39 Remsen Street (The Alden)

The building is 50 feet wide and roughly 80 feet deep on a 50-by-100-foot lot, set back ten feet from Remsen Street behind a cellar areaway, with a ten-foot rear yard and an interior light court about 11 by 15 feet. Construction is Class 3 non-fireproof — perimeter masonry 16 to 20 inches thick at the base, interior iron columns built into the bearing walls, wood floor framing, party wall shared with 43 Remsen.

Ceiling heights are the reason people buy here: the 1979 condition report measured 11 feet 2 inches on the first floor, 10 feet 11 inches on the second and 10 feet 9 inches on the third and fourth, with kitchenettes and baths dropped below. The 1980 share schedule ran two-, three- and four-room apartments at 8, 9 and 12 shares — the correct frame for pricing here. Front apartments retain the recessed window shutters the Heights brownstones share. A 2000 DOB filing to demolish obsolete stair and dumbwaiter enclosures at apartment 4B indexes how much original service infrastructure survived into living memory.

Remsen Owners Corp. has run the building since 1980 as a small, self-directed cooperative. Financial statements in The Roebling Research Library run from 2000 forward and show a plain profile: gas heat, a modest superintendent line, real estate taxes as the largest single expense, and an underlying mortgage in the high six figures refinanced in 2005 at a prepayment cost of roughly $41,000. Maintenance income ran between $155,000 and $190,000 across those years against expenses in the same band — what a fifteen-apartment walk-up looks like on paper.

Before closing, the sponsor installed a new gas heating plant, intercom and entrance door, upgraded electrical service, and carpeted and painted the halls on floors two through four; the co-op's own history records a major overhaul in 1990 and further work in 2000. DOB records show sidewalk sheds and scaffolding in 2009 and again in 2015 — two façade cycles on an 1878 masonry wall, and the recurring capital item to underwrite here.

Subletting: The proprietary lease as filed in 1980 permitted a sublet without consent for up to two years; beyond that, consent required a board resolution, a majority of directors in writing, or holders of 66⅔ percent of shares. Boards routinely tighten this over four decades; get the current rule in writing.

Financing: Section 8 of the by-laws as filed capped individual financing at 80 percent of purchase price. Confirm the current standard at offer stage.

Transfer charges: The plan as filed documents no flip tax. The 2005 statement books apartment transfer income, so some charge existed by then; the current schedule should come from management.

Pets, pied-à-terre, washer-dryer: Not documented in the plan or house rules as filed. Confirm against the current house rules and purchase application.

Recent sales

Recent transfers at this building, curated by The Roebling Team research desk. 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) cleared a median $1,306/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount 1.9% 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 3-00247-0009) 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; square footage on co-ops is not officially recorded, figures shown are approximate.

Verify the apartment count and the share ledger. Eighteen in the plan, fifteen at DOF, 12/15/16 across DOB filings. Your attorney should confirm the unit's shares, its status on the certificate of occupancy, and any combination approvals.

This is a walk-up. Four floors, no elevator, part-time superintendent. Price and underwrite it against the district's small walk-up co-ops, not against the elevator buildings on Montague or Clinton.

Read the façade file. An 1878 non-fireproof masonry building with two shed-and-scaffold cycles since 2009 carries a recurring capital obligation. Pull FISP filings, the reserve balance and assessment history.

Ask for policy in writing. The two-year no-consent sublet allowance and the 80 percent financing cap are 1980 documents; management's current answers control.

Lead with the Alden. The oldest purpose-built apartment house in Brooklyn Heights, by George L. Morse, built by the first president of the Franklin Trust Company — a provenance line no competing walk-up listing in the district can copy, and documented rather than asserted.

Sell the ceilings and the plan. Ten feet nine to eleven feet two, front-to-back layouts, original shutters. Where every apartment differs, condition and light set the spread.

Be straight about the walk-up and the age. Heights buyers price both immediately; disclosure with the capital record in hand beats positioning around it.

Price against the small-building set. The right comparables are the district's brownstone-scale and walk-up co-ops, not the staffed prewar elevator buildings.

If you're considering 39 Remsen Street, also evaluate:

• 2 Montague Terrace — same block, Promenade-facing prewar co-op
• 10 Montague Terrace — small co-op peer around the corner on the Terrace
• 62 Montague Street — prewar co-op on the same block, at the retail end
• 60 Remsen Street — the Remsen Street corridor's larger prewar elevator co-op
• 68 Remsen Street — prewar co-op peer two blocks east
• 8 Old Fulton Street (Brooklyn City Railroad Company Building) — the district's other very early conversion, at the same boutique scale
• 151 Joralemon Street — brownstone-scale co-op alternative one block south
• 1 Grace Court — small co-op on the quiet cul-de-sac two blocks south