235 East 73rd Street (Eastgate)

Thirteen floors of brown brick on a 100-foot frontage, roughly 89,000 square feet of building on a 10,216-square-foot lot. The plan produces small-to-medium prewar layouts — studios and one-bedrooms in the lettered lines, two- and three-bedrooms in the assembled apartments — with prewar proportions, defined foyers and real closets. The building's history is one of steady consolidation: the gap between the 85 apartments recorded at conversion and the roughly 74 counted today is the record of decades of two-into-one merges, and Department of Buildings filings at this address are dominated by apartment-level combination and reconfiguration work.

For a buyer, that history is an option with a price. Whether a given apartment sits next to a combinable neighbor, and whether the board has approved similar merges recently, is a real feature and should be researched at the specific line rather than assumed at the building level.

Tax history. The Department of Finance J-51 record shows three separate grants at this lot: one initiated in 1991 against roughly $60,100 of qualifying alteration cost, a second initiated in 1992 against roughly $128,600, and a third initiated in 1997 against roughly $107,000 — each a 90 percent abatement running on a twelve-year schedule extended to fourteen. The first two were consumed in tax year 2002; the last ran through tax year 2008 and the record ends there. There is no J-51 benefit today and no building-wide exemption on the lot. The only exemptions carried on the assessment roll are individual shareholder benefits — the co-op and condominium tax abatement and veterans' and seniors' exemptions — which the corporation receives and passes through to eligible shareholders, and which totalled roughly $143,000 in 2024 per the audited financials. Underwrite full unabated taxes. Real estate taxes were 39.4 percent of total operating expenses in 2024, which is what a prewar Upper East Side co-op with no abatement looks like from the inside.

This is the sharpest difference from 225 East 73rd Street next door, whose single J-51 grant burned off in 2002. Same block, same architect, same developer — different capital histories.

Debt. The corporation carries a single first mortgage originally written at $3,200,000, fixed at 2.925 percent, amortizing on a thirty-year schedule over a ten-year term and maturing March 1, 2031 with a balloon of roughly $2,450,000. The balance at the most recent year-end on file was approximately $2.93 million. There is also an unsecured revolving line of credit, increased from $500,000 to $1,250,000 during 2024 and co-terminus with the mortgage; it was undrawn at year-end. A sub-3 percent fixed rate running to 2031 is a genuine asset in the current environment, and it is worth understanding that the refinancing risk sits five years out rather than now.

Reserves and capital posture. Cash, reserves and investments totalled roughly $913,000 at the most recent year-end on file, against total assets of about $10.5 million and shareholders' equity of about $7.2 million. The corporation's governing documents do not require funded reserves and no reserve study has been performed — the auditors note the omission explicitly.

Live assessments — the most important item on this page for a buyer. The board imposed a capital assessment of approximately $400,000 (about $17.30 per share) billed in monthly installments from August 2023 through July 2025 to partially fund the Local Law 11 façade program. It then imposed a second capital assessment of $18.87 per share, roughly $437,000, billed monthly from August 2025 through July 2027, to fund a conversion of the building's boiler to gas. The gas conversion was estimated at approximately $370,000 exclusive of engineering when the most recent statements were issued, and no contract had been signed as of that date. A separate electrical upgrade to one unit, following a gas leak, was contracted at roughly $70,000. Any apartment purchased here today carries a running assessment through July 2027. Confirm the current per-share amount and remaining term with the managing agent before you price the monthly.

Building staff are covered by a Building Service 32BJ collective bargaining agreement, which expired in April 2026; payroll and related costs were 33.8 percent of operating expenses in 2024.

Ownership form: Cooperative. Purchase requires a full board package and an interview, and the board's discretion is not reviewable. Budget eight to twelve weeks from executed contract to closing, and note that NYC Local Law 58 of 2026 now imposes acknowledgment and decision deadlines on co-op boards.

Financing: 75 percent maximum per management-sourced records. Some listing records carry 80 percent; the two are not reconcilable and the managing agent's answer is the one that counts.

Post-closing liquidity: Not published. Boards of this type commonly expect liquid assets after closing equal to one to two years of maintenance and mortgage payments, but the requirement here is unstated. Ask before offering, not after.

