138 Remsen Street
138 Remsen Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002540079 · BIN 3002238
- Year built
- 1856
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 10
- Floors
- 3
- Landmark
- Designated
- Flip tax
- $20.00 per share payable to the cooperative at closing
- Subletting
- Board authorization required. Written board policy effective July 1, 1997: a shareholder may sublet up to 18 months in any continuous five-year period, with one year required to elapse before a new five-year cycle begins. Sublet charges are billed by the corporation and must be current before a sale application is reviewed
- Pets
- All pets require board approval (purchase application); house rules require express written permission of the corporation, revocable at will, with dogs carried or leashed in public portions
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 2009 (fee schedule and application); 1997 (sublet policy)). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
Every recorded sale at this building, 2004–2025
Bedroom-by-bedroom medians, the full transfer record, and how units trade against ask.
- Recent range
- $3.2M – $3.2M
- Listing discount
- 2.7%
- Recorded transfers
- 11
Own an apartment here? See what it would sell for.
A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at 138 Remsen Street 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.
138 Remsen Street is an 1856 brownstone that has spent four decades as half of a two-address cooperative, and the pairing is the first thing a buyer needs to understand. 13438 Homes Corp. owns 134–136 and 138 Remsen on two separate tax lots, and the sponsor's 1982 engineer described them as one Class "A" multiple dwelling in two sections, with a single boiler in the western cellar serving both. Buy here and your roof, heating plant and reserve exposure extend next door.
The house itself is better preserved than its neighbors, and the Landmarks Preservation Commission's own file says so. The district record for this row reads like a catalogue of nineteenth-century houses reworked in the twentieth — stoop removed and a fourth story added at 134, stoop gone at 132 and 140, original details and stoop removed at 128. Against that, No. 138 carries no alteration note at all. On a block where most façades come with a caveat, that is a marketable distinction.
The 1982 inspection report describes what survives: a front elevation primarily of brownstone with decorative ornamental stone bordering the first- through third-floor windows, red brick from the base of the penthouse floor to the parapet, wood-frame windows in two-over-two, one-over-one and six-over-one, a small railed front garden, and a ceramic-tiled vestibule with the mailboxes set into the party wall. The 1946 alteration that produced today's layout — new plumbing, added bathrooms, kitchen recesses and foyers, a sprinkler system, dormers removed and the front roof raised — is why a single-family house from the Pierce administration now holds ten apartments.
The conversion is a period document of a kind that has since disappeared. The Bassuk brothers, owners since 1958 and managers through their own firm, filed an eviction plan in April 1982 — the harder-edged form, with statutory carve-outs for senior and disabled tenants, that New York effectively retired later that decade. Eighteen of the nineteen apartments were occupied and every occupied unit was rent-stabilized. The plan's own risk factors warned that the $300,000 mortgage carried a balloon eight years out, roughly $59.88 per share, with no assurance of refinancing. That risk resolved: by 2003 the corporation had refinanced onto a fifteen-year self-liquidating mortgage, and it has run since as a small, plainly managed co-op with a modest debt load.
Architecture and unit composition
Two sections, twenty apartments, one corporation. The 1982 engineer counted ten apartments and twenty-four residential rooms at No. 138 by Department of Buildings method, against ten apartments and eighteen rooms next door at 134–136 — meaning the 138 side holds the larger apartments of the two, a fact worth naming in any listing. In each section the basement holds two apartments and the first through fourth floors hold two each.
Construction is Class III non-fireproof: brick and stone foundation, two-by-eight wood floor beams roughly sixteen inches on center, brick exterior walls with the decorative brownstone confined to the front, fire-resistant enclosure of the stairs and halls but a non-fire-resistant staircase, sprinklers throughout. There is no elevator and no service entrance; the house rules are a standard prewar form that still carries incinerator and service-elevator provisions the building has never had. Read them for what they bind, not for what they describe.
The rear yard holds a parking space the corporation rents, generating income that appears on its own line in the audited statements — a small but real offset in a ten-unit building, and a detail that never reaches a listing description. Exterior work runs through Landmarks under the district designation.
Building operations
13438 Homes Corp. was incorporated on January 22, 1982 and has run both buildings since closing, with Adventure Properties, Inc. as managing agent. The model is small-building standard: outside management, a superintendent, basement laundry, one gas plant serving both sections.
