167 East 82nd Street (Merritt House)

The building occupies a wide interior lot of roughly 77 by 102 feet and rises ten floors, with a penthouse level above that marketing records count as an eleventh. Zoning on the block is R8B with a 4.0 residential floor-area ratio; the building is built to roughly 6.4, which means it is substantially larger than current rules would allow and could not be replicated on the site.

The floor plate is straightforward and legible: four apartments per floor, lines A and B at roughly 1,621 square feet and lines C and D at roughly 878 square feet, running from the second floor through the tenth. Above them sit two penthouse residences, designated PHA and PHC, of which PHA carries approximately 1,716 interior square feet and roughly 1,517 square feet of terrace — an outdoor allocation nearly equal to the interior. Three ground-floor units complete the condominium and are carried in the recorded schedule as professional or facility units rather than as apartments.

The A and B lines are the building's core product. In their converted configuration they run three bedrooms, two full baths and a powder room, with a windowed eat-in kitchen where the maid's room and dining room used to be. Not every unit was reconfigured — the offering plan amendments document the changes unit by unit, and some apartments retain the original foyer-and-dining-room arrangement. That is worth establishing before you walk a specific apartment, because the two versions of the same 1,621 square feet live very differently.

Wood-burning fireplaces run through the residential inventory. Heating and cooling in the original conversion was PTAC unit by unit; some reconfigured apartments have split systems serving the new kitchen and bedroom. Kitchens delivered in the conversion carried Sub-Zero, Viking and Miele appliances, with stacked non-vented washer-dryers installed in unit closets.

Merritt House runs as a full-service condominium with a 24-hour doorman and a live-in superintendent — a staffing level that a 38-apartment building supports only by keeping the rest of the operation tight. The amenity program is concentrated on a single ground floor around the courtyard, which is the efficient way to deliver it at this scale: one set of rooms, one set of systems, one point of supervision.

The building is not landmarked, which materially simplifies capital work. The Department of Buildings carries a 2016 alteration for façade repair and parapet rebuilding on the condominium lot, consistent with a Local Law 11 cycle handled in the ordinary course. Any buyer should still ask the managing agent for the current façade filing status, the reserve position, and whether any assessment is in place or contemplated — the questions are the same in any building, they are simply cheaper to answer here.

Common charges and real estate taxes for the unsold inventory are laid out unit by unit in the offering plan schedules on file. In the last schedule reviewed, a full-size A- or B-line apartment carried common charges of roughly $2,000 a month against real estate taxes of a similar order, for a combined monthly carrying figure in the mid-$3,000s before debt service; the smaller C and D lines ran at a little over half that. Those figures are from the sponsor's schedule and are now several years old — they establish the shape of the carrying cost, not its current level, and any specific unit should be underwritten against its actual current bill.

Ownership form: Condominium. Purchases close through the board's right of first refusal rather than a cooperative approval and interview, which typically produces a 30-to-45-day closing timeline.

Pets: Permitted per management-sourced records. Confirm weight and breed rules in the house rules.

Pied-à-terre, LLC, trust and foreign ownership: Permitted under the standard condominium framework. This is the practical reason a buyer chooses this building over the cooperatives that dominate the surrounding blocks.

Subletting: Permitted under the standard condominium framework. Minimum lease terms and registration requirements should be confirmed with the managing agent.

Financing: No cooperative-style financing ceiling applies. As with any conversion, lender requirements will turn on the condominium's owner-occupancy ratio and any remaining sponsor concentration — worth confirming with a lender before contract.

Smoking: Non-smoking building per management-sourced records.

Transfer fee: Not documented in the records reviewed. Confirm with the managing agent before pricing a sale.

Landmark review: None. The lot carries no historic district or individual designation, so exterior alterations do not require LPC approval.

Recent sales

Recent closings 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 $1,546/sf across 3 sales. Median listing discount 3.5% 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 1-01511-7502) 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 from recorded condo declarations and offering plans.

Establish which version of the apartment you are looking at. The conversion reconfigured many but not all of the large units. Whether the maid's room became an eat-in kitchen and the dining room became a bedroom is the difference between a two-bedroom and a three-bedroom at identical square footage, and it is documented unit by unit in the offering plan amendments.

The absence of a landmark designation is worth money. Exterior work here does not need Landmarks approval. Compare that against the same project in a neighboring co-op inside a historic district before you conclude the two buildings are equivalent.

Do not rely on the city's unit count. PLUTO reports 40 residential units and 1 non-residential. The recorded schedule shows 38 apartments and three ground-floor professional or facility units. Any automated analysis built on the PLUTO split will misstate the building.

Ask about sponsor inventory and rent-stabilized units. The offering plan schedules on file identify unsold units carrying rent-stabilized occupants. Conversions of this vintage frequently retain protected tenancies for years, and both the count and the location of those units affect the owner-occupancy ratio your lender will examine.

Ask the standard capital questions anyway. Current financials, reserve position, façade filing status, and any live or contemplated assessment. The building is not landmarked and the amenity footprint is compact, but the questions are the same everywhere.

Lead with the tenure, then the layout. A pre-war condominium that permits pied-à-terre use, entity ownership and unrestricted financing reaches buyers the surrounding cooperatives cannot transact with at all. That is the argument no neighboring building can copy.

If the apartment was reconfigured, make it the headline. A three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath home with a windowed eat-in kitchen inside a 1929 Schwartz & Gross building is a specific and uncommon product. Show the plan against the original.

Say the building is not landmarked. Buyers planning any exterior work — window replacement above all — will price that correctly if you raise it, and will otherwise never discover it on their own.

Present the amenity floor as a floor, not a list. A fitness room, a yoga room, a playroom and a dining room with a prep kitchen that all open onto a planted courtyard is a coherent ground level, and it reads better in person than in a bulleted feature list.

If you're considering Merritt House, also evaluate:

• 163 East 81st Street — Schwartz & Gross, 1927, one block south; the closest architectural peer and the cooperative alternative
• 108 East 82nd Street — Schwartz & Gross cooperative on the same street, west of Park; the same firm at a different price tier
• 175 East 82nd Street — new-construction condominium on the same block front; the direct tenure comparison against modern inventory
• 151 East 83rd Street — pre-war building converted to cooperative in 1986; the earlier conversion model, two blocks north
• 122 East 82nd Street — pre-war cooperative on the same street; the west-of-Lexington alternative
• 157 East 81st Street — pre-war cooperative nearby at comparable scale
• 140 East 83rd Street — full-service pre-war cooperative in the same submarket
• 30 East 85th Street — Upper East Side condominium; the alternative for buyers who need condominium flexibility further north