40 Remsen Street

Four floors, ten apartments, brownstone front, no elevator. The LPC classifies the building as a row house of Eclectic style, which in the Commission's usage means a late-century house borrowing from more than one idiom rather than presenting a single coherent one — typically an Italianate or neo-Grec massing with Queen Anne or Romanesque incident in the lintels, cornice and entrance.

The added fourth story is the alteration the district file singles out, and it matters twice over: it is why the building reads taller than the 1840s houses beside it, and it is why the top-floor apartments differ structurally from those below — a later-built floor under a later-built roof, with its own thermal and leak history. Ask specifically about roof age and top-floor ceiling condition.

The full-lot footprint is the other item to verify with your own eyes and your attorney's survey. A building running the full depth of its lot has no rear yard — which removes an amenity and a maintenance liability at once — and rear-facing apartments look across the interior of the block toward the backs of the Grace Court houses rather than into a garden of their own. Light on the rear elevation is therefore a unit-by-unit question; confirm exposures at the showing, not from the floor plan. Exterior work runs through Landmarks, where the recurring questions on a brownstone front are window replacement and masonry or cornice repair.

40 Remsen Street Owners Corp. holds the property. The Department of Finance records the building alteration in 1980, placing the conversion in the same early-1980s wave that produced most of the district's small-building cooperative stock. The conversion terms have not been verified from the offering plan. Obtain the plan from the corporation or its counsel.

That gap defines the diligence list, and at this size the list is short and specific. Request reviewed or audited financial statements for at least three years, the current budget, the reserve balance and full assessment history, the underlying mortgage terms and maturity, FISP/Local Law 11 status and any open violations, roof and boiler ages, the current house rules, the purchase application with its full fee schedule, and the managing agent's name in writing. Ten shareholders carry a nineteenth-century masonry envelope with an added top floor; the reserve position and assessment record will tell you more than any single year's budget. One structural note to carry into that conversation: with ten shareholders carrying the whole building, each apartment's share of any capital event is large.

Board policy at 40 Remsen Street is not documented in the materials on file, and this page will not infer it from building type.

Resale: Cooperative board approval in the standard form — purchase application, financial disclosure, references, interview, and a bank recognition agreement for any financed purchase. Request the application package and fee schedule before making an offer; in ten-unit corporations, processing and closing fees are frequently a larger share of closing costs than buyers expect.

Subletting, pets, pied-à-terre, washer-dryer, flip tax, financing minimums: All undocumented in materials reviewed. Each should be obtained in writing, and each is a deal term rather than a detail — a sublet prohibition, a low financing cap or an unexpected transfer fee will change your analysis after contract if you have not established it before.

Alterations: Board consent will be required under any standard proprietary lease, and Landmarks approval separately for exterior work. Confirm whether the corporation uses a written alteration agreement.

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 $992/sf (recorded) across 1 sale. The building has traded as recently as 2026. Median listing discount 2.3% 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 3-00251-0026). 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.

Get the offering plan and house rules before you offer. The library holds the offering plan, but its terms have not been verified; obtain current amendments and house rules as well. Sublet policy, financing minimums and any transfer fee are the three terms most likely to change your math.

Verify the footprint and the yard. City records show the building covering essentially the full lot. Confirm on the survey what that means for the specific apartment's rear exposure and light.

Treat the added fourth story as its own building. It postdates the rest of the house. Roof age, leak history and top-floor insulation are the questions.

Ten shareholders, one masonry envelope. Request the assessment history and reserve balance first, the budget second.

Lead with measured space. Roughly 9,800 gross feet across ten apartments is a building-level ratio, not an apartment size. Put the apartment's own measured or plan-documented dimensions in the listing, not a figure derived from the building total.

Sell the block, precisely. The Promenade at the end of the street, Grace Court behind, no through traffic — a materially different address from the Remsen blocks east of Hicks.

Have the documents ready. Assemble the plan, amendments and current rules before launch so buyers can review the specific requirements; document availability does not guarantee a closing timeline.

Comp against walk-ups, not elevator buildings. The right set is the district's moderate-scale brownstone-front cooperatives, not the staffed prewar buildings on Montague and Clinton.

If you're considering 40 Remsen Street, also evaluate:

• 44 Remsen Street — the 1844 Greek Revival house two doors east on the same row; the direct block comparable
• 58 Remsen Street — 1844 Greek Revival co-op at the Hicks Street end of the same block
• 8 Remsen Street — Slee & Bryson's 1923 apartment house at the Promenade end of the block; the purpose-built alternative
• 1 Grace Court — 1925 boutique co-op on the cul-de-sac directly behind
• 19 Grace Court — Sugarman & Berger's 1925 building on the same block, off Hicks
• 2 Grace Court — the large 1916 cooperative across Grace Court, for scale and services
• 10 Montague Terrace — small co-op on the Promenade terrace at the end of the street
• 76 Remsen Street — Slee & Bryson's 1922 elevator co-op one block east across Hicks
• 60 Remsen Street — the corridor's larger prewar elevator building