- Year built
- 1905
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 11
- Floors
- 10
- Landmark
- No
- Pets
- The house rules on file permit no animal in the building except by express written permission of the cooperative, revocable at any time. Confirm current practice with the managing agent.
Every recorded sale at this building, 2005–2024
Bedroom-by-bedroom medians, the full transfer record, and how units trade against ask.
- 3BR median
- $2.1M
- Recent range
- $1.8M – $2.4M
- Listing discount
- 6.6%
- Recorded transfers
- 12
The block of West 15th Street between Fifth and Sixth is a seam. Ladies' Mile ends a block north, Greenwich Village begins a block west, Chelsea begins a block west of that, and Union Square is four blocks east. The buildings on it are a mix of nineteenth-century houses, early-twentieth-century commercial lofts and a small amount of recent infill — a new building went up next door at 31 West 15th Street around 2012, and the cooperative filed roof protection while it was built. Nothing here is protected by a historic district, which is worth knowing in both directions: no Landmarks review on your window replacement, and no Landmarks review on what gets built next to you.
29 West 15th Street is one of the loft buildings: ten stories on a 25-by-103-foot lot, about 22,200 square feet, one apartment to a floor. What makes it interesting is its paperwork. The cooperative plan on file was declared in October 1978 and carries the Attorney General's speculative legend on its cover — the building could not lawfully be occupied for residential purposes when the shares were sold. Purchasers bought floors of a commercial loft building on the expectation that residential use would be legalized later. The corporation had been formed the previous December; the sponsor had taken title the month before that. The city's tax roll does not record the residential alteration until 1988. Ten years elapsed between the offering and the alteration of record, and that gap is the building's actual history.
It is also the reason the arithmetic here is unusual. The entire cooperative — 585 shares, ten floors, land and building — was offered for $473,500 in 1978, against a $250,000 underlying mortgage. Individual floors now trade in the low-to-mid seven figures. And there is continuity behind those numbers that almost never survives: two of the apartments conveyed in 2024 were sold by shareholders whose names appear on the 1978 rent roll printed in the offering plan on file. Forty-six years in the same loft is not a marketing claim; it is in the document.
Architecture and unit composition
Twenty-five feet wide, ninety-two feet deep, ten floors, one elevator, one apartment per floor above the ground level. About 20,200 square feet of that is residential and roughly 2,000 square feet is not, which is what a converted loft building with a ground-floor commercial space looks like in the tax roll.
The original plan split the upper floors front and rear — the 1978 rent roll lists "9th Floor Front," "9th Floor Rear," "10th Floor Front" and "10th Floor Rear" as separate spaces — and those divisions have been undone over time. A 2019 alteration combined apartments 10F and 10R into a single top-floor residence. Recorded transfers since have used floor numbers alone: 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Ceiling heights, window counts, whether a floor is a true through-floor and how thoroughly it has been renovated drive value here far more than any per-foot average, because ten apartments do not produce a per-foot average worth trusting.
Building operations
This is a ten-unit self-managed-scale cooperative with a single elevator, a boiler, one facade and a roof, and ten owners to carry all of it. The Department of Buildings record reads accordingly: a full facade restoration and roof replacement in 2002–03 with a sidewalk shed and heavy scaffold, roof pavers over the membrane in 2005, partial facade restoration and water-tower reinforcement in 2014, a further facade and fire-escape campaign in 2017 with its own shed and pipe scaffold, and a new gas meter set in 2018. Two facade cycles in fifteen years on a twenty-five-foot front, split ten ways, is the operating reality of this building.
The debt is modest and recent. The cooperative refinanced in July 2023 with a $1,500,000 mortgage and a $250,000 line, replacing a balance consolidated at $850,000 a decade earlier — roughly $150,000 of underlying debt per apartment. And there is no J-51 anywhere in the record, in a building that would have been an obvious candidate for one, on a block where five other lots took the benefit. The real-estate tax line has always been the full line, which is unwelcome in the abstract and useful in practice: nothing is about to step up.
The house rules on file are the original set from the plan, and two of them tell you what this building was. One bars patients of professionals with offices in the building from waiting in the lobby — a rule written for a building that still had a medical tenant. The other requires a shareholder to file architectural plans with the board within six months of closing and to complete the work within three years of Department of Buildings approval. That second rule is unusual, specific, and worth asking about before you buy a loft you intend to gut.