The financial record in The Roebling Research Library runs from the late 1990s forward. Its shape is consistent: real estate taxes are the largest single expense by a wide margin, fuel, water and sewer next, management fees modest, with parking and occasional fuel refunds offsetting at the margin. Two structural facts deserve attention. The corporation refinanced its underlying mortgage in August 2003 onto a fifteen-year self-liquidating term, so the debt has amortized substantially since — a favorable position at this size. And the accountants have repeatedly noted that no reserve study has been performed; there is no estimate on file of remaining useful lives or replacement costs. For an 1856 masonry envelope with a 1946 roof alteration, that is the first gap to probe: ask for the FISP/Local Law 11 cycle, the roof and boiler history, and the assessment record. Note also that in at least one year the board voted to "assess back" the New York City co-op tax abatement rather than pass it through — a common way to fund capital work that changes net maintenance. Confirm current practice.
Policy framework
Subletting: Board-authorized, up to 18 months in any continuous five-year period under the policy effective July 1, 1997, with a one-year gap before a new cycle. Sublet charges are billed by the corporation and must be current before the board reviews any sale.
Resale: Full package — application, contract, credit release, financial statement, two personal and two business references, tax returns, employment letters, three months of bank statements, and a bank recognition agreement if financed. A personal interview may be required. Processing fee of $350 to the managing agent plus $50 per additional applicant, a $200 document fee at closing, and $500 refundable move-in/move-out deposits from both buyer and seller.
Flip tax: $20.00 per share to the cooperative at closing — on a 5,400-share corporation covering nineteen apartments, an easily modeled number. Run it on the specific unit before you sign.
Pets and occupancy: All pets require board approval. Written consent is also required to pledge shares, alter the unit, sublet, use the apartment non-residentially, or house non-family members for more than a month. Alterations without approval draw fines of up to $1,000.
Financing minimums and pied-à-terre: Not documented in the papers on file — confirm against current board policy.
Local Law 97
This building is below the 25,000 sq ft threshold at which LL97 emissions caps apply. No regulatory capital pressure from this law specifically, current or 2030.
See full Local Law 97 analysis →Recent sales
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 16, 2025 | 2B | 3 BR · 2 BA | $3,151,000 | +10.6% | |
| Apr 27, 2022 | 5A | 1 BR · 1 BA | $700,000 | +1.6% | |
| Jan 15, 2013 | 3B | 2 BR · 1 BA · 875 sf | $695,000 | $794/sf | -5.4% |
| Jan 25, 2012 | 5A | 1 BR | $350,000 | -11.4% | |
| Jul 8, 2008 | 2B | 1 BR | $700,000 | +0.0% | |
| Feb 6, 2007 | 1 | 2 BR | $815,000 | -8.9% |
Market read. $/sf is measured on the latest sales with reliable square footage (2013): a median $794/sf across 1 sale. The building has traded as recently as 2025. Median listing discount 2.7% 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 3-00254-0079) 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
You are buying into a two-building corporation. One heating plant, two lots. Review both sections' condition, not just yours.
Model the flip tax. Twenty dollars per share at closing, on the specific apartment's allocation.
Ask about the reserve study — because there isn't one. The accountants say so. Request the assessment history, FISP status, and roof and boiler ages instead.
Understand the sublet ceiling. Eighteen months in five years. Adequate for a relocation; useless as an investment thesis.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the LPC record. Most of this row carries an alteration note. No. 138 does not — a credential no neighbor can copy.
Name the room count. Twenty-four residential rooms in ten apartments at 138, against eighteen in ten next door. That is the building's strongest quantitative claim.
Disclose the paired corporation early. It surfaces in attorney review regardless; up front it reads as transparency.
Price against converted row houses, not elevator co-ops. The right set is brownstone-scale walk-ups with small share bases, not the staffed buildings on Montague and Clinton.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 138 Remsen Street, also evaluate:
- 134 Remsen Street — the other half of the same cooperative corporation; the closest comparable that exists
- 132 Remsen Street — the condominium alternative two doors west, in a house of the same row
- 100 Remsen Street — the block's postwar apartment-house co-op, for service against scale
- 76 Remsen Street — Slee & Bryson's 1922 elevator co-op, converted in 1963
- 68 Remsen Street — mid-size prewar Remsen Street co-op
- 60 Remsen Street — the corridor's larger prewar elevator building
- 114 Clinton Street — Slee & Bryson's 1923 apartment house on the same tax block
- 245 Henry Street — the 1955 apartment-house co-op on the block's Henry Street frontage
- 151 Joralemon Street — 1913 apartment house on the same block, one street south
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. Where this page compares one building or neighborhood to another, that is our analysis of the recorded record — it names the measure, the period and the sample it rests on, and it is an observation about medians rather than a prediction about any particular apartment.
Considering a move at 138 Remsen Street?
Request a private building brief with the relevant comparable sales, current and off-market availability, and an apartment-specific view of value.