247 West 12th Street

The West 12th Street elevation is red brick, six stories, with all its decorative interest at the top: a tall parapet carrying two hanging escutcheons at the center and turret-like piers at either end. It reads as what it is — a substantial commercial garage dressed with a little civic ornament — and the LPC classifies the style as early-twentieth-century commercial. The Jane Street elevation is plainer and is where the building's rooftop additions become visible, which is precisely why the 2010 rooftop enlargement went through a Landmarks public hearing.

Apartments are lettered A through D on the residential floors, running roughly four to a floor across six stories, with penthouse apartments at the top. Layouts are loft-derived: long spans, high ceilings, and in a number of apartments wood-burning fireplaces. Because the lot is through-block and irregular, exposures vary a great deal line to line — some apartments face West 12th, some face Jane, and some read to interior lot lines. That variation is the single largest driver of value differences inside the building, more so than floor level.

The building has been actively recombined. DOB filings record apartment combinations in 2008 and 2010, a duplex assembled from the fifth and sixth floors in 2010 and renovated again in 2016, and lot-line window replacement work on the fifth and sixth floors in 2019. Where those combinations were completed, the 24 apartments of record are fewer apartments in fact, and some of the largest homes are later combinations rather than original layouts; confirm the sign-offs and the corporation's current apartment schedule.

Full-time doorman coverage, a roof deck, parking inside the building's original garage space, private storage and laundry, per listing and management-sourced records. Parking within a West Village co-op is genuinely unusual and worth confirming for availability, waitlist and rate before it is priced into an offer.

On capital posture: ACRIS shows no mortgage recorded against the cooperative's land and building since the mid-1990s, which suggests the corporation may carry no underlying debt. That is a meaningful difference from most prewar co-ops of this size, and it belongs in your attorney's diligence list rather than in an assumption. The building has taken sidewalk sheds for façade and remedial work in 2006, 2008, 2012–13 and 2019 — a normal Local Law 11 cadence for a masonry building of this age, and a reminder that a 24-unit corporation spreads façade cycles across a small denominator.

Buyers evaluating any converted building should know how the residential use was created and whether anything about it is unfinished. For this lot, confirm the original residential certificate and Loft Board history before concluding that all occupancy issues are resolved.

Original use and date: automobile garage, 1910–11, rebuilt 1923 after a fire, per LPC.

The alteration that created residential use: pre-dates the digitized DOB record, which for this lot begins in 2000. What survives is the tax evidence: a J-51 exemption and abatement initiated in 1983 on a certified alteration cost of roughly $550,000, together with the 1982 conveyances and financing in ACRIS.

Zoning: the lot sits in an R6 residential district. Residential use is as-of-right and always has been under current zoning; there is no Joint Live-Work Quarters for Artists framework here, because that regime applies to manufacturing districts in SoHo and NoHo, not to West Village residential zoning. No Board of Standards and Appeals variance for this lot appears in public records.

Loft Law / IMD: no Loft Board Interim Multiple Dwelling registration for this lot is identifiable in published city records. The absence of an identified registration is a limited search result; conversion timing, financing and tax incentives do not alone exclude historical or current IMD coverage. Confirm the original residential certificate and Loft Board history.

J-51: granted, run out, and gone. Initiated 1983, 12-year exemption, 50 percent abatement, certified alteration cost about $550,000. The abatement was exhausted by the 1989 assessment year; the exemption ran through 1996. There is no residual benefit, and the building has been taxed at full assessment for three decades.

Nothing about this building's policy stack is published, and no offering plan for it was located in The Roebling Research Library or the Compass Offering Plan Library at the time of writing. What follows is what to obtain from the managing agent, not what the rules are.

Ownership form: cooperative. You buy shares allocated to an apartment and a proprietary lease, not real property. Transfer requires board approval after a full package and an interview, and the board is not obliged to give a reason for a rejection.

