219 East 44th Street

Peter Poon Architects carried the design and the Department of Buildings filings. The tower is a narrow, tall interior-lot building — 35 stories on a lot 75 feet wide — with the residential floors stacked at the top where the plates clear the surrounding roofline. That geometry is the reason the apartments work: at that height on a mid-block Turtle Bay lot, the outlooks run across Midtown and east toward the river, though views depend on floor and exposure and none is protected against future construction.

Each residence is a full floor entered from a private elevator landing. The penthouse is a duplex with roughly 1,500 square feet of terrace. PLUTO records 16,551 square feet of residential area across the six lots, which puts the typical plate in the range of a large full-floor apartment rather than a compact one — but the individual unit schedules in the amended declaration are the document to read, because the six plates are not identical and the penthouse carries a disproportionate share.

Below the residences, the tower is hotel. The steakhouse at the base operates under a place-of-assembly approval filed in 2016. The commercial and hotel components together account for the overwhelming majority of the building's 107,052 square feet.

This is not a full-service residential building and it is not marketed as one. Listing and management-sourced records describe a virtual doorman system, a part-time porter, a fitness room, and bicycle storage, plus access to hotel amenities including 24-hour concierge coverage. Two questions follow from that, and both should be answered in writing before contract.

How long does the hotel access last, and on what terms? Amenity access granted by the sponsor at launch is often time-limited or fee-based. Get the current arrangement in writing rather than from a brochure.

How are shared costs allocated between the residential units and the hotel? A single structure with shared façade, roof, structure, elevators, and mechanical plant produces a large pool of costs that has to be divided between two very different uses. That division lives in the declaration and by-laws, not in the monthly statement, and it is the single most consequential document in the building for a residential owner.

The façade record is straightforward: the tower filed Cycle 9 in May 2023 and was recorded SAFE. There is no history of remediation cycles to work through, which is what one would expect from a building completed in 2020.

Ownership form: Condominium. Purchases close through a board right of first refusal rather than a cooperative approval; confirm the timeline with the managing agent.

Pied-à-terre, subletting, LLC, trust and foreign ownership: Not documented; confirm in the declaration, bylaws and house rules. Minimum lease terms and any sublet fee should be confirmed with the managing agent. Two of the six residences are held in single-purpose entities, which indicates the structure is used in practice.

Pets and house rules: Not documented in public records. Request the house rules with the declaration and by-laws.

Flip tax: Not documented in public records. Confirm any resale capital contribution before pricing a sale.

Financing: Purchase-money mortgages were recorded on two of the six residential closings, so the units are financeable. But a condominium whose non-residential component dominates the building can complicate lender review, and some agency and portfolio lenders treat hotel-adjacent condominiums as a distinct category. Get a lender's project review early rather than late.

Real estate taxes: No exemption of any kind. Underwrite the full unabated bill on the specific unit, then apply the co-op/condo abatement only if the buyer will occupy the unit as a primary residence.

Recent sales

Recent closings 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. Most recent trades (2025) cleared a median $1,590/sf (recorded) across 5 sales. Median listing discount 7.8% 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 1-01318-7502; each condominium apartment is its own tax lot). 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 from recorded condo declarations and offering plans.

Read the declaration and by-laws before anything else. Six residential units in an eight-unit condominium alongside a hotel and a restaurant is an unusual governance structure. Common-interest allocation, voting rights, cost-sharing formulas, reserve obligations and the hotel unit's consent rights are all in those documents and nowhere else.

Do not confuse this building with 227 East 44th Street. The adjoining lot on the same block is a separate condominium under separate ownership, and the Department of Finance classes its unit lots as condominium rentals. Different lot, different building, different economics.

Underwrite full taxes from day one. No 421-a, no J-51, no 485-x, no exemption of any kind. There is no burn-off schedule to model, and no step-up to plan around.

Confirm the hotel amenity arrangement in writing. What is granted at launch is not always permanent. Ask what survives the sponsor period, at what cost, and who can change it.

Get a lender's project review early. The units are financeable — two of six closings carried purchase-money mortgages — but the structure is not a conventional residential condominium, and lender treatment varies.

PLUTO's year built is wrong. Use 2020, from the certificate of occupancy, rather than the 2015 in the tax record.

Lead with the plate and the height. A full floor at the top of a 35-story tower, entered from a private elevator landing, is the argument. There is very little competing product of that description in Turtle Bay.

Be direct about the structure. Sophisticated buyers and their attorneys will find the hotel component in the first ten minutes of diligence. Presenting it up front, with the cost-allocation provisions explained, produces better outcomes than letting it surface late.

Be direct about the tax posture. Full unabated taxes, paired with True Monthly Carrying Cost analysis, presented at the outset.

Same-building comparables are thin. Six residences, six closings across four years, and one of them a penthouse. Pricing has to be built from the surrounding boutique new-development set rather than from the building's own short history.

If you're considering 219 East 44th Street, also evaluate:

• 227 East 44th Street — the adjoining lot on the same block; a separate condominium and the closest possible comparison on address alone
• 244 East 52nd Street — recent ground-up condominium construction in the same corridor; the closest peer by vintage
• 240 East 46th Street — postwar condominium a few blocks north; the conversion alternative at very different economics
• 225 East 46th Street — mid-1950s building converted to condominium; the postwar-conversion alternative in Turtle Bay
• 216 East 47th Street — 1985 condominium; the 1980s-vintage alternative in the same immediate geography
• 845 United Nations Plaza — the large full-service condominium tower to the east; the opposite end of the amenity and denominator spectrum
• 204 East 47th Street — 1950s building converted to condominium in the 1980s; a smaller-scale alternative nearby
• 212 East 48th Street — 1924 cooperative; the prewar tenure alternative in Turtle Bay
• 250 East 40th Street — 1988 condominium south of the corridor; a larger-denominator comparison