151 West 74th Street

Nine storeys, brick with stone trim, neo-Renaissance, on a 64-foot frontage running roughly 81 feet deep on a lot about 102 feet deep. The building fills its lot frontage and leaves a rear yard, which is why the plan carries rear-designated apartments — the ACRIS record shows units designated 2BR and 3BR alongside the A, B, C and D lines.

The line structure is four apartments per floor across most of the building, thinning at the top and reconfigured at the base. ACRIS carries transfers under 31 distinct designations, floors one through nine, including a 5CD combination. The Department of Buildings record shows a two-apartment combination in 2010 and the 5C/5D combination in 2013, plus a run of individual apartment renovations from 2012 through 2019.

Two Department of Buildings alteration filings deserve a buyer's attention. In 2014 and again in 2016 the corporation filed to change the use of a doctor's office at the basement and ground level to an apartment; the 2016 filing was signed off. Professional units at the base of a 1920s Upper West Side building are a common survival, and the house rules on file still carry a clause forbidding patients of doctors with offices in the building from waiting in the lobby — a rule written for a building that had them. The conversion of that space to residential use is part of why the unit count is unstable across sources.

Because the building sits inside the Upper West Side / Central Park West Historic District, any exterior alteration — windows, ironwork, storefront-scale changes at the base, rooftop additions visible from the street — requires LPC approval. That constrains what a shareholder can do to a façade opening and lengthens the corporation's own capital timelines.

Two passenger elevators, union staff under a Local 32BJ agreement, a superintendent's apartment carried by the corporation, and a central laundry. There is no garage, no gym and no commercial tenancy; PLUTO records zero commercial area on the lot, so the corporation's revenue is maintenance, assessments, transfer fees and a laundry line.

The capital record on file is recent and specific. The corporation capitalised a roof replacement and elevator upgrades in 2019 and façade renovation across 2019 and 2020, funding them in part by drawing the reserve fund down and then replenishing it with a capital assessment of $9.08 per share, billed over eleven months from November 2019 to September 2020. The reserve fund at the most recent year-end on file stood in the low six figures — thin in absolute terms, and worth reading alongside the corporation's stated policy, disclosed in the notes, that it does not accumulate funds in advance of need and will use reserves, borrowing, maintenance increases or special assessments as required. There is no reserve study, which is normal in New York City but should not be mistaken for a funded plan.

On the Department of Buildings' façade-compliance register the trajectory has been genuinely improving. Cycle 7 was filed unsafe in February 2012, which is what produced the 2011–2012 façade repair programme on the north, south and east elevations and the sidewalk shed and pipe scaffold that went with it; the cycle closed SAFE in December 2013. Cycle 8 filed SWARMP in 2017. Cycle 9 filed SAFE in November 2021, and Cycle 10 filed SAFE in May 2025. Two consecutive clean cycles after a decade of remediation is a meaningful signal, and it is the single best piece of news in the building's public record.

The underlying mortgage is a $3,250,000 interest-only loan at 2.90 percent maturing February 1, 2031. That rate is far below anything available today. The corporation has roughly five years before it refinances, and when it does, its interest line will rise materially at current rates against a budget in which mortgage interest already sits behind only taxes and payroll. That refinancing is the single largest identifiable future pressure on maintenance here, and it should be modelled rather than ignored.

The Department of Finance's historical J-51 file for this tax lot shows four grants, all pre-dating and straddling the conversion: benefits initiated in 1974, 1975, 1991 and 1997. The 1974 and 1975 grants exhausted in the mid-1980s. The 1991 grant, against a certified alteration cost of $63,000, ran out in fiscal 2002. The final grant, initiated in 1997 against a certified cost of $14,300, applied its last dollars in fiscal 2007.

The last J-51 benefit year on this lot is 2007. There is nothing left. The FY2027 assessment roll carries no J-51 exemption and no J-51 abatement; the only exemption lines on the lot are individual shareholder senior-citizen and veterans exemptions, which belong to particular owners and do not transfer.

What the corporation does receive is the citywide Class 2 co-op and condominium tax abatement, applied at the corporation level. The audited statements disclose the mechanism plainly: the corporation levies an annual operating assessment — $8.55 per share in one recent year on file, $8.90 the next — and refunds the abatement to shareholders at approximately the same time. In practice the assessment and the abatement offset each other. A buyer reading a maintenance figure here should ask whether the quoted number includes the operating assessment, because the two are billed separately and the abatement credit only reaches shareholders who qualify by primary residence.

Ownership form: Cooperative. The buyer acquires shares in 74 Owners Corp. and an assignment of the proprietary lease, whose stated term runs to December 31, 2089. There are 10,087 shares outstanding.