Get these in writing before you make an offer: the maximum permitted financing and minimum down payment; the board's post-closing liquidity expectation, usually expressed as a multiple of annual maintenance and debt service; the sublet policy, including any ownership seasoning requirement, any cap on years, and the sublet fee; whether pied-à-terre purchases are entertained at all; whether purchases by trusts or limited liability companies are permitted and on what terms; the flip tax or transfer fee, its amount and whether it falls on buyer or seller; the pet policy; and the house rules on renovation, which matter more than usual in a building where apartments are being combined.

In a 24-unit corporation, the board's informal preferences carry as much weight as its written rules. Ask your attorney to speak to the managing agent early rather than discovering a financing ceiling or a liquidity standard after an accepted offer.

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 (2025) cleared a median $2,786/sf (recorded) across 2 sales. Median listing discount 6.2% 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 1-00615-0086). 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 trust an automated valuation on this address. The tax lot is indexed as 245 West 12th Street and the landmark record as 247–251 West 12th Street aka 10–14 Jane Street. Automated tools split, duplicate or lose this building routinely. The controlling identifiers are BBL 1-00615-0086 and BIN 1011053.

The building is in the Greenwich Village Historic District, confirmed by lot. Anything visible from West 12th or Jane Street — windows, storefront-scale openings, roof structures, railings, terraces — requires a Landmarks permit. The 2010 rooftop approval shows the Commission will entertain rooftop work here, but it went to a public hearing to get there. Budget time as well as money.

Confirm the policy stack before you offer, not after. The September 2026 fee panel reports a 2.5% seller-paid transfer fee; reconcile that dated schedule with current requirements. Request financing, liquidity, sublet and pied-à-terre terms from management. Run the Co-op Board Qualification Calculator against the actual numbers once you have them.

Ask about the underlying mortgage. No corporate mortgage has been recorded against the lot in ACRIS since the mid-1990s. If the corporation is genuinely unencumbered, that is a real advantage in the maintenance line. Verify it in the financial statements rather than inferring it from the record.

Walk the specific apartment for light. On a through-block irregular lot with six stories and no tower, the difference between a West 12th line, a Jane Street line and an interior line is the difference between two very different apartments at similar prices.

Price the parking honestly. In-building parking in the West Village is unusual and valuable, but availability in a 24-unit building is finite. Confirm whether a space transfers with the apartment or sits behind a waitlist.

Lead with the square footage and the origin. A former garage of 1910–11, rebuilt in 1923, converted in the early 1980s, averaging roughly 2,440 gross square feet per apartment of record — that is a specific and defensible story, and it separates this building from the prewar apartment-house co-ops that dominate the surrounding blocks.

Document the tax and capital position. The J-51 is long gone, so there is no abatement cliff for a buyer to fear; and if the corporation carries no underlying mortgage, say so and prove it from the financials. Both facts survive attorney review, and both improve the monthly carry story.

Be precise about the address. Listings, appraisals and title work on this lot have to reconcile 245, 247 and 251 West 12th Street with 10–14 Jane Street. Getting that reconciliation into the marketing materials at the outset prevents a week of confusion at contract.

Combination homes need their own comparable set. A duplex or combined apartment here should be priced against West Village loft product generally, not against the single-floor apartments in the same building.

If you're considering 247 West 12th Street, also evaluate:

• 344 West 12th Street — West Village prewar conversion on the same street closer to the river
• 299 West 12th Street — the large prewar condominium anchoring the Eighth Avenue end of the street
• 302 West 12th Street — full-service prewar co-op directly opposite, with a very different scale and policy profile
• 111 Jane Street — Jane Street loft-scale conversion; the closest like-for-like on the building's second frontage
• 130 Jane Street — West Village loft co-op with comparable floor plates
• 31 Jane Street — Jane Street comparison; confirm era and ownership in its own records
• 17 Jane Street — Jane Street prewar co-op at smaller unit scale
• 100 Bank Street — West Village comparison one block south; confirm original use and conversion history in its own records
• 164 Bank Street — West Village conversion co-op with loft-scale apartments
• 14 Horatio Street — full-service prewar cooperative at the northern edge of the corridor