245 Tenth Avenue

The lot is a corner parcel of 6,332 square feet, roughly forty feet on Tenth Avenue by one hundred feet on West 24th Street, and the massing works that geometry hard: two perpendicular volumes sharing an edge, with a slight outward bulge near the base. Because it is a corner, the residences get two exposures where an interior West Chelsea lot would give one — and because the High Line runs directly past the Tenth Avenue frontage, the lower and middle floors look onto a public park rather than a street wall. Note also that the building did not use its envelope: residential FAR in this C6-3 district is 7.52 and the building was constructed at 6.44.

The facade is the building's signature and its maintenance question. Randomly stamped stainless-steel panels with irregular window placement is a rain-screen assembly, not masonry; it does not weather like brick and it is not repaired like brick. Ask for the facade's inspection and repair history and the current Local Law 11 cycle status, and read them against the reserve.

Residences run half-floor and full-floor. Recorded unit designations pair a floor number with an east or west orientation — the east line looks over Tenth Avenue and the High Line, the west line into the block — with two penthouses at the top carrying wood-burning fireplaces, additional ceiling height and private outdoor space. Interior specification per architectural and market records includes exposed concrete structure and columns, ebonized oak flooring, Sub-Zero and Thermador appliances, RIFRA cabinetry and fixtures, and radiant-heated stone bathroom floors. Because the sellout ran across four years and the resale market has been active for more than a decade, renovation condition varies widely by apartment; the building average tells you very little about any particular unit.

A small full-service condominium with an institutional managing agent. The audited financial statements on file in The Roebling Research Library cover the building's earlier operating years and establish the shape of its finances: an eighteen-residence budget carrying a corner building with a stainless-steel rain-screen facade, an elevator, a second-floor amenity terrace, and a commercial component at the base. Each purchaser contributed two months' common charges to the working capital fund at closing, per the offering plan.

Two structural items to underwrite. First, the commercial units are a material share of the building and the declaration's common-interest schedule governs how expenses and capital costs are allocated between the residential and commercial components — read it against the current budget. Second, the building is now approaching twenty years old, which is when facade sealants, roofing and building systems begin to come due. Request the current budget, the reserve balance, the assessment history and the Local Law 11 status; the statements we hold are historical and will not answer the 2026 questions.

The Special West Chelsea District, adopted in 2005, created a transfer mechanism that let owners along the viaduct sell development rights into designated receiving sites — the machinery that paid for much of the park's construction and reshaped the neighborhood's skyline. Because 245 Tenth Avenue sits directly on the corridor, the question of what the site did with its development rights is a fair one, and the recorded answer is specific.

ACRIS shows three declarations of development rights recorded against the site's base tax lot in January 2005 and a fourth in December 2005, together with a zoning instrument filed in April 2005 and the two deeds — January 2005 and January 2006 — that assembled the parcel. The development rights were declared and the zoning lot established during the same period the rezoning was moving through approval. Separately, the air-rights instruments recorded on this tax block under the Special West Chelsea District's transfer machinery are recorded against other lots on the block, not against this one, and we located no High Line transfer-corridor purchase and no recorded park easement attributable to this lot. A buyer's attorney should read the 2005 development-rights declarations and the zoning lot documents directly rather than relying on this summary; they govern what can and cannot be built on the shared zoning lot.

Ownership form: Condominium. Transfers close through the board's right of first refusal rather than a cooperative approval, and recorded deeds include purchases in trust and in entity name. Pied-à-terre, LLC, trust and foreign ownership all sit inside the standard framework.

Pets: Up to two animals per residential unit under the rules and regulations annexed to the offering plan, with the board authorized to set type, size and weight limits. Animals must be carried or leashed in common areas.

Subletting: Permitted subject to the by-laws' consent and minimum-term provisions. The house rules allow guests to occupy a unit for up to thirty days without triggering those provisions, on notice to the managing agent, and the board reserves the right to impose further restrictions on short-term occupancy. No transient, hotel or motel use.

