40 Prospect Park West
40 Prospect Park West, Brooklyn, NY 11215
Park Slope, Brooklyn
BBL 3010750035 · BIN 3025138
- Year built
- 1942
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 62
- Floors
- 6
- Landmark
- No
- Subletting
- Among the most restrictive in Park Slope. Temporary only, permitted only where an extraordinary circumstance requires it and the shareholder intends to return and re-occupy; shareholder must have owned AND occupied for at least one year; applications before any public offering; annual board review; two-year maximum absent prior board approval. A 1998 board amendment provided that from 1998-08-01 any future sublet was capped at two years and that shareholders then subletting could not sublet past 2000-07-31. Sublessee: completed application, $500 non-refundable fee, three years of tax returns, current pay stub, screening committee interview. $500 non-interest-bearing deposit from BOTH shareholder and subtenant (1990-10-25 rider) plus a $500 refundable move-in deposit. Subletting shareholder must install wall-to-wall carpeting in the living room and bedroom before the subtenant moves in.
- Pets
- No more than two domesticated animals per apartment; dogs leashed or carried in the elevator and public areas
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 1998 (sublet amendment); 2007 (financials)). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
40 Prospect Park West is the park-front address that a working Park Slope buyer can actually reach. The avenue's reputation was built by the mansions and by the big interwar cooperatives — the eleven- and thirteen-room duplexes at 35 Prospect Park West across Garfield Place are the extreme case. This building, put up in 1942 on the opposite corner, was drawn for a completely different customer: eight one-bedroom lines and a single two-bedroom line, six stories, one elevator, no doorman tradition, and a plan that fits a household rather than a household with staff. It is the same view from a different budget, and that is the entire proposition.
The date matters. Nothing much was built in Park Slope between the crash and the war, and this building belongs to a brief final cycle around 1940 to 1942 — its immediate neighbor at 44 Prospect Park West went up in 1940 — that the Landmarks Preservation Commission would later treat as outside the neighborhood's historic character. When the Commission designated the Park Slope Historic District in 1973 it took the entire block behind these two buildings and went around them both. Neither the 2012 Extension nor Extension II changed that. The practical consequence is straightforward: this cooperative controls its own envelope. Windows, façade and roof work need a DOB permit and a board vote, not a certificate of appropriateness. The offsetting consideration is equally straightforward — the protection that fixes the block behind the building does not attach to the building itself.
There is a second, quieter consequence of standing outside the district. At a built floor-area ratio near 4.8 against the 6.02 the site permits, this is one of very few cooperatives in the neighborhood carrying meaningful unused residential development rights — on the order of sixteen thousand square feet — on a park-front lot with no landmark jurisdiction over what happens above the roofline. That is not a plan, and nothing in the record suggests the board has pursued it. It is a fact about the asset that a sophisticated buyer's attorney should be aware of, and a question worth putting to the board rather than assuming an answer to.
What actually defines living here is the governance, and it is unusually explicit. This is an owner-occupancy building by deliberate, documented policy. Subletting is permitted only for extraordinary circumstances, only after a year of ownership and occupancy, and only for two years — and in 1998 the board went further, notifying every shareholder then subletting that no sublease would be approved past July 31, 2000, regardless of the lease in hand. The rules go on to cap occupancy per apartment by line, limit guests to thirty days and only while the shareholder is home, require a screening committee interview of every purchaser and every sublessee, and mandate that a subletting shareholder carpet the living room and bedroom wall to wall before the subtenant arrives. A buyer who wants flexibility should look elsewhere. A buyer who wants a building of resident owners has found one, and should read the rules as the reason it is that way.
The sponsor's exit is the last piece of the history. Park West Realty Co. still held nine apartments — 5,370 shares, just over fourteen percent of the corporation — as of August 2007, renting them out and funding maintenance from the rents. Under an April 2003 agreement with the corporation and its managing agent, the sponsor was obligated to sell one apartment every twelve months and, except in limited circumstances, to create no new sub-tenancies in the unsold units. Board control had already passed to shareholders voluntarily on January 1, 1989. That is a slow, orderly sell-down, and it is worth asking management how much, if any, sponsor-held stock remains.
Architecture and unit composition
Six stories of brick on a 13,900-square-foot lot with 100 feet of park frontage, holding roughly 67,100 square feet — a built FAR near 4.8 where 6.02 is permitted. The main entrance faces Prospect Park West; the service entrance is on Garfield Place and is the required route for every move and every large delivery.
The apartment mix is the thing to understand. Eight of the nine lines are one-bedrooms; only the A line is a two-bedroom. Across roughly 60 to 62 units and 38,170 shares, that produces a building with a narrow product range and, as a result, a comparatively tight price band — the intra-building spread here runs on floor, exposure and renovation state rather than on configuration. The premium is the park: front-line apartments look across the avenue into Prospect Park, and rear-line apartments look into the block. Establish which line an apartment is on before you form a view of its value.
