, without the park frontage
• 1220 Park Avenue — upper Park Avenue prewar co-op; comparable room counts, different corridor
• 1185 Park Avenue — the large courtyard co-op to the south; the family-scale prewar alternative