35 Prospect Park West

The building occupies the full 100-foot Prospect Park West frontage north of Garfield Place and runs 165 feet back, on a 16,500-square-foot lot. Built floor area is roughly 191,650 square feet — a built FAR near 11.6 against 6.02 permitted under today's R8X zoning. The Department of Finance counts eighteen stories; the 1929 plan describes fifteen stories plus two penthouses, and the two accounts are best read as describing the same massing from different conventions.

The main entrance is on Garfield Place, not the avenue — a Roth planning decision that keeps the park frontage entirely residential and gives the corner apartments uninterrupted exposure. A separate service entrance handles deliveries through the basement. As built the building ran two passenger cabs finished in wood and two metal service cabs; the specification is explicit that Roth arranged apartments so that residents would not walk long corridors and would not face each other's doors across a landing.

Because the apartment mix runs from five rooms to thirteen, the intra-building price spread here is wider than in almost any comparable Brooklyn cooperative, and floor is not the dominant variable — line and configuration are. A park-front simplex, a Garfield Place line, a maisonette with a private entrance and a penthouse duplex are four different products in one building, and they should be comped as such. Renovation state matters more than usual as well: apartments of this size carry renovation budgets that can rival the purchase price of a two-bedroom elsewhere in the district.

35 Park West Corporation operates on a fiscal year ending September 30 and runs a genuinely large budget for a 70-unit building — total cost of operations above $2.7 million in recent audited years. Two lines dominate. New York City real estate taxes ran roughly $900,000 in fiscal 2020, against a building that is fully depreciated for accounting purposes. Payroll, payroll taxes and union benefits together exceeded $1.1 million. Substantially all employees are covered by an SEIU Local 32BJ collective bargaining agreement, and the corporation contributes to the Building Service 32BJ multiemployer pension fund, which its auditors disclose as having been certified in "red" — critical — status for the plan year ended June 30, 2020, with a rehabilitation plan in place. That disclosure is standard across union-staffed New York buildings and is not specific to this address, but it belongs in a buyer's file.

Capital spending has been heavy and recent. The corporation signed a $1,211,005 façade contract with Skyline Restoration Inc. plus engineering oversight, and had paid roughly $1.09 million of it by September 30, 2020. Property and equipment additions ran $1.11 million in fiscal 2020 alone. Funding came from the capital assessment in force since 2016 — $3.07 per share monthly in 2016, stepping down through $2.46, $1.50, $1.5345 and $1.5575 to roughly $1.58 per share for the year ending September 2021 — together with the 2 percent transfer fee, both of which flow to the reserve rather than to operations. Between them they produced more than $600,000 in fiscal 2020.

The consequence is visible on the balance sheet: the reserve fund fell from about $922,000 to about $359,000 over fiscal 2020 as the façade money went out the door. The corporation refinanced on June 5, 2018 with a $1,300,000 fifteen-year self-amortizing mortgage at 4.107 percent maturing July 1, 2033, and holds an undrawn $500,000 line of credit alongside it. Maintenance rose 5.0 percent effective October 2019 and 4.1 percent effective October 2020. No reserve study has been performed and the auditors note the omission. Ask for the current reserve balance, the status of the façade program, and whether the capital assessment is still running.

Two small revenue lines are worth knowing because they are unusual: the corporation licenses rooftop antenna space for $12,000 a year, and it bills storage separately from maintenance.

Purchaser review: Applicants are reviewed by two shareholder committees — a Finance Committee and a Screening Committee — which recommend to the Board of Directors. The package runs to three years of tax returns, statements of net worth with support for cash and securities, a statement of current annual income, salary confirmation where the employer has changed, the contract of sale, the lender's recognition agreement, a bank or brokerage reference letter sent directly to the committee, three business references and three personal references, all of whom are contacted, plus a signed acknowledgment that the applicant has read the house rules. Plan for a long timeline; the corporation's own guidance warns that reference confirmation is the bottleneck.

Financing: The application for residence states a limit of 75 percent of the purchase price.

