22 Mercer Street

The two elevations do different jobs. On Broadway the building presents as a 19th-century cast-iron commercial front, restored and with its storefront reconstructed. On Mercer it presents as loft masonry with a modern entrance infill, on a cobbled block that the conversion architects and their neighboring projects along the same corridor materially changed over two decades. Inside, cast-iron columns, hardwood flooring and custom cabinetry carry the loft vocabulary through the residences, and the roughly hundred-foot lobby echoes the atrium geometry in its ceiling.

Residences are laid out four to a floor across the second, third and fourth floors — the A, B, C and D lines — with the four penthouses above. The A and B lines run roughly 2,100 square feet each, the C and D lines roughly 2,500. The four penthouses, the product of the rooftop addition, run from roughly 3,250 to 3,450 square feet and are the only residences with direct roof relationship. Every residence in the building is a large loft; there is no small inventory here at all.

The atriums are the feature to walk before contract. They perform, but a bedroom lit by an interior shaft is a different proposition from a bedroom on a street wall, and buyers weigh that differently. Which rooms in a given line face Mercer, which face Broadway, and which face an atrium is the single most useful question to resolve in person.

The condominium runs an attended lobby with a full-time staff — the operating budget on file provides for five full-time employees, which is a heavy staffing ratio spread across sixteen residences and is the largest single line in the building's expenses. That configuration is what makes 22 Mercer one of the few staffed doorman buildings in its immediate part of SoHo, and it is also what makes its common charges substantial relative to unstaffed loft conversions nearby.

The audited statements on file, for the fiscal years ended November 30, 2017 and 2018, show a building operating close to the line. The 2018 year ran an operating deficiency before capital work, and a larger one after it, with cash and members' equity both drawn down materially over the year. Capital spending in that period went to plumbing upgrades, security equipment, a heating upgrade and, in the prior year, a lobby and corridor renovation. The condominium's governing documents do not require the accumulation of a reserve, no reserve study has been performed, and the auditors noted the omission of the supplementary information on future major repairs that generally accepted accounting principles call for.

These statements are now several years old and should not be relied on as a current picture. They establish the building's structural posture — staffed, capital-active, and without a formalized reserve mechanism — not its present position. Any buyer should request the most recent audited statements, the current budget, the current reserve and assessment status, and the current Local Law 11 cycle status from the managing agent before contract.

The residential unit lots show no exemption on the assessment roll; check each apartment's tax bill for any abatement.

Ownership form: Condominium. Purchases close through the board's right of first refusal rather than a cooperative approval.

Flip tax: 1 percent of the purchase price, adopted by board resolution in 2008. It is charged on transfer and recorded by the condominium as contributed capital. This is a real and documented cost that belongs in every seller's net-proceeds calculation at this building.

Working capital contribution: On resale, the purchaser contributes to the working capital fund an amount equal to one month's common charges for the unit.

Common charges: Allocated to residences by common-element percentage as set in the offering plan. The commercial unit's charges are computed on an allocation of specific expenses rather than on the same percentage basis, and the commercial unit is separately submetered for water.

Pets, pied-à-terre, subletting, financing: Not verified. Confirm each of these with the managing agent, and obtain the current house rules.

Real estate taxes: No exemption appears on the assessment roll; check the current bill on the specific unit for any abatement.

The building is inside the SoHo–Cast Iron Historic District, designated in 1973. Exterior alterations require LPC permission even where not visible from the street, although some ordinary maintenance is exempt. The Mercer and Broadway elevations both matter to the review. Work meeting LPC rules can receive staff approval; proposals outside those rules require Commission review, so visibility alone does not determine the permit type. Interior work requiring a DOB permit also requires LPC permission, often a Certificate of No Effect. Window replacement, storefront work, entrance changes and anything affecting the penthouse profile all fall within the Commission's jurisdiction.

The building's own history is the clearest illustration of what that means in practice. The vertical expansion was permitted only in exchange for the full restoration of both façades and the faithful reconstruction of the Broadway storefront. Penthouse owners contemplating rooftop work, and any owner contemplating window changes, should treat the Commission's calendar as a real constraint.

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 (2026 to date) cleared a median $1,894/sf (floor-adjusted) across 1 sale. Floor-adjusted means each sale is restated to a constant mix of floors, so the figure can differ from the plain median of the sales listed above. Median listing discount 2.8% 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 1-00231-7501; 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.

Search under both addresses. PLUTO addresses this lot as 443 Broadway. A search under 22 Mercer Street alone will miss city data on the building. Both addresses, one lot, one building.

Resolve the exposures room by room. Four atriums make the deep plate work, but an atrium-lit bedroom is a specific product. Walk the unit and identify which rooms face Mercer, which face Broadway and which face a shaft.

Get current financials, not the ones on file anywhere else. The most recent audited statements available to us are several years old and show a building operating at a deficiency with no formalized reserve mechanism. That may have changed entirely. Request the latest audit, the current budget, and any assessment history or pending assessment before contract.

Budget the 1 percent transfer fee on the way out. It applies on your eventual sale, not your purchase, and it is easy to forget when you are underwriting the buy.

Ask about the commercial unit configuration. The financial statements describe two commercial units; the tax roll carries one. Understand who the commercial owner is, what the common-charge allocation is, and whether commercial arrears have been an issue.

Confirm the policy stack in writing. Pets, pied-à-terre, subletting minimums and financing limits are not documented in the public record for this building. Get them from the managing agent before you commit.

Sell the plate and the staff together. Twenty-one-hundred to twenty-five-hundred square feet of SoHo loft in a building with full-time staff is a combination with very few competitors in the district. Say so plainly.

Correct the conversion date. Buyers who research the building will find 2008. The record shows a 2004 declaration and a December 2006 first closing. Being right about your own building's history is credibility you can spend later in the negotiation.

Have the atrium answer ready. It will come up on every showing. Frame it as the design solution that made a two-hundred-foot-deep floor plate livable, because that is what it is.

Prepare the financial package early. A capital-active building without a formalized reserve invites questions. Have the current audit, budget and any assessment history assembled before you list rather than after an offer.

If you're considering 22 Mercer Street, also evaluate:

• 40 Mercer Street — Jean Nouvel's 2007 glass-and-color condominium at Mercer and Grand; the new-construction alternative on the same street, with a full amenity program and a very different cost structure
• 161 Grand Street (The Solita) — a 1911 loft building converted to condominium around 2000–01, a block away; the nearest peer by location and conversion vintage
• 173 Grand Street — small southern-SoHo loft building on the same axis
• 185 Grand Street — new-construction condominium on the same southern-SoHo axis; the modern-systems comparison
• 129 Lafayette Street — prewar loft conversion at comparable scale near Canal Street
• 57 Greene Street — SoHo cast-iron loft conversion in the core of the district
• 107 Greene Street — Greene Street loft condominium; the core-SoHo comparison at higher price per foot
• 105 Wooster Street — boutique SoHo loft condominium
• 27 Wooster Street — small SoHo loft condominium south of Grand
• 30 Crosby Street (The Loft) — loft conversion of a 19th-century store-and-loft building east of Broadway, at similar plate size