Policy framework
Ownership is by shares and proprietary lease, with board approval on every transfer. The managing agent runs applications through a portal with a $600 application fee and a $100-per-applicant credit report fee for purchases, and an identical schedule for sublets — which establishes that sublets are contemplated and reviewed, without establishing the seasoning requirement, the term cap or the fee, none of which are published.
Everything else a buyer needs is likewise unpublished. The financing ceiling, the post-closing liquidity expectation, whether a flip tax has been adopted since 1978, whether pied-à-terre purchases are entertained, and whether trusts and LLCs are accommodated are all board policy and all obtainable only from the managing agent. The house rules on file permit animals only by express written permission of the cooperative, revocable — get the current position rather than relying on a forty-eight-year-old document. Ask for the proprietary lease, the by-laws, the current house rules and any amendments, the alteration agreement, the most recent financial statements and the current certificate of occupancy, and read them together.
Local Law 97
This building is below the 25,000 sq ft threshold at which LL97 emissions caps apply. No regulatory capital pressure from this law specifically, current or 2030.
See full Local Law 97 analysis →Facade safety — Local Law 11
The latest available filing classified the facade as SWARMP — Safe With A Repair and Maintenance Program: the engineer identified conditions requiring monitoring or repair before the next inspection cycle. The scope, timeline, and how the building funds the work are building-specific — we review the filings and board materials for you.
How to read this, and where it comes from
QEWI = Qualified Exterior Wall Inspector — the licensed engineer the city requires to sign the report (the independent expert, not the managing agent).
Penalties shown are amounts DOB assessed against filings on record across 2005–10 to 2020–25. The FISP dataset does not record whether they were paid, contested or remain open, so treat the figure as history rather than a current balance and confirm the building’s standing with the managing agent.
Source: NYC DOB facade filings (FISP) · The Roebling Research Library. City record last verified September 2026.
Recent sales
Full-floor lofts here convey as share transfers to separate, unrelated purchasers — individuals and couples, across at least seven different floors since the mid-2000s, with no bulk transaction and no single entity holding the building. Turnover is slow, which is what a ten-unit building with original shareholders still in residence produces, and it means the comparable set is thin enough that condition and floor dominate.
The building competes for a specific buyer: someone who wants a genuine twenty-five-foot full-floor loft with a private elevator landing, at a price below the converted-loft condominiums in Chelsea and Flatiron, and who is willing to accept cooperative approval mechanics and a small building's capital exposure in exchange. Against the neighborhood's newer condominiums it gives up doorman service and amenity; against them it offers a floor plate and a ceiling height that new construction on a twenty-five-foot lot cannot reproduce. Unit-level transaction history is maintained in The Roebling Research Library and shared with clients during diligence.
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.
| Date | Unit | Apartment | Price | PPSF | vs. Ask |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 12, 2024 | 6 | 3 BR · 2 BA · 2,250 sf | $1,805,000 | $802/sf | -27.7% |
| Jun 4, 2024 | 9 | 3 BR · 1.5 BA | $2,425,000 | -6.6% | |
| May 27, 2022 | 7 | 3 BR · 2.5 BA · 2,300 sf | $3,153,150 | $1,371/sf | -9.8% |
| Jun 11, 2021 | 5 | 3 BR · 2 BA · 2,000 sf | $3,207,750 | $1,604/sf | -8.3% |
| Feb 20, 2018 | 10B | 2 BR · 1 BA | $889,000 | +0.0% | |
| Jun 2, 2017 | 5 | 3 BR · 2,300 sf | $2,500,000 | $1,087/sf | +0.8% |
| May 23, 2017 | 2 | 2 BR | $1,865,000 | -1.6% | |
| Apr 20, 2008 | PHB | 2 BR | $1,250,000 | +0.0% |
Market read. Most recent trades (2024) cleared a median $802/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount 4.2% from the last ask — a recurring negotiation gap worth pricing into any offer or listing strategy.
The retrade record
Lines that have traded more than once in the public record — the building’s appreciation arc, apartment by apartment.
Full closing history with price-per-square-foot over time, the complete retrade record, and every line that has traded.
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 1-00817-0025) 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.
