242 Lafayette Street

Fifty-six feet of frontage on Lafayette is wide for this district, and it is the reason the floor plates work as two apartments rather than one. Each floor from the second through the fifth is split north and south, giving every apartment a full-width Lafayette Street exposure across roughly half the frontage plus depth to the rear. At roughly 1,500 square feet average with five-story-loft ceiling heights, these are true lofts rather than loft-styled apartments: the interior renovation filings on record describe relocating non-load-bearing partitions and plumbing within open volumes, not reconfiguring a fixed room plan.

The north elevation is exposed brick in two bays with segmental lintels, a consequence of the 1897 rebuilding. The roof carries a wood deck and fence. Individual apartment renovations are documented across the record — 4N in 2016, 5N in 2018, 5S in 2015, a second-floor apartment in 2016, a fourth-floor apartment in 2002 — so condition varies unit to unit and should be assessed apartment by apartment rather than assumed from the building.

Two attempts to add space above were made and neither succeeded. A 2003 alteration proposed renovating a fifth-floor apartment and adding a 525-square-foot penthouse; a 2009 alteration proposed a new rooftop addition. Both remain at plan-examination disapproved in DOB's records, neither reached permit, and the building is still five stories. The lot is now inside a historic district, which changes the calculus for any future attempt. Do not underwrite roof rights here.

There is one passenger elevator and no staff. Capital work appears in the DOB record at the rhythm you would want from a small self-directed cooperative rather than in bursts: the gas boiler was replaced with two units in 2010, façade repair and repointing was filed in 2011, and a full roof program — membrane and flashing replacement, cracked masonry replacement, repointing, and new guard rails — was filed in 2018. Storefront work at street level followed in 2019 and 2020. Debris netting was filed over the adjacent plaza in 2020 for neighboring construction.

On the financing side, ACRIS shows the corporation carrying modest leverage across its history: a National Consumer Cooperative Bank loan in 1992, an HSBC facility in 2001, an $1.1 million mortgage in 2011, and then in January 2019 a $1.5 million first mortgage together with a $200,000 facility, with the prior loan discharged at the same closing. The maturity date is not in the public record. Ask for it. In an eight-apartment cooperative, the underlying mortgage's maturity and terms are the single most consequential number in the financial statements, and it is not published anywhere a buyer can reach.

The two ground-floor commercial units are cooperative units held outside the residential shareholder group; the recorded transfers show the storefront shares moving to an outside commercial owner in 2017. Because they are shares rather than a lease, the corporation collects maintenance on them rather than market rent. How many shares are allocated to the commercial units — and therefore how much of the operating budget they carry — is a question the audited financials answer and nothing else does.

This is the single most important thing a buyer needs to understand about this building, and it is not obvious from a listing.

The apartments are joint living-work quarters for artists. DOB filings describe them that way as recently as 2013. Under the M1-5B zoning that governed the lot until December 2021, JLWQA units in SoHo could lawfully be occupied only by artists certified by the city, and that requirement — however loosely observed in practice — sat underneath every share transfer in the building.

The rezoning effective December 15, 2021 replaced M1-5B with M1-5/R7D inside a new Special SoHo-NoHo Mixed Use District, and a 2022 state amendment deemed any non-artist who was a permanent occupant of a JLWQA unit as of that date to satisfy the artist requirement. The framework now also provides a voluntary path to convert a JLWQA unit to Residential Use Group 2 through a Department of Buildings application, conditioned on a one-time Arts Fund contribution assessed at $100 per square foot.

Three practical consequences follow. First, the artist-certification gate that historically constrained the buyer pool for this building is, for existing lawful occupancy, effectively resolved. Second, conversion to conventional residential use is optional, not automatic — and at $100 per square foot it is a six-figure decision for a 1,500-square-foot loft. Third, whether the corporation or the individual shareholder bears that cost is a house question governed by the proprietary lease, not a matter of statute. Whether any unit in this building has been converted is not documented in DOB's online filings. Establish the current certificate-of-occupancy status of the specific apartment, and the board's position on conversion, before contract. It is a real and quantifiable number, and it is invisible in the asking price.

On the Loft Law: no Interim Multiple Dwelling registration appears in the records reviewed, and every DOB filing on the building carries the Loft Board flag as "N." The ordinary explanation fits — the cooperative took title in 1977, five years before Article 7-C, and its occupants have held shares rather than tenancies throughout. Confirm it with the managing agent rather than relying on inference, because former-IMD status carries an exemption from the SoHo/NoHo conversion and Arts Fund requirements and is therefore worth establishing definitively.

Management-sourced records document a flip tax of 1 percent of gross sale price, subletting permitted with board approval subject to a surcharge documented at 5 percent, pets permitted, and pied-à-terre use permitted. Those four are the extent of what is published.