Because the building was constructed in 1942 to prewar standards but on a modest program, expect the finishes and systems of a late prewar building rather than a 1920s one — plaster, a cellar heating plant, a compactor chute on each floor, one passenger elevator and no freight car. A documented alteration on the property dates to 2019; establish what that work was and how it was funded.
Building operations
40 Prospect Park West Owners Corp. has run the building since the July 1985 closing. The corporation's audited financial statements show the operating shape clearly: real estate taxes and payroll are the two dominant lines, with a small staff, an elevator and compactor maintenance contract, and modest laundry income. There is no commercial rent and no garage to lean on.
The corporation refinanced on December 28, 2006, replacing a $750,000 Independence Savings Bank mortgage taken in October 1998 at 6.75 percent with a $1,000,000 loan from National Cooperative Bank at 5.45 percent, amortized over thirty years with a balloon payment scheduled for January 1, 2017. Reserve funds stood at $616,709 at the end of 2006, materially higher than a year earlier after a large appropriation. In the same period the board implemented a maintenance increase of about 4 percent effective January 2006 and 7.75 percent effective January 2007, and ran two concurrent assessments through 2006 — a heat assessment equivalent to a 3 percent increase, and an assessment of roughly $0.35 per share for required foundation repairs.
Those are two-decade-old figures and they are useful for pattern rather than for underwriting. The pattern is a board that funds capital work through assessment rather than deferral, and a corporation that has refinanced roughly once a decade. Ask for the current mortgage terms and maturity, the current reserve balance, the last FISP/Local Law 11 filing, the elevator's modernization history, and what the 2019 alteration on the property record was. The corporation has historically not conducted a study of the remaining useful lives of common components, so the board's own capital plan is the document that matters.
Recent sales
The retrade record
Lines that have traded more than once in the public record — the building’s appreciation arc, apartment by apartment.
Recent transfers at this building, sourced from NYC Department of Finance records. Apartment-level detail (line, condition, asking-price context) verified upon consultation request.
| Date | Unit | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Sep 3, 2025 | 5A | $2,185,000 |
| Jun 24, 2024 | 5D | $775,000 |
| May 20, 2024 | 3G | $950,000 |
| Jul 11, 2023 | 1D | $670,000 |
| May 1, 2023 | 5K | $1,320,000 |
| Feb 16, 2022 | 5A | $1,650,000 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-01075-0035) 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.
What to know if you’re buying
Read the sublet rules first. Two years maximum, extraordinary circumstances only, one year of prior occupancy required, and a board that has already once terminated every existing sublet in the building. This is an owner-occupancy cooperative and it means it.
Establish which line you are buying. Eight one-bedroom lines and one two-bedroom line. Front lines face the park; rear lines do not. Nothing else in the building moves value as much.
Ask what the sponsor still holds. Park West Realty Co. held nine apartments as recently as 2007 under a one-per-year sell-down agreement. Confirm what remains and how it is occupied.
Get current debt and reserve figures. The last documented refinancing carried a 2017 balloon. Ask what replaced it, at what rate, with what maturity, and what the reserve balance is today.
Note what the historic district exclusion does and does not give you. No Landmarks review on the building's own exterior work — and no Landmarks protection over the building either. The block behind it is protected; this corner is not.
Plan the move around the rules. Weekdays only, Garfield Place service entrance, $500 deposits from both sides, and no share transfer until both are received.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the park and the price of entry. This is Prospect Park West frontage at a one-bedroom cost basis. Photograph the view from the actual apartment and state the line.
Screen buyers for the sublet rule early. Investors and pied-à-terre buyers will not clear this board. Finding that out before the board package saves a month.
If you are selling an A-line apartment, market its scarcity. One two-bedroom line in a sixty-unit building is genuinely thin inventory on this avenue.
Reconcile the unit count and shares in advance. The Department of Finance says 62; the plan says 60 plus a professional unit; the financials say 60. Have the share allocation and the corporate record ready for the buyer's attorney.
Assemble the capital and debt file. No reserve study, an assessment history that includes foundation work, and a documented 2019 alteration. A seller who can hand that over shortens the transaction materially.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 40 Prospect Park West, also evaluate:
- 35 Prospect Park West — Emery Roth's 1929 cooperative directly across Garfield Place; the same view at several times the apartment scale, also outside the historic district
- 1 Prospect Park West — the 2019 condominium conversion at Grand Army Plaza; condominium flexibility on the same avenue
- 220 Berkeley Place — 1955 postwar co-op inside the district; comparable scale, different plan logic
- 814 Carroll Street — 1950 co-op a few blocks north; the postwar alternative
- 20 Plaza Street East — 1940 co-op on Grand Army Plaza; the same building cycle with more service
- 140 8th Avenue — the 1936 Art Deco co-op at Carroll Street
- 235 Lincoln Place — Charles Kreymborg's 1937 neo-Federal co-op inside the district
- 420 12th Street — co-op in the South Slope; a lower-cost basis further from the park
- 343 4th Avenue — the 2006 Fourth Avenue condominium; condo ownership in the same neighborhood
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