130 East 12th Street (First Village)

The building occupies a 4,770-square-foot interior lot, 45 feet on East 12th Street by roughly 106.5 feet deep, and carries about 25,071 gross square feet — roughly 21,414 residential and 3,657 commercial at the base. Built floor-area ratio is 5.26 against a residential FAR of 6.02 in the C6-2A district, which is unusual: this building is under what current zoning would allow, meaning the site has unused development rights. Those rights sit with the condominium as a whole rather than with any unit owner, and they are a latent asset a buyer should at least be aware of.

Eleven residential unit lots across seven floors means roughly two homes per floor, on a 45-foot-wide plate with a deep footprint. The type is a full-width or half-floor loft with windows on the street and rear elevations and blind side walls, which is what a 45-foot interior lot produces. Ceiling heights and column conditions are original to the 1905 commercial structure and vary by floor; a residence on a lower floor in a building of this vintage will not present the same volume as one above.

The exterior is brick and terra cotta with the massing and window rhythm of a commercial loft rather than a residence. Because the building carries no landmark designation, replacement windows, storefront alterations and façade repairs at this address have gone through the Department of Buildings without Landmarks review — which is why the base and the openings may not read as consistently as they would on a designated block nearby.

This is a small self-contained condominium with an elevator, a bike room and a common roof deck, and no staffing model documented in the material reviewed. Buildings at this scale typically run with a part-time superintendent and a managing agent rather than resident staff, and a buyer should confirm the actual arrangement rather than assume one.

The capital record visible in city filings is modest and steady: exterior masonry repairs filed in 2009; a sidewalk shed and pipe scaffold erected in 2010 for remedial repair work; a further façade repair filing in 2017; and a manual and automatic sprinkler and fire alarm installation covering the cellar and first floor in 2016, tied to the commercial space. That is a normal maintenance cadence for a 1905 masonry building under the periodic façade inspection cycle, and it suggests the building has been keeping up rather than deferring.

No financial statements, budget, house rules or offering plan for this building were located in The Roebling Research Library at the time of writing. That is a real gap and it is stated here rather than papered over. Reserve position, assessment history, common charge trend, staffing and the underlying policy stack are all unverified for this address, and every one of them should be requested from the managing agent before contract.

City data reports an exemption of roughly $799,650 in exempt assessed value on this tax lot in the fiscal 2027 roll. None of it belongs to the residential units.

The entire exemption sits on unit lot 1001 — the ground-floor and cellar commercial unit — which has been owned since November 2021 by a religious not-for-profit organization and carries a not-for-profit property tax exemption in consequence. The Department of Finance exemption record shows the benefit first applied for the 2023 fiscal year and continuing through 2027, and the amount matches the lot-level figure PLUTO reports exactly. The residential unit lots (1002 through 1012) carry no exemption of any kind in the exemption records for fiscal years 2021 through 2027.

The conversion-era benefit is separately documented and separately expired. All eleven residential unit lots carried a J-51 exemption and abatement initiated in 1987 at 90 percent, running across tax years 1987 through 1998. It burned off at the end of that run and has not been replaced. There is no 421-a, no 485-x and no current J-51 anywhere on the residential side of this building.

The practical consequence: underwrite full unabated taxes on the specific unit. Any analysis — including automated valuation output — that reads the lot-level exemption as a benefit flowing to the apartments will understate the monthly carrying cost materially. The commercial unit's tax position also has a second-order effect worth noting: a not-for-profit owner at the base means a stable, long-horizon commercial neighbor rather than a rotating retail tenancy, which cuts in the building's favor on quiet and in its disfavor on any hope of rising commercial common-charge contribution.

The documented structure is short, and this section deliberately does not extend past what the record supports.

Ownership form: Condominium. Transfers proceed by board right of first refusal rather than cooperative approval, which produces faster and more predictable closing timelines than a co-op of comparable size.

Commercial unit: The ground-floor and cellar commercial space is a separate condominium unit within the same declaration, under separate ownership from the residences. It votes its common interest. Its current owner is a not-for-profit organization.

Amended declaration: The condominium recorded an amendment to its declaration in 2018, affecting all twelve unit lots. The substance of that amendment should be reviewed in diligence.

Pets, financing minimums, sublet terms, flip tax and house rules: Not documented in the records reviewed. Request the house rules, the current budget, the most recent financial statements and the amended declaration from the managing agent before contract. Do not assume the standard condominium defaults apply to any of them.

Recent sales

Recent closings 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.

Market read. Most recent trades (2025) cleared a median $1,277/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount 3.1% 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 1-00556-7501) 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 from recorded condo declarations and offering plans.

The lot-level tax exemption is not yours. It belongs entirely to the ground-floor commercial unit and its not-for-profit owner. The apartments carry no abatement. Underwrite the full bill on the specific unit.

The J-51 is long gone. It ran 1987 to 1998. Anyone describing this as an abated conversion is working from a thirty-year-old fact.

Ask about the roof antennas. City filings record rooftop telecommunications equipment installed between 2008 and 2010. Find out whether a license is still in place, what it pays the condominium, when it expires, and how it affects roof deck use and future roof work.

Confirm whether 1002 and 1003 are combined. The deed record suggests they are. It changes the effective unit count and it changes how you read the building's common-interest math.

Request the documents that are not in circulation. No offering plan, budget, financials or house rules for this building were found in the library. Reserve position, assessment history, pet policy, sublet terms and any flip tax are all open questions to put to the managing agent in writing.

There is no landmark constraint, despite the neighbors. Five historic districts converge within a few blocks and none of them covers this lot. Window replacement and exterior work run through the Department of Buildings alone — cheaper and faster than a designated address, with correspondingly less protection over what gets built or altered around you.

Correct the tax story before a buyer misreads it. City data shows a large exemption on this lot. It belongs to the commercial unit. Explain it up front, in writing, with the residential unit's actual bill attached — otherwise a sophisticated buyer will find the discrepancy mid-diligence and reprice.

Lead with the plate and the vintage. A 1905 Renwick, Aspinwall & Tucker loft with roughly two homes per floor, on the Village seam, is the argument. A building of eleven residences will not win on services.

Assemble the document package early. These materials are not widely in circulation. A seller who arrives with the current budget, the most recent financial statements, the amended declaration and the house rules in hand removes the single biggest source of friction in this building's transactions.

Same-building comparables are thin by construction. With eleven residential lots and a slow trade cadence, pricing has to be built from the surrounding loft-conversion set and adjusted for floor, exposure and condition.

If you're considering First Village, also evaluate:

• 125 East 12th Street — directly across the street; the closest possible comparison on location
• 21 East 12th Street — same street, west of Broadway; the Greenwich Village side of the same corridor
• 18 East 12th Street — converted loft building a few blocks west; comparable vintage and scale
• 10 East 12th Street — Greenwich Village building on the same street; useful for isolating what the Broadway crossing is worth
• 31 East 12th Street — same block index, different tenure and services
• 114 East 13th Street — small East Village building one block north; comparable unit count and staffing
• 28 East 10th Street — Devonshire House; the larger full-service alternative two blocks south
• 21 Astor Place — converted loft condominium at Astor Place; the closest peer by type in the immediate area
• 303 Mercer Street — Greenwich Village condominium west of Broadway; different scale, overlapping buyer pool
• 25 Bond Street — NoHo loft condominium; the higher-end version of the same loft-conversion argument
• 15 Union Square West — Union Square loft conversion; the amenity-carrying alternative a few blocks north
• 240 Park Avenue South — full-service condominium just north; a different product for the same search