20 Greene Street

Warner's 1880 building is masonry bearing walls with wood joists and wood flooring behind an ornamental cast-iron front — a nineteenth-century kit of mass-produced components chosen from a catalog, which is exactly what gives the Greene Street streetwall its repeating rhythm. Cast-iron structural columns run through the building, and Corinthian columns survive inside a number of the residences rather than being boxed away.

The residential plan is A-and-B on each level: two lofts per floor from the second through the sixth, with a penthouse level above. Lofts here read as loft product — long spans, column lines, tall ceilings, oversized front windows — and several units have been combined or extended since the conversion, so the unit mix as offered in 2000 is no longer the unit mix on the ground. Department of Buildings filings record a 2019 combination of a fifth-floor residence with a penthouse unit and a penthouse roof build-out signed off in 2022, producing a single residence spanning the top of the building with substantial roof terrace. Square footage should therefore be verified per unit, not taken from a building-level figure or from the original schedule.

This is a twelve-unit self-contained condominium: one passenger elevator, no doorman, no amenity program of the sort a larger conversion carries. Common charges in a house this size cover the ordinary items — heat, water and sewer, common electricity, insurance, elevator service and maintenance contracts, management, and reserve funding — and the arithmetic is unusually exposed, because there are only twelve payers. Ask for the current budget and the reserve position rather than assuming them, and ask specifically how common charges are apportioned as between the two commercial units and the ten residences, since that allocation is set in the declaration and is the single largest variable in a small mixed-use condominium's monthly cost.

Two open items sit on the Department of Buildings record and belong in any diligence file. An elevator violation issued in March 2021 remains active, and a 2023 low-pressure boiler violation for failure to file the 2018 external inspection is also active. Both are administrative in character and both are common in small buildings without full-time staff, but both are curable and both should be resolved — by the board, before closing — rather than inherited. Ask the managing agent for the current status of each, and for the last two cycles of boiler and elevator inspection reports.

Façade obligation is the other question to put in writing. The 2019 restoration was a comprehensive one, but the Facade Inspection Safety Program cycle turns on a fixed schedule and this building sits at the height threshold where owners sometimes disagree about whether it is covered. No façade compliance filing for this building appears in the Department of Buildings' current-cycle facade database. Confirm with the managing agent whether the building is subject to the programme and, if it is, what its filing status is.

No offering plan for the Soho Greene Condominium is held in The Roebling Research Library, and the building's house rules are not published. That means the policy stack for this building — pets, subletting, pied-à-terre and corporate or trust ownership, move-in rules, and any transfer fee — is not documented in public records and should not be assumed from condominium defaults.

Two points are worth raising specifically. First, small SoHo conversions of this vintage frequently give the board a right of first refusal on both sales and leases, and occasionally a waiting period or a cap on the number of units that may be leased at one time. Whether this condominium's by-laws do so is a question for the recorded declaration and by-laws, which are on file with ACRIS and which your attorney should read in full before you sign. Second, the residences here are documented in Department of Buildings filings as Joint Living-Work Quarters for Artists — the classification that permitted residential occupancy under the manufacturing zoning that governed SoHo before 2021. The 2021 rezoning placed this lot in M1-5/R7X within the Special SoHo-NoHo Mixed Use District and provides a route to unrestricted residential use, but whether that has been effected for the building or for any particular unit is a question for the current certificate of occupancy and the managing agent, not for a public profile. Nothing in the Department of Buildings record for this address indicates Loft Board involvement or an Interim Multiple Dwelling registration — the conversion was accomplished through an Alteration Type 1 at the Department of Buildings, not through Loft Board legalization — and every job filing on this building answers the department's loft-board question in the negative. Confirm the Loft Board position directly if it matters to your financing.

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 $2,847/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount 5.6% 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 1-00230-7503) 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.

The penthouse — the assembled residence spanning the top floors — has been owned since 2022 by Eli Bronfman, of the Seagram family. The Real Deal reported in February 2026 that he had leased the apartment while continuing to seek a buyer, at what the paper characterised as a SoHo record for a residential lease.

Get the policy stack in writing before you bid. With no offering plan available publicly and no published house rules, subletting, pets, pied-à-terre, LLC and trust ownership, and any transfer fee all have to come from the managing agent. Ask for the declaration and by-laws too, and have your attorney confirm whether a right of first refusal applies to leases as well as sales.

Underwrite the twelve-unit denominator. Read two years of financial statements and the current budget, ask for the reserve balance and any assessment history, and ask how the two commercial units share common expense. In a building this size one capital event is felt immediately by every owner.

Clear the two open Department of Buildings violations. The active elevator violation from 2021 and the active boiler violation from 2023 should be resolved by the condominium before closing, not after. Ask for the current status in writing.

Respect the landmark and verify the occupancy classification for your unit. Any exterior change visible from Greene Street requires a Certificate of Appropriateness. Separately, ask whether your specific residence is described as Joint Living-Work Quarters for Artists on the current certificate of occupancy and what, if anything, the condominium has done under the 2021 rezoning. It changes nothing about how you live there and a good deal about how cleanly it resells.

Lead with the front, and with the fact that it is finished. A 75-foot cast-iron elevation of 1880, restored to specifications the Landmarks Preservation Commission has used as a reference for other cast-iron work, is a genuinely scarce asset and a buyer's biggest unspoken worry about a building like this one. Put the completion date in the first paragraph.

Lead second with the tax position. No abatement means no reset. In a market where buyers have been burned by expiring benefits elsewhere, an unabated, fully-seasoned tax line is a selling point — say so plainly.

Assemble the diligence package before you list. Budget, financials, reserve position, declaration and by-laws, the written policy stack, the status of the two open violations, and the certificate of occupancy. In a twelve-unit condominium the buyer's attorney will ask for all of it, and the deal takes exactly as long as the answers do.

If you're considering 20 Greene Street, also evaluate:

• 10 Greene Street — the small cast-iron loft condominium immediately down the block, on the same side of the street
• 15 Mercer Street — five-residence 1886 loft condominium on the same tax block, the closest structural analogue
• 35 Mercer Street — loft cooperative on the same block; the co-op comparison at similar scale
• 33 Greene Street — cast-iron Greene Street loft building a block north, in the core of the district
• 57 Greene Street — SoHo cast-iron loft conversion on the same street
• 22 Mercer Street — through-block cast-iron loft condominium one block east; the staffed-building comparison
• 14 Wooster Street — full-floor loft cooperative at the same southern edge of the district
• 161 Grand Street — 1911 loft building converted to condominium around 2000-01, a block away
• 477 Broome Street — SoHo loft building at comparable scale
• 93 Mercer Street — boutique SoHo loft building with large plates