319 Schermerhorn Street (The Nevins)

The building rises twenty-one stories and 210 feet on a 5,371-square-foot lot, with roughly 55,900 square feet of residential area within a 60,576-square-foot building — a built floor-area ratio of 11.28 in a C6-4 district. The facade is gray brick with projecting corner windows and an upper setback; it is a masonry building, which matters for both its appearance on the corner and the character of its long-run facade obligations.

The plan lays out the stack precisely. The ground floor holds the entry vestibule, lobby and common corridors, with the two commercial units occupying part of the first floor and part of the cellar. The second floor carries three residences alongside the residential common area. Floors three through ten hold five apartments each. The sixteenth through eighteenth hold two each. The nineteenth carries one simplex plus the lower level of a duplex, and the top of the building holds the penthouse, whose private roof terrace is a limited common element reached by interior stairs from the living area.

The mix as offered is nine studios, thirty-one one-bedrooms, twenty-nine two-bedrooms and four three-bedrooms. That is a small-unit building — sixty of seventy-three residences are studios or one-bedrooms — and the practical consequence is that the three-bedrooms, the duplex and the penthouse are effectively unique products inside it, with no comparable line to price against. Private balconies and terraces, where they exist, are limited common elements appurtenant to specific apartments rather than shared amenity; establish exactly what conveys with any home carrying outdoor space.

Two building-wide features are worth naming because they are unusual together. There is no common laundry room at all — the plan provides every residence with a laundry closet and a sponsor-supplied stacked washer and dryer. And the roof, apart from the penthouse's private terrace, is not a residents' amenity; the shared outdoor space is the terrace, garden and rear yard at the base.

The Nevins is a resident-governed condominium under an elected board with professional management. The sponsor bore the building's expenses from the first unit closing through June 30, 2018, when common charges commenced; thereafter the sponsor carried the charges on unsold units until the sellout completed. Every residential unit had conveyed by December 31, 2020.

The most recent audited statements on file, for the year ended December 31, 2020, describe a building operating at roughly $1.09 million in revenue against roughly $1.02 million in expenses, with a modest surplus and a thirty-thousand-dollar transfer to reserves. Payroll and related costs dominate at sixty-six percent of the total, which is what a staffed twenty-one-story building costs. The rest is unremarkable — management, insurance, elevator maintenance, security, fire safety, utilities — with one line that dates the year precisely: elevator door-lock monitoring, a compliance item the building took on in 2020.

Three items from those statements belong in any diligence list.

Reserves and reserve planning. The condominium's governing documents do not require that funds be accumulated for future major repairs, and as of that audit the board had not conducted a reserve study, established remaining useful lives, or developed a funding plan. Reserve cash at year-end was under thirty thousand dollars. When capital needs arrive, the board's stated options are to raise common charges, levy an assessment, or defer the work. Ask for the current reserve balance, the current capital plan, and whether a reserve study has since been commissioned.

Water intrusion. The building filed multiple insurance claims during 2020 for water damage in several apartments — a pipe leak affecting a group of units, a second claim covering two more, and a third arising from a roof leak. Insurance proceeds net of deductibles were received across 2020 and 2021, and as of the auditors' report the corresponding repairs had not yet been performed or recorded. Individually these are ordinary claims; together, in a building of this age, they are a question to put directly to the managing agent about the roof and the risers.

Utility metering. The plan requires that utilities be metered or sub-metered and billed to the residential and commercial units accordingly. As of that audit it had not been determined whether the metering was complete, whether appropriate readings had been taken, or whether billings to unit owners were accurate, and the amounts had not been quantified. This is a live open item rather than a historical one, and it can affect what a specific unit is actually charged.

The building sits above the 25,000-square-foot threshold that triggers the city's building-emissions and benchmarking regimes, so its Local Law 97 position and its facade inspection cycle both belong in the same conversation as the reserve balance.

Recent sales

Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00167-7501) 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.

Ask for the current financial statements before anything else. The statements on file with us are the audited 2020s, and they document a condominium with no reserve requirement in its governing documents, no reserve study, no funding plan, and reserve cash under thirty thousand dollars at that year-end. That may have changed — several years and several budgets have passed — but you need to know whether it has, because in a building of this height the capital agenda is not optional. Ask for the reserve balance, the assessment history since 2021, the current capital plan, the facade inspection status and the building's Local Law 97 position.

Model the 421-a phase-out. Pull the specific unit's tax bill, read the exemption line, and carry the step-up forward across your intended hold. A benefit that began in the 2019 tax year on a fifteen-year schedule is not a permanent feature of the monthly number.

Ask about the certificate of occupancy, the water history and the metering. The published certificate record for the new-building job ends at a temporary certificate issued in January 2021 — ask whether a permanent certificate has since issued. Ask what was done about the 2020 roof and riser leaks, since the audit shows insurance proceeds received against repairs not yet performed as of the auditors' report. And ask how your specific unit is metered and what it is actually charged; the same audit left open whether the sub-metering was complete or the billings accurate.

Budget the application. The plan gives you a right of first refusal process; the managing agent runs a full package on top of it. Assemble financials, references, credit authorization and loan commitment early, and price the fee schedule into your closing costs.

Lead with the carrying cost and the transit. A 421-a benefit still at full value, in-unit laundry in every home, and a corner a block from the Nevins Street 2/3/4/5 with Hoyt–Schermerhorn and Atlantic Terminal in walking distance — that combination is what separates this building from the Downtown Brooklyn towers it competes with. Present the actual monthly number, and present it honestly, including the phase-out, because a prepared buyer will find it anyway.

Get ahead of the diligence. A buyer's attorney will read the financial statements and will ask about reserves, the 2020 water claims, the utility metering note and the certificate of occupancy. Have current statements, the reserve balance, the capital plan and the certificate status assembled before you go to market. A seller who can answer those four questions on day one closes materially faster than one who discovers them in week three.

Price to the stack, not to the building. Floor level, corner exposure and outdoor space drive value here more than square footage alone, and the larger apartments have no internal comparable. Benchmark those against the Boerum Hill and Downtown Brooklyn new-development tier rather than against the studio and one-bedroom trades inside your own building.

If you're considering The Nevins, also evaluate:

• 76 Schermerhorn Street (The Symon) — new-construction Downtown Brooklyn condominium on the same street; the closest direct comparison
• 10 Nevins Street (The Brooklyn Grove) — ground-up condominium a few blocks north on the same street; near-identical vintage
• 11 Hoyt Street — Studio Gang's 2020 tower; the amenity-led alternative at a higher price tier
• 509 Pacific Street (The Hendrik) — boutique Boerum Hill condominium; the smaller, lower-density alternative
• 556 State Street (Boerum Heights) — Boerum Hill new-development condominium across the Schermerhorn line
• 423 Atlantic Avenue (The Ex-Lax Building) — loft conversion nearby; the large-apartment alternative in a different product
• 561 Pacific Street — Boerum Hill condominium near Atlantic Terminal
• 96 Schermerhorn Street (Boerum Court) — the cooperative alternative on the same street; a different tenure and a different cost structure
• 110 Livingston Street — the large Downtown Brooklyn conversion condominium a block north
• 166 State Street — smaller Brooklyn Heights–edge condominium; the boutique-scale comparison