Subletting: Restrictive by Upper East Side standards, and documented rather than inferred. Two-year owner-occupancy seasoning, board interview of the subtenant, one-year minimum term, a 20 percent-of-maintenance annual fee, no-smoking and no-pets clauses required in the sublease, and a hard ceiling of three sublet years in any five. This is not an investor building.

Pied-à-terre, co-purchase, guarantors and gifting: Not addressed in the house rules on file. Management-sourced records describe guarantors as acceptable on purchases — with the guarantor named on the shares — and not acceptable on sublets, and describe pieds-à-terre, co-purchasing and gifting as case-by-case with board approval. Confirm all of it.

Trusts and LLCs: ACRIS transfers at this lot include conveyances involving trusts and estates, so trust ownership functions here in practice. That is not a published policy, and LLC purchase is a separate question. Both should be confirmed, and both carry tax-abatement consequences worth raising with counsel.

Flip tax: 2.0 percent of the sale price per the corporation's audited financial statements. The payer is not stated there and the market records conflict. Get it in writing.

Alterations: The house rules require 80 percent floor coverage in all rooms except kitchens, pantries, bathrooms, closets and foyers, and confine construction noise to weekdays between 8:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. Both matter to a renovation schedule.

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.

Market read. Most recent trades (2026) cleared a median $747/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount 3.4% 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 1-01428-0017) 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.

Underwrite the assessment, not just the maintenance. A per-share capital assessment runs through July 2027 to fund the gas conversion, on the heels of one that ran through July 2025 for the façade. Ask for the current per-share figure, the remaining term, and whether the board expects a third.

There is no abatement left. The last of three J-51 grants was consumed in tax year 2008. The tax line on the maintenance bill is the tax line.

The mortgage is an asset. Sub-3 percent fixed money running to March 2031, with an undrawn $1.25 million credit line behind it. Ask what the board's plan is for 2031 — but recognise that this building is not carrying the refinancing problem that many prewar co-ops are.

Read the sublet policy before you assume flexibility. Two years of owner occupancy, a board interview for the subtenant, a 20 percent-of-maintenance annual fee, and a three-in-five-years ceiling. If your plan involves renting the apartment at any point, price that plan honestly.

Check whether the fireplace works. In this building and in 230 across the street, architectural records indicate the fireplaces were built decorative. Do not pay for a working flue you have not verified.

The block is not landmarked, and that cuts both ways. No Landmarks approval is required for façade or window work, which makes it faster and cheaper. It also means the enclave's coherence depends on six separate boards making compatible choices. Zoning is the real protection: at R8B the block is built to roughly twice what the district now allows.

Prepare the board package properly. Run the Co-op Board Qualification Calculator before you offer, and ask the post-closing liquidity question early.

Lead with the enclave and the architect. Emery Roth, Bing & Bing, six buildings, one architectural idea, no through traffic. That is a story a buyer absorbs in ten minutes and it differentiates this address from generic side-street prewar stock.

Disclose the assessment on your terms. A running per-share assessment through July 2027 will surface in the board package. Presenting it early — with the building's own explanation of what it funds and what the mortgage looks like behind it — produces a better result than letting it appear at contract.

Sell the balance sheet. Sub-3 percent fixed debt to 2031, an undrawn credit line, positive shareholders' equity and a below-market rate are all facts that survive attorney diligence. Most competing prewar co-ops cannot say the same.

Price condition honestly. The gap between an estate-condition lettered apartment and a renovated combination is wide here. Run the Renovation Cost Calculator against your asking strategy.

If you're considering 235 East 73rd Street, also evaluate:

• 225 East 73rd Street — the immediate Eastgate blockmate, four years older, with a different J-51 and capital history
• 230 East 73rd Street — the twin across the street, completed the same year, the closest like-for-like in the group
• 220 East 73rd Street — the earlier Eastgate building on the south side; sunken living rooms and working fireplaces
• 150 East 73rd Street — prewar co-op west of Lexington; the step up in address at a step up in price
• 112 East 74th Street — comparable prewar side-street cooperative one block north
• 157 East 74th Street — prewar co-op in the same Lenox Hill side-street band
• 215 East 72nd Street — the postwar full-service alternative two blocks south
• 200 East 74th Street — postwar co-op on the avenue corner; the different-product comparison