147 South Oxford Street
147 South Oxford Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217
Fort Greene, Brooklyn
BBL 3020050029 · BIN 3057506
- Year built
- 1930
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 21
- Landmark
- No
- Flip tax
- Charged in practice - the corporation's audited financial statements record flip-fee income in multiple years ($3,250 in 2004; $13,240 in 2005). Rate not documented in any reviewed document; confirm with management
- Subletting
- Per the offering plan and by-laws as filed: a shareholder may sell shares, assign the proprietary lease and sublet subject to the Apartment Corporation's RIGHT OF FIRST REFUSAL BUT NOT A RIGHT OF APPROVAL. Conflicts with the current Goldin Management purchase application, which describes an admissions committee that reviews, interviews and approves. Flagged on the page as unresolved
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 1987 plan as filed; purchase application undated but current in the Drive library). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
Most of the small co-ops on the South Oxford blocks are converted row houses inside the historic district. This one is neither. It is a purpose-built five-story apartment house with an elevator, on the stretch of South Oxford Street south of Fulton, and it converted in 1988 out of a full rehabilitation rather than out of a landlord's decision to sell tenants the building as it stood.
The sequence is legible in the documents. Fordox Associates bought the property in March 1986, rehabilitated it, and offered it as a cooperative on August 24, 1987 through Lazam Properties on West 54th Street. The plan is captioned a Residential Rehabilitation Project, and its delivery specification is the tell: apartments handed over with fresh paint, new tile in the kitchens and baths and wood floors elsewhere, with each purchaser responsible for anything beyond that. The corporation was incorporated in April 1987 and began operating on September 30, 1988. Department of Finance's alteration field independently records work in 1988 and again in 2003.
Two structural features separate the building from its neighbors. The first is the elevator — Finance classes it D4, an elevator cooperative, in a submarket where four- and five-story walk-ups are the norm. The second is the ownership framework the plan wrote. Under the by-laws as filed, a shareholder may sell shares, assign the proprietary lease and sublet the apartment subject to the corporation's right of first refusal but not to a right of approval. That is close to condominium mechanics inside a cooperative wrapper, and if it still governs it is the single most valuable thing about the building. The caution is that the cooperative's own purchase application describes an admissions committee that interviews and approves purchasers, which is the ordinary co-op process. Forty years of amendments can close the gap between a 1987 plan and a 2026 house rule. Both documents belong in the file, and the current one controls.
The location reads differently from the rest of Fort Greene, and it should be described honestly. The block sits between Fulton Street and Atlantic Avenue rather than inside the row-house core, which puts the Atlantic Avenue–Barclays Center station complex and the Long Island Rail Road terminal two blocks away and Fort Greene Park about half a mile north. When the plan was written the parcel to the east was being built out with four-story townhouses by Rose Associates — the Atlantic Commons group that now fronts the block's interior. This is a transit-first address in a neighborhood usually sold on its parks and its brownstones.
Architecture and unit composition
Five stories over a cellar, on a rectangular 5,000-square-foot plot fronting South Oxford Street, with roughly 16,780 square feet of building above it. Twenty-one apartments, five on the first floor and four on each floor above.
The line structure is unusually easy to read because Schedule A prices it plainly. On the upper floors the A line runs 4½ rooms, the B line 3½, and the C and D lines five rooms each, all with one bath. On the first floor the four principal apartments are four-room units with one and a half baths — the only apartments in the building with a second bath — alongside a three-room, one-bath unit. Share allocations track that hierarchy from 175 shares at the small end to 340 at the large end, out of 6,000 total.
The room count carries a footnote worth repeating to any buyer. The plan states that rooms were counted using the City's permitted zoning-room designation, and its own definitions include a dining alcove or entrance foyer in the count. A five-room apartment here is a two-bedroom with a foyer and a dining alcove, not a three-bedroom. Compare floor plans, not room numbers, when you set price against the district's other small co-ops.
Because the building sits outside the historic district, windows, façade repairs and any exterior alteration proceed on the ordinary Department of Buildings track without Landmarks review. For a masonry building approaching a century old with FISP cycles ahead of it, that is a real operating difference from the row-house co-ops six blocks north.
Building operations
This is a small self-directed corporation with a light staffing model. The conversion budget carried a single payroll line of $6,000 for the first year against $100,800 of maintenance income, alongside a management fee of the same size, and the corporation's later operating statements show the same shape: a janitor line rather than a staff, an elevator maintenance line, laundry income, and professional fees. There is no doorman.