Board package and interview: As set out above — the purchase application, two references per applicant, two years of returns, pay stubs, a personal balance sheet, the contract, the lender commitment, a $50 fee, and an interview before an Admissions Committee that recommends to the board. Non-purchasing occupants may be required to attend. The package on file is a demanding but conventional one; the two-references-per-applicant requirement, one of which must be work-related, is stricter than the market default and worth solving early.

Financing and post-closing liquidity: Not stated in the documents on file. The application requires a commitment letter but no maximum is specified, and no post-closing liquidity multiple appears anywhere in the file. Both are current board practice rather than plan terms, and both must come from the managing agent. Run the Co-op Board Qualification Calculator once you have the real thresholds.

Flip tax: The greater of $25 per share or 2.5 percent of gross sale price, per the audited statements. Note that the documents on file do not state whether the buyer or the seller bears it — confirm the payor at contract, because a 2.5 percent charge is large enough to change a net.

Subletting: One-year term, one optional renewal year, one sublease per calendar year, board interview for the subtenant, half a month's maintenance as the processing fee, and a required renter's insurance policy. This is a restrictive but workable policy; it is not a building that supports an investment strategy.

Pied-à-terre, trusts and entities: No published policy. The application requires board consent for non-family occupancy beyond a month, which is the operative constraint. Purchases in trust or in an entity should be raised with the managing agent before contract, not after.

Shares held by the holder of unsold shares are exempt from the transfer fee and, under standard unsold-share terms, from board approval on resale. A purchaser buying directly from that holder is buying on materially different terms from a purchaser buying from a shareholder — including, per the Twenty-Eighth and Twenty-Ninth Amendments on file, an obligation to pay both the New York City and New York State transfer taxes that are customarily the seller's, grossed up for the city tax. Read the contract carefully.

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.

Market read. Most recent trades (2025) cleared a median $1,034/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount 1.6% 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 1-01146-0008) 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.

Ask about the unsold-share block first. Roughly nineteen percent of the corporation sat with a single holder at the most recent amendment on file, across eight tenanted apartments. Get the current figure. Some lenders test cooperative investor concentration and will price or decline on it, and your mortgage broker should confirm the building is acceptable to your lender before you sign a contract.

Model the 2031 refinancing. The corporation borrows at 2.90 percent until February 2031. At any plausible replacement rate, the interest line rises materially. Ask the board, through the managing agent, whether a plan exists.

Read the assessment history, not just the maintenance. There is a recurring operating assessment tied to the tax abatement refund, and there has been a capital assessment within recent memory. The quoted maintenance is not the whole monthly number.

The building is in a historic district. Windows and anything else visible from the street are LPC's business. If your renovation touches an exterior opening, budget the approval time.

The flip tax is real and large. Greater of $25 per share or 2.5 percent of gross price. Establish who pays it before you agree a price.

Reserves are thin and there is no reserve study. That is normal in New York and it is still worth pricing. Ask for the two most recent audited statements — the ones in our library are for 2019 and 2020 and should not be treated as current.

Lead with the façade record. Cycle 9 SAFE and Cycle 10 SAFE, after an unsafe filing in 2012 and a full remediation. That is a documented, verifiable improvement and it answers the first question a buyer's attorney will ask.

Present the capital cycle as completed work. Roof, elevators and façade are behind the building, not ahead of it. Say so, and show the statements.

Get ahead of the maintenance question. Taxes are over half the budget and there is an operating assessment on top. Explain the abatement-refund mechanism rather than letting a buyer discover a second line item mid-diligence.

Prepare the buyer for a demanding package. Two references each, two years of returns, an Admissions Committee and a board interview. Deals fail here on incomplete packages, not on price.

If you're considering 151 West 74th Street, also evaluate:

• 123 West 74th Street — 1925 cooperative on the same block; the closest like-for-like by vintage and scale
• 245 West 74th Street — 1923–1924 building converted from rental in 1990; almost identical vintage and a conversion date within two years of this one
• 136 West 75th Street — 1921 elevator cooperative one block north; the smaller prewar alternative
• 161 West 75th Street — 1928 cooperative at larger scale; the full-service step up
• 125 West 76th Street — 1922 cooperative converted in 1986; the earlier-conversion comparison
• 104 West 70th Street — a true prewar condominium in the same historic district; the deeded-ownership alternative, with entirely different policy and financing rules
• 140 West 69th Street — prewar cooperative further south; a useful check on how conversion vintage prices
• 235 West 75th Street — prewar building gut-converted to condominium in 2014–2015; the renovated-condo alternative
• 170 West 76th Street — the neighbouring-block cooperative alternative