3 East 71st Street

deYoung, Moscowitz and Rosenberg gave 3 East 71st a dignified two-story limestone base with a pink-granite entrance surround, set beneath a warm beige-brick shaft — a facade that bridges prewar gravity and postwar economy. The 13-story building reads as a refined Lenox Hill apartment house, scaled to its blue-chip block between Fifth and Madison.

The roughly 46 apartments offer a variety of configurations, including impressive duplex residences. Many homes carry wood-burning fireplaces, high ceilings, and generous, well-zoned layouts. The upper floors are the prizes, with sweeping outlooks over the Frick's gardens, Central Park to the west, and the skyline to the south — outlooks that currently benefit from the low-rise institutional and townhouse context around the building and vary by floor and exposure.

3 East 71st is a full-service cooperative. A 24-hour doorman covers the lobby, and a live-in resident manager runs the building with porter support. For a building of this vintage, the amenity set is generous: a fitness center, a central laundry room, bike storage, and private storage units.

The board's documented terms: the cooperative permits pied-à-terre purchases with conditions and allows pets. Financing is permitted up to 50% of the purchase price, and a 4% flip tax is collected on resale and is paid by the purchaser. Subletting is not permitted. Confirm diplomatic purchases and the current rules with the building.

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 (2026 to date) cleared a median $1,498/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 4.6% 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 1-01386-0006). 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.

The board process is real — a full package, financials, references, and an interview — but the terms are accommodating: pied-à-terre and diplomatic purchases are permitted, pets are allowed, and financing up to roughly 50% is available with board approval. Budget the 4% buyer-paid flip tax into your underwriting; it is higher than the 1–2% common elsewhere and materially affects total cost. Evaluate apartments for view (the Frick-and-Park outlook on the upper floors is the building's signature), fireplace, and layout. The location — across from the Frick, a half-block from Central Park and Fifth Avenue, near the 6 at 68th Street and the Q at 72nd — is permanent value.

3 East 71st sells on its address and its flexibility: a 1944 co-op opposite the Frick and steps from the Park, with pied-à-terre and diplomatic rules that broaden the buyer pool relative to the cash-only houses nearby. The Frick-and-Central-Park view, a working wood-burning fireplace, high floor, and duplex configuration are the differentiators that set a strong price within the building. Management's published schedule assigns the 4% flip tax to the purchaser, so it comes out of seller proceeds only if the contract shifts it; buyers do price it into what they will pay. Because turnover is thin, price to the building's own most recent comparable and to the peer prime-Lenox-Hill co-ops nearby. We market each home to the qualified, internationally-minded buyer this building attracts.

If you're considering 3 East 71st Street, these nearby Lenox Hill and Fifth Avenue cooperatives are the natural comparison set:

• 2 East 70th Street — prewar co-op a block south, near Fifth
• 10 East 70th Street — full-service co-op on the same blue-chip stretch
• 834 Fifth Avenue — one of Fifth Avenue's grandest prewar co-ops nearby
• 845 Fifth Avenue — Park-facing co-op a few blocks south
• 19 East 72nd Street — full-service co-op nearby to the north