Heat and hot water are master metered and carried in maintenance; cooking gas is separately metered and billed to the shareholder. Because the building has an elevator, its fixed operating base is higher than a comparable walk-up — elevator maintenance, inspection and eventual modernization are recurring line items that a four-story walk-up co-op simply does not carry, and modernization in a 21-unit building arrives as an assessment.
Two documents deserve early attention. The first is the underlying mortgage: the corporation carried debt through the statements available in the Roebling Research Library, and in a corporation this size the loan's balance, rate and maturity drive maintenance more than any other single input. The second is the flip fee. The corporation's audited statements record flip-fee income year after year, which establishes that a transfer fee exists; the rate is not documented in the papers reviewed and should be confirmed before anyone models net proceeds.
Recent sales
Recent transfers at this building, sourced from NYC Department of Finance records. Apartment-level detail (line, condition, asking-price context) verified upon consultation request.
| Date | Unit | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 23, 2025 | 2C | $925,000 |
| Jul 7, 2022 | 5C | $975,000 |
| Nov 24, 2021 | 3B | $854,000 |
| Sep 22, 2021 | 5B | $900,000 |
| Jul 12, 2021 | 1C | $700,000 |
| Dec 13, 2017 | 2D | $790,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-02005-0029) 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.
What to know if you’re buying
Read the sale and sublet language twice. The 1987 by-laws give the corporation a right of first refusal and no right of approval. The current application describes an approving admissions committee. Ask for the governing document and the current house rules before you assume either.
The elevator is the building's advantage and its cost. It puts fifth-floor apartments in play for buyers who would not consider a walk-up, and it adds a maintenance and modernization obligation that twenty-one shareholders absorb directly.
Do not read the room count as a bedroom count. The plan uses the City's zoning-room method and counts foyers and dining alcoves. A five-room apartment is a two-bedroom with a foyer.
Ask about the underlying mortgage and the flip fee. Both exist in the record and both move numbers. Get the current loan terms and the current transfer-fee rate in writing.
Understand what the district line costs and saves you. No Landmarks review on windows and façade work. Also no historic-district address to price against. Both are real.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the elevator and the rehabilitation. Very little of Fort Greene's small-building co-op inventory offers either. An elevator building rehabilitated at conversion is a distinct product and should be marketed as one.
Make the transfer framework explicit and documented. If the right-of-first-refusal-without-approval structure still governs, it is the strongest line in the listing and it should be supported by the current by-laws, not by the 1987 plan alone.
Sell the transit position honestly. Two blocks to Atlantic Terminal, the Long Island Rail Road and the subway concentration underneath it. That is a specific buyer, and reaching them beats competing on brownstone charm the building does not have.
Price against the right set. The correct comparables are Fort Greene and Clinton Hill small co-ops of fifteen to forty units, adjusted for the elevator and for the absence of a historic-district address — not the row-house conversions inside the 1978 boundary.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 147 South Oxford Street, also evaluate:
- 60 South Oxford Street — ten-unit co-op on the same street inside the historic district; the clearest test of what the district line is worth
- 149 Lafayette Avenue — ten-unit 1930s co-op in the district; the closest peer by vintage and building type
- 147 Lafayette Avenue — the Lafayette Court group; a 1930s remodeling of 1860s houses, at similar unit count
- 159 Lafayette Avenue — twin 1897 flats buildings run as one co-op; a walk-up cross-check on price per room
- 122 Ashland Place — large Fort Greene co-op at the Cultural District edge; the scale-and-services alternative
- 191 Willoughby Street — the same decision at institutional scale, with staff and amenity overhead
- 264 Cumberland Street (The Sanctuary) — the district's boutique condominium alternative, for buyers weighing ownership form
- 372 DeKalb Avenue (Clinton Mews) — Clinton Hill co-op just east; a useful price-per-room benchmark outside Fort Greene
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.
Considering a move at Oxford Gardens, the name the 1987 offering plan uses for the cooperative throughout its budget schedules. The corporate name is 147 South Oxford Owners Corp.; confirm which name the building answers to today?
Request a private building brief with the relevant comparable sales, current and off-market availability, and an apartment-specific view of value.
Own an apartment here? See what it would sell for.
A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at Oxford Gardens, the name the 1987 offering plan uses for the cooperative throughout its budget schedules. The corporate name is 147 South Oxford Owners Corp.; confirm which name the building answers to today 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.