What to know if you’re buying
Read the certificate of occupancy first. The 1978 plan contemplated joint living and working quarters for artists as one route and Multiple Dwelling Law compliance as the other, and the later Department of Buildings record points to the latter. Which one the building actually holds determines who can lawfully live there. Your attorney should read the certificate itself, not a summary.
No landmark designation — verify it and then price it. Ladies' Mile stops short of this lot. That means no Landmarks approval on your windows or your rooftop equipment, and it also means the lot next door is developable. Both belong in your underwriting.
No J-51, and none coming. Five other lots on this block took J-51 benefits; this one never did. Underwrite the tax line as-is. There is no phase-out to fear and no abatement to lose.
Ten owners, two facade cycles in fifteen years. Ask for the reserve balance, any live or contemplated assessment, the date of the most recent Local Law 11 filing and its findings, the boiler and elevator ages, and the roof's history. In a building this size a single capital campaign is a meaningful per-share number.
Ask about the alteration deadline. The house rules on file require plans filed with the board within six months of closing and work completed within three years of DOB approval. If you are buying to renovate, confirm whether that rule still stands and how the board administers it — before contract, not after.
Understand the non-residential space. City records show one non-residential space of roughly 2,000 square feet in an eleven-unit building. Ask the managing agent who holds it, what it may be used for, and what it contributes to the budget.
What to know if you’re selling
Sell the floor plate. A true twenty-five-foot full-floor loft with the elevator opening onto your own landing is the product, and it is what the newer buildings nearby cannot offer at this price. Lead with dimensions, ceiling height and window count rather than with the neighborhood.
Tell the conversion story properly. Offered on speculation in October 1978, before residential occupancy was lawful; corporation formed in 1977; alteration of record in 1988; original shareholders still selling in the 2020s. That is a better and more credible narrative than "prewar loft," and the offering plan on file supports every clause of it.
Have the diligence file ready. Certificate of occupancy, proprietary lease, by-laws, current house rules, alteration agreement, recent financials, reserve position, and the facade and roof record. In a ten-unit building, buyers' counsel reads all of it, and an unanswered question becomes a price concession.
Position against the converted lofts, not the new condominiums. Your buyer is comparing this to the loft cooperatives and conversions on West 15th through West 19th Streets. Meet them there, and be explicit about what a ten-unit cooperative does and does not provide.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 29 West 15th Street, also evaluate:
- 30 West 15th Street — 1908 former commercial loft converted to a cooperative, directly across the street; the closest peer in vintage, scale and tenure
- 14 West 17th Street — circa 1906–07 Beaux-Arts store-and-loft, now a self-managed loft cooperative; the nearest like-for-like on governance
- 32 West 18th Street — 1908 commercial loft converted to a condominium; the condominium alternative in the same building type
- 16 West 19th Street — 1907 loft converted to a boutique condominium of large full-floor homes
- 100 West 15th Street — prewar elevator cooperative a few blocks west, at a lower price tier
- 16 West 16th Street — 1964 full-service cooperative around the corner; the doorman alternative
- 22 West 15th Street — 1989 ground-up condominium on the same block; the new-construction contrast
- 50 West 15th Street — 2008 condominium; the amenitized alternative at a higher price tier
- 63 West 17th Street — boutique condominium of large residences; the condo-mechanics alternative
- 27 West 19th Street — 2007 ground-up condominium in the Flatiron loft district
- 7 West 14th Street — 1964 postwar cooperative; the full-service, lower-priced alternative nearby
The neighborhood
For the full corridor — architecture, schools, transit, and pricing across Flatiron — read The Roebling Team Guide to Flatiron.
The full playbook — what goes in the package, how boards read your financials, the interview, and the timeline — plus sample cover, reference, and personal letters you can adapt.
How to read the facts on this page. Items attributed to an offering plan describe the building as it was offered at that filing — unit mix, square footage, the amenity program as planned. They are not a statement about how the building operates today. Tax and compliance figures are sourced separately to current City records and carry their own dates. House rules, staffing and fee policy can change by board resolution without any public filing: treat every policy line here as a starting point for diligence and confirm it with the managing agent.
Considering a move at 29 West 15th Street?
Request a private building brief with the relevant comparable sales, current and off-market availability, and an apartment-specific view of value.
Own an apartment here? See what it would sell for.
A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at 29 West 15th Street would likely sell for today, what it costs to sell, and what you’d walk away with — reviewed personally against condition, exposures, renovation quality, and the competition actually on the market.