Everything else is not. There is no offering plan for this building in either the Compass Offering Plan Library or The Roebling Research Library. The maximum financing percentage, the minimum down payment, any post-closing liquidity requirement, the board's posture on purchases by trusts, LLCs or other entities, on co-purchasing, guarantors and gifting, and any seasoning period before a sublet is permitted are all board practice in an eight-shareholder corporation and are documented nowhere a buyer can reach independently. Obtain them from the managing agent in writing before making an offer. In a building this small the answers can be idiosyncratic, and a financing ceiling or liquidity standard discovered after an accepted offer is the most common way a deal here fails.

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 (2025) cleared a median $1,567/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount -2.5% over ask.

Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 1-00496-0030) 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.

You are buying shares, not real property. Title is in the corporation. You will receive a stock certificate and a proprietary lease. Your lender will be making a share loan against that collateral, recognized by a recognition agreement the corporation must sign — and in an eight-shareholder building, confirm at the outset that the board will execute one for your lender.

The board package and interview are the transaction. With eight apartments the board is effectively the whole building, and the review is personal rather than procedural. Assemble a complete package — two to three years of returns, verified assets, employment and reference letters, and a clean financial statement — and expect the interview to matter. Run the Co-op Board Qualification Calculator before you offer.

Get the financing ceiling and the liquidity standard in writing first. They are not published. If the building permits only 50 or 60 percent financing, or expects two years of post-closing liquidity, that changes what you can bid — and finding out after acceptance costs you the deal and the diligence spend.

Price the JLWQA question. Establish the apartment's occupancy classification of record and whether conversion to Residential Use Group 2 has been done, is planned, or is being left alone. If conversion is contemplated, $100 per square foot is the statutory contribution, and the proprietary lease decides who pays it.

Read the underlying mortgage. A $1.5 million first plus a $200,000 facility recorded in January 2019, spread across eight apartments, is modest — but the maturity is not public, and a refinancing into a materially different rate environment is the most likely source of a maintenance increase here.

Landmark status constrains the exterior. The storefronts, windows and façade are regulated. Window replacement and any street-facing change require a Landmarks permit. Budget time, not just money.

No staff, no doorman, no package room. The building is self-directed. Confirm how deliveries, contractors and building access are handled, and read the house rules on renovation hours and elevator use — with one elevator and eight apartments, a neighbor's gut renovation is felt.

Lead with the building's history and its landmark façade. An 1881 John Sexton factory, twice-designed, inside the SoHo–Cast Iron Historic District Extension, held by the same cooperative since 1977, is a genuinely distinctive provenance and it survives buyer diligence intact.

Correct the year built before a buyer finds it. The Department of Finance roll and most listing records carry 1910. The building dates to 1881–82 with an 1897–98 addition, per LPC's designation report and the original DOB dockets. Supply the correct record up front; it reads as authority rather than as a correction.

Have the policy stack ready in writing. Because nothing is published, the buyer's first substantive question will be the one you cannot answer from a listing. Get the financing ceiling, liquidity standard, sublet terms and flip tax from the managing agent before you go to market and hand them over on request.

Address JLWQA proactively. A prepared seller frames it as resolved by the 2021 rezoning and quantifies the optional conversion cost. An unprepared seller lets a buyer's attorney frame it as a defect. The facts are the same; the outcomes are not.

Present the capital record. Boiler in 2010, façade in 2011, roof in 2018 — a small cooperative that has stayed ahead of its building envelope is worth saying so, with the filings to back it.

If you're considering 242 Lafayette Street, also evaluate:

• 237 Lafayette Street — the 21-apartment loft cooperative on block 495, directly opposite; the nearest like-for-like in tenure and street
• 292 Lafayette Street — an 1883–84 loft cooperative of thirteen apartments and a store; the closest match in vintage, scale and structure
• 284 Lafayette Street — an 1891–92 loft cooperative of twenty residences; the larger Lafayette Street co-op alternative
• 33 Greene Street — an 1873 loft cooperative with eight residences; the closest peer by shareholder count
• 16 Crosby Street — an 1877 twelve-unit loft cooperative one street east; comparable governance at comparable scale
• 106 Spring Street — a ten-loft cooperative, two per floor, in an 1890s store-and-loft building; the same plate logic
• 169 Spring Street — a c. 1882 loft cooperative converted in 1979; the same pioneer-conversion generation
• 101 Wooster Street — an 1893–94 nine-residence loft cooperative with a commercial unit; near-identical unit count and commercial structure
• 102 Wooster Street — an 1891 store building converted to eight condominium residences plus a commercial unit; the condominium alternative at the same scale
• 115 Mercer Street — an 1872 loft converted to eight residential and two commercial condominium units; the deeded-ownership comparison
• 225 Lafayette Street — a c. 1926 loft converted to condominium in the mid-2000s; newer conversion, same corridor