360 Clinton Avenue

The lot runs 126.67 feet along Clinton Avenue and 180 feet deep to Vanderbilt Avenue, with about 95,960 square feet of residential floor area across six stories and 96 apartments. The Department of Finance records two buildings on the lot, which is how the assessor reads the front and rear wings; the designation report reads them as one structure with two C-plan wings, and the corporation runs them as one building with two elevator banks.

The offering plan's Schedule A shows the apartment mix in the room counts of the period: two-room, three-room, four-room and four-and-a-half-room apartments, with one and two baths — studios, one-bedrooms and two-bedrooms in current language. Share allocations run from 715 to 1,287 against a total of 3,507 shares. Because the share count is so small relative to the apartment count, the per-share numbers at this building look nothing like those at the large postwar complexes nearby, and a buyer comparing maintenance across Clinton Hill co-ops has to work in dollars per room, not dollars per share.

The variables that separate one apartment from another here are the ones that always separate apartments in a courtyard building: which wing, which exposure, which floor, and what has been done to the kitchen and bath. Clinton Avenue frontage buys the mansion-row view and the wide-lawn streetscape the Commission praised; the Vanderbilt Avenue wing and the court-facing lines buy quiet. Original detail survives in varying degrees — brick arches inside apartments are a recurring feature of this building's floor plans — and because the building sits inside the historic district, exterior and window work requires LPC approval regardless of what a board alteration agreement says.

The building carries a live-in superintendent and a porter — the staff structure has been continuous since the conversion, when both employees were members of Local 187 — plus a contracted security service that ran $60,622 in 2020. There is a laundry room, and the corporation earns meaningful revenue from paid storage: $38,880 in 2020 against $9,900 of laundry income. Both elevators were replaced in a capital program around 2009, the Vanderbilt Avenue car returning to service before work began on the Clinton Avenue car.

The corporation has two rooftop telecommunications leases. One is with Omnipoint Communications (T-Mobile), a 30-year lease that began in 2001 and runs to 2031 with five automatic five-year renewal options, at $3,223.06 per month as of the 2020 statements. The second was with Sprint Spectrum at $32,532 annually, expiring in 2021. The 2020 statements note that the corporation derived 14.0 percent of its revenue from a single source — a concentration a buyer should understand, because rooftop antenna income is not permanent and its loss lands on maintenance.

The mortgage is the diligence item at this building, and the date has passed. The corporation refinanced on December 18, 2015, replacing a Santander Bank mortgage carrying a $2,204,201 balance at 6.00 percent with a $3,300,000 mortgage from Investors Bank at 3.65 percent, interest-only, on a ten-year term. The audited statements state expressly that it is not self-liquidating and that, assuming payments were made as scheduled, $3,300,000 came due on January 1, 2026. The same refinancing established a $750,000 revolving line of credit, of which $150,000 was drawn at December 31, 2020, due on the maturity or prior satisfaction of the mortgage. A buyer transacting in August 2026 is transacting after that maturity date. There is no substitute for asking management, in writing, what happened: extension, refinancing, or payoff, and on what terms.

The rest of the 2020 statements should be read alongside it. Total revenue was $1,260,854 against $1,296,991 of expenses, producing a deficit before depreciation of $36,137 — the second consecutive year of operating deficit, after $23,466 in 2019. Special assessments contributed $98,000 in 2020 and $107,987 in 2019. The reserve fund ended 2020 at $103,890, down from $153,969 after a $50,000 transfer to the operating fund. Real estate taxes were $402,534, shown alongside a separate real-estate-tax abatement line of $100,471 — ask management what that abatement is and how long it runs, because the two lines together, not either alone, describe the tax burden. The corporation has not commissioned a reserve study; its auditors say so in the notes.

None of that is disqualifying, and much of it is ordinary for a 96-unit prewar co-op that has recently done elevators and absorbed a $110,000 pipe break. It does mean that at this building the financial statements are not a formality. Read them, and read the current year's.

Recent sales

Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-01943-0006) 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 what happened to the mortgage. The corporation's $3,300,000 interest-only Investors Bank loan was scheduled to come due January 1, 2026. Get the current balance, rate, maturity and whether the $750,000 line of credit is drawn, then run True Monthly Carrying Cost analysis on the specific apartment against the current maintenance and any assessment.

Read the last three years of financials, not one. The 2019 and 2020 statements each show an operating deficit before depreciation, special assessments in both years, and a reserve fund of about $104,000 at the end of 2020. Ask for the current reserve balance and the assessment history since.

Understand the rooftop income. Fourteen percent of 2020 revenue came from one source. Telecom leases end; ask when, and what the board's plan is.

You are inside the historic district. Designated November 10, 1981. Window replacement and exterior work go through Landmarks.

Choose your wing deliberately. Clinton Avenue frontage and Vanderbilt Avenue frontage are two different living experiences in the same corporation, with different elevators and different light.

Lead with the through-block plan. No other co-op on the Clinton Avenue mansion row runs the full depth of the block with two wings around a garden court. Show the court.

Quote the designation report. "A large neo-Colonial style apartment building dating from the 1920s," with colonnettes, brick quoins, splayed lintels and blind brick arches. Landmarks wrote your copy in 1981.

Say the pet policy out loud. Cats, dogs and birds without board permission is rare, and it reaches buyers who have been rejected elsewhere.

Be ready on the mortgage and the reserve. Both come up in diligence. Having the current figures in hand before you list protects the deal and shortens the contract period.

Price per room against the right set. The comparables are Clinton Hill's and Fort Greene's small prewar elevator co-ops and brownstone conversions, not the 1,200-apartment complexes up the avenue.

If you're considering 360 Clinton Avenue, also evaluate:

• 345 Clinton Avenue (Clinton Hill Co-ops, South Campus) — the wartime complex directly across the avenue, at very different scale
• 325 Clinton Avenue — the Clinton Hill Co-ops building at the Lafayette Avenue corner, also landmarked
• 372 DeKalb Avenue (Clinton Mews) — the Pratt-block loft conversion, outside the district, with in-unit laundry
• 149 Lafayette Avenue — small Fort Greene cooperative in the row-house register
• 60 South Oxford Street — Fort Greene brownstone-scale co-op inside its own historic district
• 264 Cumberland Street — boutique Fort Greene condominium alternative on a landmarked block
• 225 Park Place — Prospect Heights prewar cooperative of comparable scale
• 230 Park Place — another Prospect Heights co-op peer priced per room
• 220 Berkeley Place — Park Slope prewar co-op inside a historic district