21 Monroe Place
21 Monroe Place, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002370053 · BIN 3001908
- Year built
- 1899
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 10
- Floors
- 4
- Landmark
- Designated
- Subletting
- Consent by board resolution, or in writing by a majority of the directors, or by written consent or vote of shareholders holding at least 65% of outstanding shares; corporation may charge reasonable legal and other expenses. Initial purchasers were exempt from board consent for sales and sublets (conversion-era carve-out)
- Pets
- No bird or animal may be kept or harbored unless the corporation expressly permits it in writing in each instance; permission revocable (house rules as filed with the 1984 plan)
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 1984 plan as filed). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
Every recorded sale at this building, 2004–2026
Bedroom-by-bedroom medians, the full transfer record, and how units trade against ask.
- 1BR median
- $740K
- Recent range
- $650K – $2M
- Listing discount
- -1.0%
- Recorded transfers
- 18
Own an apartment here? See what it would sell for.
A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at 21 Monroe Place would likely sell for today, what it costs to sell, and what you’d walk away with — reviewed personally against condition, exposures, renovation quality, and the competition actually on the market.
Monroe Place is the address people give when they want to explain what Brooklyn Heights is. It runs one short block north from Pierrepont Street to Clark Street, wide and quiet, with the Church of the Saviour anchoring the Pierrepont corner since the 1840s and the Appellate Division's marble courthouse holding the street at No. 45; the block's houses include Greek Revival work the Landmarks Preservation Commission dates to 1838. There is no commerce on the street, very little traffic, and — for a two-minute walk to Montague Street and the Clark Street express — a striking amount of silence.
21 Monroe Place is a ten-apartment walk-up on that street, and its interest lies almost entirely in the quality of its address and the smallness of its operation. Ten apartments across 310 shares is a corporation small enough that every shareholder knows every other shareholder's kitchen. The share schedule is dominated by three-and-a-half-room one-bedrooms, with one apartment carrying exclusive use of the rear garden, another exclusive use of a terrace, and one an extra library room the room count does not credit.
The conversion is a clean, late example of the Heights wave. 21 Co., a New York partnership, had held the property since August 1981 and brought the cooperative plan in July 1984 on a non-eviction basis. Prices to sitting tenants were set 40 percent below outside prices, the total offering came to $1,078,000 including an assumed $220,000 wraparound mortgage, and the plan flagged that mortgage's 1989 balloon as its central special risk: if the corporation could not refinance, shareholders faced an assessment of roughly $710 per share. The corporation refinanced; its audited statements through the late 1990s show a conventional mortgage amortizing steadily and total maintenance income for the entire building running in the mid-eighty-thousands a year.
That last figure is the honest frame for a buyer. This is a building with no staff, no elevator, no lobby, and no amenity line — an operation whose whole annual budget is smaller than one year's carrying cost on a single apartment in a Montague Street full-service co-op. The trade is service for silence and for the Monroe Place address, and for the right buyer it is not a close call.
Architecture and unit composition
The building rises four stories over a garden level, with front and rear apartments paired at each level — the plan's schedule runs from 1F and 1R at the bottom through the top-floor pair. Apartments are small and regular: most are one-bedrooms at three and a half rooms with one bath, with one smaller and one larger, their share allocations turning on the variables the plan's own opinion letter lists — number of rooms, size, layout, fenestration, floor, position in the building, terraces, garden, and view.
The two outdoor apartments are the scarce inventory. In a ten-unit walk-up inside the historic district, private outdoor space of either kind is the feature that most reliably sets a resale record, and the garden and terrace apartments should be treated as their own comparable set rather than measured against the interior lines. At conversion the sponsor installed a new Weil-McLain steam boiler with pressure control, header, and equalizer, plus two seventy-five-gallon water heaters — a plant long since past its original service life, so current heating and hot-water equipment should be confirmed from the co-op's records. Electricity and cooking gas are individually metered; heat is carried in maintenance. Exterior work runs through the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Building operations
21 Monroe Housing Corp. has operated the building since the closing that followed the 1984 plan; the corporation's New York City filings date the start of its business here to December 1984. Operations are as lean as the building is small: no resident staff, an outside-labor line rather than a payroll, and a board drawn from a ten-shareholder pool. The bylaws are correspondingly plain — no compensation to officers or directors, amendment by two-thirds of the shares or two-thirds of the board, and the standard conversion-era limits on how long the sponsor could hold board control.
Diligence here is financial-statement diligence. Ask for several years of audited statements, the current mortgage terms and maturity, the reserve balance, the assessment history, and the board's plan for the façade and roof; in a corporation this size a single capital cycle is a large per-shareholder number, and a long record of modest maintenance depends on shareholders having funded that work rather than deferred it. The Roebling Research Library holds the plan, bylaws, house rules, proprietary lease, purchase application, and financial statements for client diligence.
Policy framework
Pets: No bird or animal may be kept or harbored unless the corporation expressly permits it in writing in each instance, revocably. Confirm current practice — boards frequently administer this rule more permissively than it reads.
