16 East 11th Street

Six stories, sixteen apartments, 18,616 square feet of residential area and nothing else — no retail, no professional space, no commercial income. That last fact is worth stating because it sets the arithmetic of the building: without commercial income the operating budget rests mainly on maintenance, and sixteen apartments is a small denominator for a landmarked masonry building.

The apartments are lettered by floor, and the recorded transfers show A, B and C lines on the third floor with fewer lines above — a plan consistent with two former town houses run together, where the party wall determines where apartments can be cut. Apartments 4B and 4C have traded twice as one residence, and a 2003 alteration application combined two units in compliance with the Department of Buildings' technical policy on apartment combinations, but those records do not establish a current count below sixteen. Reconcile the dated filings, certificate of occupancy and current share schedule.

The exterior work of the last two decades is legible in the filings. In 2009 the cooperative replaced the exterior wooden porch and stair at the basement entrance with a metal-and-glass porch on new concrete foundations, keeping the stair in its original position — landmark-district work at the building's most distinctive feature. A sidewalk shed went up in 2013 for remedial repairs, and again in 2018 alongside a pipe scaffold during a building alteration. In 2024 the cooperative filed for grinding and pointing as needed, with a sidewalk shed and pipe scaffolding. The boiler was replaced gas-to-gas in the cellar in 2010.

This is a small self-contained house, and buyers should underwrite it as one. Department of Finance classes it D4, its class for an elevator apartment building held cooperatively. Staffing, doorman coverage and porter hours are not documented in any record available for this page, and a sixteen-apartment Village co-op of this type is typically run with a superintendent rather than a service staff. Ask the managing agent directly rather than inferring from the building class.

The house rules on file are the standard cooperative form, and the ones that actually shape daily life are worth reading before contract: renovation and repair work involving noise is confined to weekdays between 8:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.; there is an eleven-to-eight quiet period for instruments and speakers; floors must be covered with carpet or equivalent noise-reducing material across at least 80 percent of each room outside kitchens, baths, closets and foyer; window air-conditioning units and anything projecting from a window require prior approval; and animals require express written permission that the corporation may revoke.

The capital picture is the ordinary one for a landmarked 1839–1904–1937 masonry building: recurring facade cycles, a 2010 boiler, and a small owner base to fund both. Read the current budget, the reserve position and the current façade condition and repair program before contract. The documented six-story building is below FISP’s higher-than-six-story threshold. Ask specifically what the 2024 pointing work cost and whether it was assessed.

Ownership form: Cooperative. Purchase is by share transfer with a full board package and a board interview, and the board has broad discretion, limited by federal, state and city law and its own authority. Budget six to ten weeks from executed contract to closing in a building of this size, and expect the package itself — two years of returns, a REBNY-style financial statement, personal and professional references, and a lease rider — to be the gating item rather than the interview.

Subletting: governed by the subletting article of the proprietary lease on file. Consent comes from a board resolution or the written consent of a majority of directors; if the board refuses, shareholders holding at least 65 percent of the issued shares may consent instead. The lease directs the board not to withhold consent unreasonably for sublets of two years or less, on a proper written application, with the proposed subtenant appearing personally. Obtain the current seasoning requirement, sublet fee and cumulative cap, if any, in writing. Have counsel reconcile those policies and their adoption authority with the proprietary lease, bylaws and valid amendments, including the lease’s two-year reasonable-consent provision.

Pets: permitted only by express written permission, revocable. Treat this as a real restriction and get the permission in writing before contract if a pet is coming with you.

Financing, liquidity and structure: not documented. The financing ceiling, minimum down payment, post-closing liquidity requirement, flip tax and its basis, pied-à-terre posture, and whether the board will approve a trust or an LLC as purchaser were not established in the materials reviewed; the operative governing documents and authorized current policies should be reconciled. Get all six in writing from the managing agent before you sign a contract. A flip tax computed on gross price rather than on profit changes seller math materially.

Landmark constraint: exterior alterations to windows, ironwork, the entrance surround and rooftop equipment generally require LPC approval, with specified routine maintenance exemptions; confirm the permit route for the scope. Price the review, not just the construction.

Real estate taxes: the roll shows no exemption beyond one veterans exemption, and no J-51 is on record. Check the corporation's current tax bill before underwriting, and note that the single veterans exemption on the roll belongs to a shareholder and disappears when that shareholder sells.

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. $/sf is measured on the latest sales with reliable square footage (2017): a median $1,932/sf (recorded) across 1 sale. The building has traded as recently as 2024. Median listing discount 0.5% 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 1-00568-0011). 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.

The underlying-debt question is the first one to ask. Nothing has been recorded against the corporation's fee since 1997, and a satisfaction was recorded in 2010. If the corporation is genuinely unencumbered, that is a real and rare advantage: no refinancing risk, no maturity to underwrite, and a maintenance line that is not carrying a mortgage payment. It is also exactly the kind of fact a buyer should verify from the audited financials rather than from the absence of a filing.

Sixteen apartments means sixteen shares of every capital dollar. The building is landmarked, masonry, and 187 years old at its core. Facade cycles here are expensive per apartment. Ask what the 2013, 2018 and 2024 scaffold campaigns cost and how they were funded.

Confirm the whole policy stack in writing. Financing ceiling, minimum down, post-closing liquidity, flip tax, pied-à-terre, trusts and LLCs. Those terms were not established in the materials reviewed. Run the Co-op Board Qualification Calculator once you have the real numbers, not before.

Read the floor count correctly. PLUTO says five stories; the building has been six since 1937. If a valuation, a title report or an appraisal is working from the PLUTO figure, correct it.

Lead with the history, because it is verifiable. An 1839 Greek Revival row house combined in 1904, inside the Greenwich Village Historic District, with a documented Gallatin connection in the primary record. That is not marketing language; it is in the designation report, and it survives a buyer's attorney reading it.

Prepare the buyer for the board. The review did not establish this cooperative’s current policy terms; obtain them early to evaluate financing assumptions. Establish the ceiling and the liquidity requirement before you accept an offer, and price the flip tax into your net.

Condition drives the spread. These are row-house rooms with row-house proportions; the difference between a renovated line and an original one is wide in a building this small. Run the Renovation Cost Calculator against your asking strategy.

If you're considering 16 East 11th Street, also evaluate:

• 55 East 11th Street — full-floor loft cooperative on the same street two blocks east; the loft alternative at a similar unit count
• 31 East 12th Street — small prewar Village cooperative one block north
• 39 East 12th Street — comparable scale and vintage in the same pocket
• 37 East 12th Street — immediate peer by size and corridor
• 12 East 13th Street — small Village building two blocks north; verify tenure
• 15 East 10th Street — prewar cooperative one block south, inside the same historic district
• 38 East 10th Street — cooperative in the same designation area
• 20 East 9th Street — the larger full-service alternative nearby
• 15 West 11th Street — the west-of-Fifth counterpart at similar scale
• 45 West 10th Street — small cooperative in the same historic district; verify construction era