124 East 79th Street (The Belgravia)

Twenty-one stories on a 66-by-102-foot interior lot produces a narrow, tall floor plate, and the plan responds by putting most residences on a corner. The unit lettering runs A through E on the low floors and narrows to A and B in the upper stack, which is the signature of a building that gets smaller as it steps back: the second through ninth floors carry four to five residences apiece, the tenth through twelfth carry four, the fourteenth through twentieth carry two, and the top is a pair of penthouses with roof terraces reached from inside the residence. Those terraces are Limited Common Elements of the units they serve, not shared roof deck.

Combination activity is heavy for a building of this size and should shape any comparable analysis. Department of Buildings filings record fourth-floor and second-floor A/B combinations, a twelfth-floor C/D combination, a fifteenth-floor A/B/F combination, a tenth-floor B/D combination, and a fourteenth-floor A/B combination — six combination filings between 2005 and 2026; confirm which were completed. A building that started with 66 residences likely trades today with fewer, and with a wider spread of unit sizes than the original Schedule A contemplated. Line-by-line analysis matters more here than a building average.

Electricity is sub-metered and re-billed by the association rather than bundled, which matters when comparing monthly carrying cost against prewar co-ops on the same block that fold utilities into maintenance.

The Belgravia runs as a full-service condominium with an attended lobby and concierge, a residents' lounge with kitchenette, an exercise facility, a package room, central laundry, and the ground-floor garden. Staff are covered by the SEIU Local 32BJ collective bargaining agreement, and payroll and benefits together are the dominant line in the operating budget — the ordinary shape of a 66-unit full-service house.

The capital record in the audited financial statements on file is worth reading closely. The building has been through a long façade and roof cycle: Department of Buildings filings show façade repair work in 2011, 2013, 2018 and 2022, roof replacement in 2022, and sidewalk sheds in each of those cycles. More consequentially, the association undertook an elevator modernization financed with a bank construction facility of up to $1.1 million drawn from September 2021, converting on completion into a nine-year term loan, alongside a special assessment levied in 2021. Common charges rose eight percent for 2021 and a further six percent for 2022.

Two things follow. The building has been willing to fund its capital work rather than defer it, which is the right posture. But it has funded a meaningful share of that work with borrowed money and assessments rather than from reserves, and the auditor's report on file notes that the association had not commissioned a formal reserve study and had omitted the supplementary disclosure on future major repairs that the accounting standards call for. The most recent audited statements located in The Roebling Research Library cover the year ended December 31, 2021; a buyer should ask for the current year's audit, the current budget, and the outstanding balance and amortization schedule on the elevator loan before contract.

Ownership form: Condominium. Resales close on the board's right of first refusal rather than a cooperative approval.

Pets: Permitted under the house rules on file, carried or leashed in public areas, subject to the board's reserved right to limit numbers or to remove a nuisance animal.

Subletting: Permitted, with a sublet fee charged by the association. Transient, hotel and motel use is expressly prohibited, which forecloses short-term rental.

Pied-à-terre, LLC, trust and foreign ownership: Pied-à-terre: Permitted. LLC, trust and foreign ownership: Not documented; confirm in the declaration, bylaws and house rules.

Home office: Permitted to the extent the certificate of occupancy and zoning allow, with no clients waiting in common areas and no illuminated signs.

Alterations: Construction noise is limited to weekdays between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. Exterior installations, including air-conditioning devices, window treatments visible from 79th Street, and anything projecting from a window, require prior written board approval.

Terraces: No charcoal or propane grills, under an April 2014 amendment carrying a $1,000 fine. Terrace and balcony plantings must sit in raised, lined, drained containers.

Flip tax: Two percent of the gross sale price on resale, per the audited financial statements on file. Confirm the current rate and the payer with the managing agent before pricing a sale.

Real estate taxes: Full unabated assessment. No 421-a, 485-x or J-51 benefit appears on the billing lot or any residential unit lot in current Department of Finance records.

Recent sales

Recent closings 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 (2025) cleared a median $1,140/sf (floor-adjusted) across 3 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 3.7% 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 1-01413-7501; each condominium apartment is its own tax lot). 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 from recorded condo declarations and offering plans.

Do not confuse this with 120 East 79th Street. The building immediately to the west is a separate 1947 cooperative on its own tax lot, with roughly 78 apartments and an entirely different ownership form, policy stack and price basis. Same block, same street, different building. Automated valuation tools conflate them.

Underwrite the current tax bill and the two percent flip tax together. The roll shows no exemption, so check the apartment's tax bill, and there is a transfer fee on the way out that most condominium buyers do not model. Run both through the True Monthly Carrying Cost analysis before you set a number.

Ask for the elevator loan. The association borrowed against a nine-year term facility to fund the modernization and assessed owners in 2021. Get the outstanding balance, the annual debt service inside the common charge, and the maturity date. That is the single most useful document in the building's file.

Ask what happened after 2021. The most recent audited statements located in our library close at December 31, 2021. Five years of façade cycle, energy compliance and cost inflation have run since. The current audit and budget are the documents that matter.

Verify the unit's combination history. Six documented combinations mean floor plans in circulation may not match the recorded unit lot or the certificate of occupancy. Confirm what the deed conveys against what you are walking through.

Buy the exposure, not the floor. Because of the setbacks, the low floors here are unusually good — the garden runs the whole south edge of the property — and the mid-floors on the north face East 79th Street. Walk the specific line at the specific hour.

Lead with the specific building features. Condominium ownership, private outdoor space and a garden common element are features to compare with nearby properties. Confirm the current purchase process and pied-à-terre or entity rules from governing documents; do not present this combination as impossible for a neighbor to offer.

Disclose the transfer fee early. A two percent flip tax on a condominium is unexpected. Buyers who find it in diligence renegotiate; buyers who are told at the outset price around it.

Document the capital work. The façade cycle, the roof and the elevator modernization appear in the records as done or funded; confirm completion with sign-offs and recent engineering reports. Packaged with the financials, that reads as stewardship. Left unexplained, the assessment and the loan read as risk.

Price against the vintage, not against the corridor. Comparables should come from 1980s and postwar Upper East Side condominium stock — not from the new ground-up product to the north and not from the prewar co-ops next door, whose buyer pools barely overlap with this one.

If you're considering The Belgravia, also evaluate:

• 45 East 80th Street (The 80th at Madison) — 1987 ground-up condominium by Liebman Liebman Associates; the closest peer by vintage and ownership form
• 188 East 78th Street (The Empire) — 72-residence 2001 condominium; the next generation of the same idea, at greater scale
• 201 East 80th Street (The Richmond) — large prewar warehouse converted to condominium; the value-tier condominium alternative in the same corridor
• 135 East 79th Street — 2013 Studio Sofield new construction; the modern condominium step-up two blocks west
• 109 East 79th Street — 2020–2021 new construction; the current top of the East 79th Street condominium market
• 150 East 78th Street — 25-residence new-classical condominium one block south; the traditional-detail alternative
• 180 East 79th Street — 1929–1930 prewar cooperative on the same block; the co-op alternative at scale
• 136 East 79th Street — 1929 cooperative, converted 1949; the boutique prewar co-op on the block
• 156 East 79th Street — Schwartz & Gross, 1917; the prewar co-op with the longest tenure on the block