287 East Houston Street (287/LES)

The lot is a 50-foot-wide interior parcel with a 70-foot building depth, which fixes the plan. Glazing concentrates on the East Houston elevation and, where the adjacent lots allow, on the rear. Side walls are largely solid — the standard outcome for an interior Manhattan lot without protected light and air, and the standard risk to test before contract on any unit relying on lot-line windows.

Residences run from the 1A and 1B units at grade through a stacked series of A, B, C and D lines on the lower and middle floors, narrowing to single residences on the tenth and eleventh floors and a penthouse designated PHB. Ceiling heights, floor-to-ceiling window walls, in-unit laundry and heated primary-bath floors run through the inventory. The cellar carries a licensed storage program — twenty-two units in the schedule filed with the offering plan, ranging from small three-by-three-foot lockers to four-by-four-foot walk-ins — which are licensed rather than deeded, a distinction that matters if a buyer expects storage to convey automatically with a resale.

The unit count itself deserves attention. ACRIS carries 27 recorded residential unit lots, the Department of Finance bills 27, and the final certificate of occupancy lists 27 dwelling units. PLUTO and the condominium's own audited financial statements both say 28. We have not been able to reconcile the extra unit against any recorded lot, and we do not carry a figure we cannot document. Anyone building an automated valuation or a common-charge-per-unit analysis on the PLUTO number should be aware that the recorded schedule does not support it.

287/LES operates as a self-contained condominium with no cooperative-style underlying mortgage — the ordinary condominium structure, and the reason the carrying-cost analysis here is common charges plus unabated real estate taxes plus any unit-level financing. Confirm in the current financial statements that the association carries no loan.

The audited financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2023 show the building operating comfortably within its revenue: total revenue of roughly $547,000 against total expenses of roughly $384,000, producing net revenue above $160,000 for the year and accumulated earnings of roughly $325,000 at year-end, with total cash and restricted cash near $387,000. Working capital contributed by purchasers stood at roughly $80,000. For a 27-unit building with no employees beyond superintendent-level payroll, that is a sound position.

Two qualifications belong on the same page. First, the auditor notes that the condominium has not conducted a study of the remaining useful lives of common-property components or of the cost of future major repairs and replacements — there is no reserve study, and the required supplementary information on future major repairs was omitted from the statements. In a building this size, a single significant capital item can therefore arrive as an assessment rather than as a drawdown.

Second, the operating history shows water-related work in the building's early years. Special repairs for water damage ran into six figures in 2022 and to roughly $51,000 in 2023, largely offset in both years by insurance proceeds, alongside a water-filter replacement program in 2022; the 2023 revenue line also includes a $31,500 window charge. None of this reads as distress, and the insurance recoveries suggest discrete events rather than a systemic envelope failure. It does mean that a buyer should ask directly for the current board minutes, the status of any façade or window work, and whether the underlying causes were resolved.

Ownership form: Condominium. Purchases close through a right of first refusal rather than a board interview.

Pets: No more than one pet per residential unit (fish excepted) without board consent, per the purchase application on file. Weight, breed and registration requirements should be confirmed in the current house rules — the application includes a pet registration form.

Pied-à-terre, LLC, trust and foreign ownership: Permitted. The purchase application contains a full corporate-purchase schedule.

Subletting: Permitted under the standard condominium framework, with a distinct sublet/lease submission track in the building's application package. Minimum lease terms should be confirmed with the managing agent.

Financing: Not documented; confirm in the declaration, bylaws and house rules.

Working capital: Two months' common charges payable to the condominium at each closing.

In-unit washer/dryer: Permitted and installed throughout.

Real estate taxes: No 421-a and no other exemption on any residential unit lot in FY2023 through FY2027. Underwrite full unabated taxes on the specific unit from day one.

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 $1,671/sf (floor-adjusted) across 2 sales. 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 5.0% 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 1-00350-7503; each condominium apartment is its own tax lot). 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 roll shows no exemption. No exemption appears on any residential unit lot in the assessment roll; confirm on the apartment's tax bill that no abatement applies. This is the first thing to model.

Do not build an analysis on the PLUTO unit count. City land-use data and the condominium's audited statements say 28 residential units; the recorded unit-lot schedule and the certificate of occupancy say 27.

Ask for the reserve position and the capital history in writing. There is no reserve study on file. Request the last two years of board minutes, the current budget, and the status and cause of the water-damage repairs recorded in 2022 and 2023.

Confirm staffing hours and storage terms. Lobby coverage in a 27-unit building is a budget decision, not a fixed feature; and cellar storage is licensed under the offering plan schedule rather than deeded, so confirm whether a license accompanies the specific unit.

Test the exposures. This is an interior lot between low-rise neighbors. Establish which windows in a given unit are lot-line windows and what the adjacent lots could support.

If you're considering 287/LES, also evaluate:

• 150 Rivington Street — GLUCK+, 2018, 45 residences; the closest peer by vintage and the larger full-service alternative
• 100 Norfolk Street — Eran Chen / ODA, 2016, 38 residences; the design-led Lower East Side condominium of the same development cycle
• 196 Orchard — Ismael Leyva Architects, 2018, 94 residences; the full-amenity, larger-denominator alternative
• 50 Clinton Street — Isaac & Stern Architects, 2016; boutique new construction one block south on Clinton
• 199 Chrystie Street — 14 residences delivered 2021; the smaller, later boutique alternative on the neighborhood's western edge
• 61 Rivington Street — The Library, 11 residences in a 1905 McKim, Mead & White branch library; the adaptive-reuse alternative
• 20 Clinton Street — 1930 Art Deco building converted to condominium; the prewar alternative on the same tax block
• 240 East Houston Street — circa-1920 buildings combined and converted in 1988; the loft-conversion alternative on the same street
• 48 Orchard Street — 2003 new construction, 26 residences; the prior generation of Lower East Side condominium development