Flip tax / transfer fee: 2 percent of the gross sales price, charged to the seller, or in certain cases measured against appraised value. It is treated as paid-in capital for tax purposes, segregated in a reserve account and released only by majority vote of the board. Transfer fees produced $309,400 in fiscal 2020 and $227,500 in fiscal 2019.

Capital assessment: In force continuously since 2016 at a per-share monthly rate revised annually. Confirm the current rate and the projected end date.

Pets: No dog or cat without the board's express written permission; animals must be carried or leashed in public portions.

Alterations: Governed by the corporation's Construction and Renovation Guidelines, available from the building manager, which shareholders are responsible for enforcing on their contractors.

Marketing and access: The building manager must be told in advance of any broker or prospective-buyer visit; the seller must notify the board in writing before listing; the corporation's attorney must be retained by the seller for the stock transfer; and the rules as written state that the building's address may not be used in public advertising. Establish the board's current position on that last point before you build a marketing plan.

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. $/sf is measured on the latest sales with reliable square footage (2025): a median $1,176/sf (floor-adjusted) across 2 sales. The building has traded as recently as 2026. Median listing discount 1.6% 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 3-01073-0041). 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.

Compare the documented apartment types. Simplexes of five to eight rooms, duplexes of eleven to thirteen, two maisonettes with private street entrances. Decide which product you are actually shopping for before you compare prices.

Model the carrying cost honestly. The fiscal 2020 statements reported roughly $900,000 in real estate taxes and over $1.1 million in payroll and related costs for the union staff. Obtain the current budget and actual maintenance and assessment charges; those historical expenses do not establish today's bill or a comparison with smaller co-ops. Run the True Monthly Carrying Cost against the specific apartment's share count.

Ask where the capital program stands. A $1.2 million façade contract, a reserve drawn down from roughly $922,000 to $359,000 in one year, and a capital assessment running since 2016. Get the current reserve balance and the board's forward plan.

The 2 percent transfer fee is the seller's, but price it anyway. It shapes what sellers will accept and it shows up in every negotiation in the building.

Understand what the historic district exclusion means. City landmark review does not apply to this undesignated building, but board approvals, DOB permits and other applicable requirements remain. Absence of LPC review alone does not guarantee faster or cheaper work.

Budget the board package time. Two shareholder committees, three years of returns, six references contacted individually, and a 75 percent financing ceiling.

Lead with the plan and the provenance. An Emery Roth commission, built as a cooperative in 1929 and never converted, with the five- to thirteen-room configurations described in the original plan. Document the specific apartment's current layout rather than claiming that no competing building offers similar space.

Comp your line, not the building. Averaging across a five-room simplex and a thirteen-room duplex produces a number that helps nobody. Use same-line and same-configuration sales.

Disclose the transfer fee and the assessment early. A 2 percent seller-paid fee and an ongoing capital assessment are both better handled in the first conversation than in the third.

Confirm the advertising rule before you plan marketing. The corporation's written rules restrict use of the building address in public advertising and require advance notice of broker visits. Get the board's current position in writing.

Have the corporation's financial record ready. Audited statements running back decades, a documented façade program and a self-amortizing mortgage maturing in 2033 are underwriting assets with both the board and the buyer's lender.

If you're considering 35 Prospect Park West, also evaluate:

• 40 Prospect Park West — the 1942 co-op directly across Garfield Place; also excluded from the historic district, and a very different apartment
• 39 Plaza Street West — Rosario Candela's 1926 tower on Grand Army Plaza; the other architect-signature prewar cooperative in the neighborhood
• 1 Prospect Park West — the 2019 condominium conversion at Grand Army Plaza; the condo-ownership alternative on the same avenue
• 10 Plaza Street East — the 1959 fifteen-story co-op on the Plaza; postwar full-service
• 20 Plaza Street East — 1940 co-op on Grand Army Plaza
• 135 Eastern Parkway (Turner Towers) — the large prewar Prospect Heights cooperative; the closest peer on scale
• 34 Plaza Street East — prewar co-op on the Plaza's Prospect Heights side
• 209 Lincoln Place — the ten-story 1928 co-op inside the historic district
• 1 Grand Army Plaza (Richard Meier on Prospect Park) — the park-front new-development condominium alternative