233 East 70th Street

The building is a postwar brick mid-rise of sixteen or seventeen stories, depending on which record you consult, occupying a hundred feet of frontage on East 70th Street with retail wrapping the Second Avenue corner. Its architecture is the competent commercial idiom of its decade rather than a designed statement — a flat brick elevation, a canopied entrance, regular fenestration. The building is credited to H.I. Feldman, one of the most prolific apartment-house architects working in postwar Manhattan.

Six apartment lines repeat up the building, designated P, R, S, T, U and V, running from studios and one-bedrooms through combined two- and three-bedroom apartments where owners have joined adjoining units. The share transfer record shows those combinations plainly. Ceiling heights and layouts are of their period: efficient, level, with adequate light on the higher floors and a Second Avenue exposure on one side. Roughly 89,000 square feet of the building's ninety-six thousand is residential, with about 6,400 square feet of retail and a small office component; those area figures do not establish rental income to the cooperative. The retail interest is separately owned, while the corporation owns a small professional unit. Obtain its current use, lease and net-income records before treating it as a source of maintenance support.

The building runs a full-time door staff with a laundry room, fitness room, and bicycle and private storage per listing and management-sourced records.

Capital posture. The cooperative's underlying financing has been small and conservative throughout. ACRIS records a $3.1 million underlying mortgage placed with a cooperative lender in April 2005, and a replacement $3.0 million underlying mortgage with the same lender recorded March 26, 2026, with an accompanying assignment of leases and rents and a Fannie Mae subordination. Against eighty-one to ninety apartments that is on the order of thirty-five thousand dollars of underlying debt per unit — low by Manhattan cooperative standards. The corporation also carries the professional unit it bought in 2015 as an asset. Confirm the current balance, the maturity and any live assessment with the managing agent; neither reserves nor assessments are public.

Tax benefits. The Residential Unit carried J-51 benefits from a single grant initiated in 1995 — a fourteen-year exemption with a ninety percent abatement computed on roughly $117,200 of qualifying alteration cost. The abatement ran through tax year 2006 and is fully burned off. No J-51, 421-a, PILOT or other program benefit is in force on any lot in this condominium today, and the Department of Finance shows only a nominal exemption on the residential unit, reflecting individual shareholder exemptions rather than anything held by the corporation. Underwrite a full, unabated tax line.

Flip tax. $40 per share, seller-paid at closing, plus a closing fee of $700 and five cents per share. Because the charge is per share rather than per dollar, ask for the apartment's share count early — it is the only input you need to price the fee exactly.

Subletting. Permitted after one year of ownership, on a minimum two-year lease, with unlimited annual renewals subject to board approval each year. Subtenants may not keep dogs. The corporate sublet fee is 22.5 percent of monthly maintenance for the first two years and 30 percent thereafter, billed monthly to the shareholder. A sublet application, credit check, and move-in and move-out fees apply.

Board process. A full purchase application and interview, with a separate financing fee where the purchase is financed.

Not published: the financing ceiling, minimum down payment, post-closing liquidity requirement, pied-à-terre practice, treatment of trusts and limited liability companies, guarantors and co-purchasers, and the shareholder pet policy. The only pet rule we can document is the prohibition on subtenants keeping dogs. Obtain the rest in writing from the managing agent.

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. Most recent trades (2026 to date) cleared a median $842/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 2.4% 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 1-01425-7501). 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.

Say the word "condop" to your lender on day one. The tax lot is classified as a condominium and the apartment is co-op shares. A lender that opens the file as the wrong product has to re-paper it, and that costs time; how much depends on the lender and the documents.

Ask for the share count before you model closing costs. The flip tax is $40 a share and the closing fee adds five cents a share. Both are fixed by the apartment, not by the price.

Get the board's financing ceiling and liquidity requirement in writing. Neither is published, and neither is inferable from the building's small underlying mortgage.

Read the condominium by-laws, not just the co-op's. You are buying into a corporation that is one of three unit owners in a condominium, alongside a privately held retail unit. Common charges, voting and the allocation of building-wide costs are set by the condominium's declaration and by-laws, not by the number of units.

Confirm the unit count and the apartment's line. City records disagree with each other. If square footage or share allocation matters to your valuation, verify it with the managing agent rather than with a listing.

Explain the structure in the setup, not in the contract. A buyer or a lender who discovers the condop structure at underwriting can slow the deal. Telling the buyer at first showing gives their lender and attorney time to plan for it.

Lead with the sublet policy. One year of ownership, a two-year lease, and renewals thereafter is more flexible than most Lenox Hill cooperatives allow. State the terms in the listing.

Have the financials ready. Low underlying debt and a burned-off J-51 make for a clean, easily explained financial picture. Put it in front of the buyer's attorney early.

If you're considering 233 East 70th Street, also evaluate:

• 233 East 69th Street — a condop from the same sponsor family one block south; the closest structural comparison in the neighbourhood
• 301 East 69th Street — another condop from the same 1980s conversion programme
• 220 East 65th Street — the Concorde, a large Lenox Hill alternative on a different block
• 130 East 63rd Street — a Lenox Hill condop with a notably liberal policy stack; useful for comparing what a condop can permit
• 1175 York Avenue — York River House, a flexible Lenox Hill condop at larger scale
• 212 East 70th Street — the same block of East 70th Street, different tenure
• 310 East 70th Street — postwar cooperative comparison further east
• 245 East 72nd Street — larger postwar building two blocks north