Subletting and resale: Consent by board resolution, or in writing from a majority of the directors, or by written consent or vote of shareholders holding at least 65 percent of the outstanding shares, with the corporation entitled to charge its reasonable legal and other expenses. The shareholder-supermajority override is a period artifact; current practice governs.
Noise, floors, and windows: The house rules require floor coverings adequate to minimize noise transmission to the apartment below, restrict music and loudspeakers overnight, confine construction to weekday daytime hours, and require approval for shades, awnings, window guards, ventilators, and air-conditioning devices — with anything street-visible also requiring Landmarks approval.
Flip tax, financing minimums, pied-à-terre: Not documented in the papers available. Confirm against the current house rules and purchase application.
Local Law 97
This building is below the 25,000 sq ft threshold at which LL97 emissions caps apply. No regulatory capital pressure from this law specifically, current or 2030.
See full Local Law 97 analysis →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.
| Date | Unit | Apartment | Price | PPSF | vs. Ask |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 30, 2025 | 4R | 1 BR · 1 BA | $765,000 | -4.3% | |
| Jan 22, 2024 | 3 | 2 BR · 2 BA | $1,999,888 | +12.7% | |
| Jul 27, 2023 | 4F | 1 BR · 1 BA · 662 sf | $740,000 | $1,118/sf | +2.1% |
| May 10, 2023 | 4R | 1 BR · 1 BA | $699,000 | +0.0% | |
| Nov 4, 2021 | 2F | 1 BR · 1 BA · 625 sf | $768,000 | $1,229/sf | +0.0% |
| Jan 29, 2019 | 5F | 1 BR · 1 BA | $609,444 | +1.7% | |
| Aug 13, 2018 | 2F | 1 BR · 625 sf | $725,000 | $1,160/sf | +3.7% |
| Jul 18, 2016 | 4F | 1 BR | $600,000 | +13.4% |
Market read. $/sf is measured on the latest sales with reliable square footage (2023): a median $1,118/sf across 1 sale. The building has traded as recently as 2026. Median listing discount 0.0% from the last ask.
The retrade record
Lines that have traded more than once in the public record — the building’s appreciation arc, apartment by apartment.
Full closing history with price-per-square-foot over time, the complete retrade record, and every line that has traded.
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00237-0053) 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.
What to know if you’re buying
The street is the asset. Monroe Place is as quiet as Brooklyn Heights gets, with the Unitarian church at one end and the courthouse up the block. Spend time on it — it is the reason this building prices where it does.
Ten shareholders means ten-shareholder economics. Read several years of audited statements, the mortgage maturity, the reserve, and the assessment history. One façade cycle divided ten ways is a real number.
Get the pet rule in writing. The rules require express written board permission in each instance. If a dog is part of your household, resolve that before you sign.
No elevator, no staff. Package handling, trash, and snow are shareholder concerns — the trade for the maintenance figure. The garden and terrace apartments are the building's scarce premium inventory and should be comped as their own type.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with Monroe Place. The address carries genuine weight. Name the church, the courthouse, and the quiet, and let the block do the work.
Put the maintenance figure in the headline. Low carrying cost inside the historic district is a competitive advantage against staffed buildings, and buyers running the math will find it themselves.
Document the capital record. Buyers in ten-unit corporations worry about assessments. A clean record of completed façade, roof, and boiler work converts that worry into confidence.
Comp against the district's small walk-ups. The right set is the ten-to-fifteen-unit prewar co-ops on the nearby residential blocks, not the Montague or Remsen Street elevator buildings.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 21 Monroe Place, also evaluate:
- 123 Henry Street — a ten-unit co-op on the same tax block, converted two years earlier; the closest direct comparable
- 22 Monroe Place — the larger co-op across the street; the same address with services and scale
- 28 Monroe Place — mid-size Monroe Place co-op peer
- 108 Pierrepont Street — ten-unit Greek Revival house co-op one block south; house-scale living at similar unit counts
- 161 Henry Street — turn-of-the-century co-op on the same block, at a middle scale
- 153 Henry Street — the large prewar elevator co-op on the same block; the service alternative
- 20 Pierrepont Street — small prewar co-op peer around the corner
- 35 Pierrepont Street — prewar co-op on Pierrepont at a moderate scale
- 15 Clark Street — prewar co-op at the Clark Street end of the block
- 130 Clinton Street — full-service prewar co-op alternative on the district's eastern spine
The full playbook — what goes in the package, how boards read your financials, the interview, and the timeline — plus sample cover, reference, and personal letters you can adapt.
How to read the facts on this page. Items attributed to an offering plan describe the building as it was offered at that filing — unit mix, square footage, the amenity program as planned. They are not a statement about how the building operates today. Tax and compliance figures are sourced separately to current City records and carry their own dates. House rules, staffing and fee policy can change by board resolution without any public filing: treat every policy line here as a starting point for diligence and confirm it with the managing agent. Where this page compares one building or neighborhood to another, that is our analysis of the recorded record — it names the measure, the period and the sample it rests on, and it is an observation about medians rather than a prediction about any particular apartment.
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