Alterations and decorating: Both are governed by written agreements with the board, with refundable security deposits — documented on file at $5,000 for alterations and a lower figure for decorating work. Confirm current amounts and lead times before budgeting a renovation.

Storage: Storage units are appurtenant to residences and transfer automatically with the unit.

Flip tax: No resale capital contribution appears in the records reviewed. Confirm with the managing agent before pricing a sale.

Real estate taxes: No exemption remains. The ten-year 421-a that ran from the start of the sellout has expired, and residences are fully taxable. Model the current bill for the specific unit rather than a projected schedule.

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 $1,745/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 4.2% 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 1-00696-7502). 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.

The abatement is gone. Residences carried a ten-year 421-a that has fully expired. If you are comparing this building against abated West Chelsea inventory, you are comparing two different monthly numbers. Run the True Monthly Carrying Cost Calculator with the actual current bill.

Read the sellout history before you read the comps. The recorded sales record starts in late 2011 for a building that completed in 2009, because the sponsor went through a lender forbearance in the interim. That gap is a financing story, not a building-quality story, and any analysis treating the 2011–2013 closings as the building's delivery will misdate it.

Underwrite the facade. A stamped stainless-steel rain screen on a twenty-year-old corner building is not a masonry maintenance problem. Ask for the inspection history, the repair record, the current Local Law 11 cycle and the reserve balance, in that order — and remember that elevator, roof, facade, terrace and systems costs all divide across eighteen apartments.

Read the commercial allocation. Two ground-floor commercial units are a meaningful share of the building. Have your attorney read the declaration's common-interest schedule against the current budget to understand what residential owners actually carry, and read the 2005 development-rights declarations that govern the zoning lot.

Test the High Line exposure at the right hour. Direct park adjacency is the building's best feature and its most specific liability: the viaduct is heavily trafficked, and sightlines into lower- and middle-floor east-facing rooms are real. Walk the park past the building before committing to a line.

Lead with the architecture and the corner. Della Valle Bernheimer's stamped-steel elevation is one of the few genuinely recognizable buildings on the corridor, and two-per-floor corner plates with High Line frontage are not reproducible.

Get ahead of the tax number. A buyer will find the expired abatement. Presenting the current bill up front, alongside the carrying-cost analysis, is worth more than any amount of positioning.

Document the capital record and price line by line. Facade, roof, elevator and assessment history are the questions serious counsel will ask of a twenty-year-old boutique building; we provide the documents we hold in the Research Library to buyers' counsel during diligence. And because east and west lines, half-floors and penthouses vary widely in condition, comparable selection within the building matters more here than the building average.

If you're considering 245 Tenth Avenue, also evaluate:

• 500 West 25th Street (The Emerson) — eight-residence condominium on the same tax block and the same park frontage; a separate condominium and the closest direct comparison
• 231 Tenth Avenue (Vesta 24) — 2004 boutique condominium one block south with a wood-wrapped facade and a common patio over the park; the nearest peer by scale and vintage
• 503 West 24th Street (The Getty Residences) — Peter Marino's five full-floor residences above gallery and foundation space; the trophy tier on the same street
• 508 West 24th Street — boutique condominium on the same block front west; a design-led alternative at a different scale
• 514 West 24th Street (The Fitzroy) — new-construction boutique condominium on the same street; the later-vintage alternative
• 200 Eleventh Avenue (The Sky Garage) — the corridor's other single-idea building; comparable unit count, entirely different amenity thesis
• 100 Eleventh Avenue — Jean Nouvel's curtain-wall condominium two blocks west; the design-forward alternative at higher density
• 520 West 19th Street — High Line-adjacent condominium to the south; similar park exposure, different plan type
• 555 West 23rd Street — large full-amenity West Chelsea condominium; the high-service alternative for buyers weighing amenities against floor size
• 420 West 25th Street — smaller Chelsea condominium a block north; the value comparison off the park