149 Lafayette Avenue

Five stories, ten apartments, brick and casement windows in Mann's Colonial Revival manner, on the north side of Lafayette Avenue inside the Fort Greene Historic District. The Department of Finance classes the building as a walk-up cooperative; confirm circulation and any elevator condition on inspection. With two apartments per floor on a corner lot, many apartments may have more than one exposure; confirm the subject apartment's windows and exposures from its floor plan and an inspection.

Apartment layouts follow the period: defined rooms, real entry space, and the closet and bath allocations of prewar planning rather than postwar efficiency. In a ten-apartment corporation, differences in share allocation between units are meaningful — read the specific unit's share count against its maintenance rather than reasoning from a building average. Exterior work, windows included, runs through Landmarks under the district designation, and the co-op's own architect-review requirement adds a step before that.

The operating model is minimal and deliberate. The 2014 statements show real estate taxes as the largest single line at roughly $32,840, alongside water and sewer, insurance, a $7,200 annual management fee, $6,000 in building services, and modest repair categories. Revenue comes from maintenance, sublet fees, and — beginning in 2014, after the corporation installed new basement cages and lighting — storage rentals. The board raised maintenance twice that year, from $6.68132 per share monthly in 2013 to $7.24121 and then $7.89445, citing increased operating expenses, and separately declared a $6,500 special assessment.

Two facts from those statements matter to a buyer's underwriting. First, the corporation carried no mortgage at that date; evaluate current capital funding through reserves, maintenance, an assessment or borrowing. Second, the statements are prepared at review level, not audited. That is not by itself a red flag, but it changes what diligence looks like: read several consecutive years and get the board's own account of the façade, roof, boiler and window position. The reported five-story building falls below FISP’s higher-than-six-stories threshold. Façade maintenance and any required LPC approvals for window work still belong in the capital review.

Pets: Permitted with board approval; new pets are limited to 20 pounds.

Subletting: Permitted, with a monthly fee to the corporation equal to 25 percent of the maintenance for the sublet's duration, in force since January 2015. The by-laws also give the board authority to set a reasonable fee covering the corporation's expenses on any assignment or sublet.

Pied-à-terre: Not contemplated. The purchase application requires the purchaser to represent that the apartment will be a principal residence.

Flip tax / transfer fee: 1 percent of the final gross price if the apartment has been owned more than 24 months; 3 percent if less than 24 months. Shareholders of record as of April 30, 2014 were exempted from the fee — meaning an original-holder seller and a recent-purchase seller face different economics, and the exemption should be confirmed unit by unit.

Alterations: A signed Alteration Agreement, a $500 non-refundable deposit, and — for anything requiring a Department of Buildings filing — review and approval by the building's architect, with walk-throughs before, during and possibly after construction, at the shareholder's expense.

Board approval: Full package through BrickWork Management Inc. — a $475 non-refundable application fee, a $50 credit check fee, three complete hard-copy sets plus a PDF, three years of tax returns and bank statements, three personal and three professional references per applicant, and an interview at the board's discretion. Allow thirty days.

Insurance: All shareholders are required to carry homeowner's or renter's coverage with liability protection.

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. Most recent trades (2025) cleared a median $839/sf (recorded) across 1 sale. Median listing discount 0.0% from the last ask.

Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-02102-0061). 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.

This is a small, tightly run co-op, and the rules are written down. Pets capped at 20 pounds for new arrivals, sublets taxed at a quarter of maintenance, alterations gated by the building's own architect, fines for violations, and a principal-residence representation on the purchase application. Read the September 2014 house rules before you fall in love with the apartment.

Read several years of financials, and read them as review-level statements. The 2014 statements showed no mortgage payable; confirm current debt and ask how capital work would be funded — reserves, maintenance, assessment or borrowing — and ask about the façade, roof, boiler and windows directly.

Landmarks plus a building architect. Exterior work needs LPC approval and interior work that touches the Department of Buildings needs the co-op's architect first, at your cost. Budget the process, not just the construction.

Name the pedigree when you value the building. Horace B. Mann's 1930s reworking of this block, and the Sutton Place–inspired communal garden he laid out for it, are specific historical details to document in the listing.

Lead with Mann and the block's history. Buildings in this district compete on story as much as on square footage, and the 1934–38 Shaw and Mann transformation of Lafayette Avenue is a story with a paper trail.

Know which transfer fee applies to you. One percent versus three percent turns on a 24-month holding period, and shareholders of record as of April 30, 2014 were exempted outright. Establish your position before pricing.

Present the current rules and financial position. Supply the written rulebook, alteration procedures and current statements; the 2014 balance sheet’s absence of mortgage debt does not establish present financial strength.

Prepare the package early, and price per room against the district's small buildings. BrickWork requires three hard-copy sets plus a PDF, six reference letters and three years of financial records per applicant, with thirty days to process; confirm the current requirements and allow for review without treating thirty days as a guaranteed closing timetable. The correct comps are Fort Greene and Clinton Hill's row-house conversions and boutique apartment houses, not the postwar co-ops on Ashland Place.

If you're considering 149 Lafayette Avenue, also evaluate:

• 147 Lafayette Avenue — the adjoining Lafayette Court cooperative, whose rowhouses at 137–145 Mann combined and remodeled in the 1930s; the closest architectural sibling that exists
• 159 Lafayette Avenue — small co-op peer on the same corridor, comparable scale and district position
• 60 South Oxford Street — ten-unit Fort Greene Historic District co-op converted in 1988; the direct scale comparable
• 147 South Oxford Street — small Fort Greene co-op on the district's signature row-house block
• 264 Cumberland Street (The Sanctuary) — the boutique condominium alternative a few blocks north, in a converted chapel
• 372 DeKalb Avenue (Clinton Mews) — Clinton Hill's small-scale co-op alternative just east
• 175 Amity Street — Cobble Hill's seventeen-unit historic-district co-op; the same buying decision in another brownstone district
• 177 Amity Street — fifteen-unit peer next door to it, for scale calibration