35 West 82nd Street

LPC records the building as neo-Renaissance brick, designed by Schwartz & Gross for Hennessy Realty Company and completed in 1912. It is nine stories on a 53-foot frontage, the scale of a narrow Central Park West side-street apartment house. The trim is concentrated at the base and the cornice line. Listing records describe the layouts as mostly classic fives and classic sixes, with high ceilings, oversized windows and original moldings. In the conventional usage, a classic five has a living room, a dining room, a kitchen and two bedrooms; a classic six adds a smaller former maid's room. Confirm each apartment's current layout from its floor plan.

The plan has been reworked at the top and the bottom. DOB records a combination of 9A with 9B in 2014 and of 2C with 2D in 2017. There have also been several full apartment renovations: 9C in 2018, a $500,000 renovation of 4B filed in 2020, and 2B in 2024. One 2014 renovation closed off an original dumbwaiter and added a laundry area. That is a sign of an older building whose apartments are being brought up to current standards one by one.

Because the building is in the historic district, anything visible from the street has to go through LPC before DOB will issue a permit. That covers windows, air-conditioning sleeves and rooftop equipment. It adds time to any renovation that touches the façade.

Department of Buildings records show steady capital work over the past fifteen years:

• Façade. Exterior repair in 2011 (about $99,000 filed), then exterior restoration in 2019 (filed at up to about $133,000). The building is on the city's façade inspection cycle under Local Law 11, which requires periodic inspection and repair of exterior walls (five-year cycles to date; Local Law 49 of 2025 changed the framework from October 1, 2026).
• Roof. Full roof replacement with new insulation and code-compliant parapet railings in 2016, filed at about $368,000.
• Fuel storage. Replacement fuel-storage tank installed in 2015.
• Solar. A rooftop photovoltaic system filed in September 2025, about $147,000.

The 2018 operating budget on file ran to roughly $559,000 in expenses against $580,000 of income. Payroll is small, consistent with a live-in superintendent and no doorman staff.

The 2016 refinancing replaced older cooperative-bank debt with a first mortgage and a $250,000 line of credit. The March 2020 questionnaire did not state whether the line had been drawn and recorded the first mortgage maturity as April 1, 2031. Confirm current balances, facility availability, maturity and later borrowing. Ask whether the board plans to refinance early and how much it expects to borrow.

Everything below comes from a managing-agent building questionnaire dated March 2020 on file in The Roebling Research Library. It is several years old. Confirm each point with the managing agent.

• Flip tax. Paid by the seller and calculated on profit, not on price. Start with the sale price. Subtract the price the seller originally paid, legal fees (up to $2,000), any broker's fee, NYC and NYS transfer taxes, and the legal fee from the seller's own purchase. The flip tax is a percentage of what is left: 14 percent for less than a year of ownership, 10 percent for one to two years, 7 percent for two to four years, 4.5 percent for four to seven years, and 3 percent after seven years.
• Financing. Up to 80 percent of the purchase price.
• Pets. Allowed.
• Occupancy. All 29 apartments owner-occupied, none sublet, as of 2020.

Not documented: the sublet policy and its fees, pied-à-terre treatment, whether trusts or LLCs may take title, and the post-closing liquidity requirement (the cash and securities a buyer must still hold after closing). A small board sets these itself. Get them in writing before you make an offer.

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 (2017): a median $1,075/sf (recorded) across 1 sale. The building has traded as recently as 2026. Median listing discount 0.5% 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 1-01196-0013). 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.

The 80 percent financing ceiling is real headroom. Some prewar cooperatives near the park cap financing at 75 percent or lower. Confirm that the ceiling still stands, and ask what debt-to-income ratio and post-closing liquidity the board expects. At this building size, board expectations are rarely written down.

Underwrite the taxes, not the debt. With a small, fixed-rate underlying mortgage, the maintenance risk is on the tax side. Run the True Monthly Carrying Cost Calculator on the specific apartment.

Ask about 2031. The mortgage matures April 1, 2031. The balance is small, but a refinancing can be sized larger to fund capital work. Ask whether that is planned and what it would fund.

Budget for landmark review. Windows, sleeves and anything on the roof go through LPC. Build the review time into your renovation schedule.

Check the apartment's history. With combinations on the record and a unit count that has fallen from 29 toward 26, confirm the share allocation and the alteration history of the specific apartment.

Work out your flip tax before you set a price. It comes out of profit, so your holding period and original price change the number a lot. A seller who has owned for more than seven years pays 3 percent of net profit. A seller who has owned for under two years pays 10 to 14 percent.

Lead with the balance sheet. Present the dated fixed-rate debt and March 2020 no-sponsor disclosure, confirm the current positions, and document the absence of commercial space alongside filings for roof and façade work and a solar installation; confirm completion and current condition. A buyer's attorney will ask about the building's finances; have the current statements ready.

Have the policy answers ready. Sublet, pied-à-terre and entity rules were not established in the reviewed materials. Obtaining current written terms before showing can reduce unanswered questions, but does not establish a fixed time saving.

If you're considering 35 West 82nd Street, also evaluate:

• 41 West 82nd Street — Schwartz & Gross's 1916 cooperative on the adjoining lot; the closest match anywhere
• 32 West 82nd Street — George F. Pelham's 1926 cooperative directly across the street, on block 1195
• The Alden — Emery Roth's 1926 tower at the Central Park West corner of the same block; the full-service step up
• 227 Central Park West — the Thom & Wilson cooperative at the other park corner of the block
• 71 West 83rd Street — a twelve-unit 1885 cooperative one block north, also in the historic district
• 36 West 84th Street and 40 West 84th Street — prewar side-street cooperatives two blocks north
• 11 West 81st Street — a 1908 cooperative one block south, across from the museum
• 15 West 81st Street — a larger 1930 cooperative on the museum block, with full service
• 139 West 82nd Street — a prewar cooperative on the same street west of Columbus