230 East 18th Street

The three houses occupy a 75-foot frontage on an 80-foot-deep lot, with the building itself running 54 feet deep — leaving rear yard behind. Four stories, no setback, a continuous street wall of the kind that defines the blocks around Stuyvesant Square. The façades were remodeled at some point before designation, and LPC's records flag that remodeling on all three houses as well as the added basement entrances at Nos. 228 and 232, so what a buyer sees is a nineteenth-century structure wearing a later face.

Inside, the apartments follow row-house logic rather than apartment-house logic. Ceiling heights, window proportions, fireplaces and floor plates vary meaningfully house to house and floor to floor, and the duplex and garden-level homes are genuinely different products from the single-floor apartments. There is no line system to reason from. Every apartment in a building of this kind has to be evaluated on its own plan, its own light and its own condition, and comparables drawn from within the building will be thin by definition.

Recent renovation filings for this address include a roof replacement in 2020 and a façade rehabilitation programme carried out in the mid-to-late 2000s with sidewalk sheds and pipe scaffold in 2007 and 2008 — useful maintenance history, but not proof that this stated four-story building is subject to FISP. DOB generally applies that program above six stories; verify actual height and coverage while reviewing current façade condition and repair plans.

This is a self-contained small house rather than a full-service building. The house rules on file describe a central laundry with designated hours, a trash room and refuse flue, and a superintendent who directs disposal. There is no documented doorman or concierge, and the rules are the rules of a building where shareholders and staff know one another: no group tours or auctions in an apartment without consent, no obstruction of halls or stairs, quiet hours running from eleven at night to nine in the morning, and floor-covering over at least three quarters of any floor above a neighbour.

Governance is correspondingly close. The board interviews every subtenant, approves every sublease and every renewal, and reserves the right to amend the house rules by resolution. Buyers used to the anonymity of a 200-unit co-op should read that as a feature or a constraint depending on temperament, but should not mistake it for informality.

Ownership form: Cooperative. A purchaser buys shares in 230 East 18th Street Corporation and takes a proprietary lease, whose term now runs to 30 September 2050 following a 1993 extension approved by shareholder consent.

Board package and interview: Required. In a sixteen-apartment corporation the board is small, its members are neighbours, and the review is personal. Expect a full financial disclosure, references, and an in-person interview. Build the timeline into the contract.

Financing ceiling and post-closing liquidity: Not published anywhere on the public record and not stated in any document on file. Small pre-war co-ops in this district commonly cap financing well below condominium norms and set a post-closing liquidity standard expressed in months or years of maintenance. Both figures, along with any debt-to-income standard, must come from the managing agent before an offer is priced. Run the Co-op Board Qualification Calculator against whatever standard the agent confirms.

Subletting: Permitted with board approval on a one-year lease renewable for one further year, with a board interview of the subtenant and both a processing fee and a monthly surcharge, per the rules on file. This is a residence-first policy, not an investor policy.

Pied-à-terre and non-resident ownership: The occupancy rule on file requires the owner or an approved subtenant to reside in the unit, with an exemption for immediate family as defined in the proprietary lease. Treat pied-à-terre purchase as unavailable unless the managing agent confirms otherwise in writing.

Trusts, LLCs, co-purchase, guarantors and gifts: Not addressed in any document on file. Small boards treat each of these case by case, and a trust or LLC purchase in a building of this size should be raised with the managing agent before a contract is signed, not after.

Pets: Dogs only by express written permission of the corporation, in each instance. Do not assume a dog will be permitted.

Flip tax: 1 percent of the purchase price, joint and several between seller and buyer, per the 1990 lease amendment on file. Sellers should assume they will negotiate over who bears it.

Real estate taxes: No J-51 and no other building-wide abatement. Maintenance is the whole monthly number; there is no step-up or burn-off schedule to model.

Recent sales

Recent transfers 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. $/sf is measured on the latest sales with reliable square footage (2023): a median $1,000/sf (floor-adjusted) across 1 sale. The building has traded as recently as 2024. Median listing discount 2.5% 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 1-00898-0039). 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 on co-ops is not officially recorded, figures shown are approximate.

Do not underwrite the year-built field. City records say 1945; LPC's own survey says c. 1850. This is a row-house conversion. Party walls, floor framing and sound transmission behave like a nineteenth-century house, the age of the plumbing risers and other systems has to be established rather than assumed, and an inspection scoped for a post-war building will miss things.

The landmark designation is real and it is Stuyvesant Square, not Gramercy Park. Exterior alterations, including non-visible work, generally need LPC permission; some ordinary maintenance is exempt, and interior work requiring a DOB permit also needs LPC permission. Scope and LPC rules determine the permit route. Review façade condition and planned repairs, and establish FISP applicability to this stated four-story property before requesting a cycle filing.

Get the financing and liquidity standards in writing before you offer. Nothing about this board's underwriting is published. In a building this small the standard can be materially tighter than the district norm, and finding that out after a contract is signed is expensive.

Understand the residence requirement. The occupancy rule on file is unusually direct: the owner or an approved subtenant must live in the apartment. If the purchase is a pied-à-terre, a parent-for-child purchase, or an eventual rental, resolve it with the managing agent first.

Verify the fee stack. The 1 percent flip tax is documented. The sublet processing fee, the monthly sublet surcharge and the move-in deposit are documented as of 2009 and may have moved since. Confirm all of them, and run the True Monthly Carrying Cost Calculator on the specific apartment.

Lead with the house, not the year built. The building's advantage is that it is three Greek Revival houses in a designated district with apartments that no purpose-built co-op on the block can offer. Listing and valuation data built on the 1945 record misdescribes the building; correct the construction history in the marketing and price against sales of comparable row-house apartments.

Document the capital position. The May 2026 refinancing left the corporation with modest first-mortgage debt and a small credit line — a strong story for a buyer's attorney. Have the current financial statements and the refinancing terms ready.

Qualify buyers against the board's actual standard, not the market's. A small board with an interview requirement and undisclosed underwriting will reject a buyer who looks fine on paper elsewhere. Screening early protects the deal timeline.

Be direct about the sublet and occupancy rules. Investor-minded buyers are not the pool for this building. Marketing it to them wastes a contract cycle.

If you're considering 230 East 18th Street, also evaluate:

• 233 East 17th Street — the same tax block and the same historic district; the closest like-for-like on landmark position
• 117 East 18th Street — small pre-war co-op on the same street, west of Irving Place
• 157 East 18th Street — boutique pre-war building on the block between Irving Place and Third Avenue
• 211 East 18th Street — immediate neighbour on the same block; the nearest scale comparison
• 112 East 19th Street — converted house of similar vintage one block north; the row-house alternative, and a useful illustration of how narrowly the district lines are drawn here, since that lot is undesignated
• 132 East 19th Street — a contributing property in the Gramercy Park Historic District; useful for seeing how the two districts differ in practice
• 105 East 19th Street — small pre-war co-op one block north
• 230 East 15th Street (The Rutherford) — larger full-service alternative at the southern edge of the district
• 130 East 18th Street (Gramercy Plaza) — the doorman-building alternative on the same street
• 230 East 20th Street (The Modern at Gramercy Square) — a different building on a different block; the new-construction condominium alternative for buyers who want financing flexibility instead of share ownership