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Cooperative · 1960
Part of the Seward Park Cooperative
409 Grand Street, New York, NY 10002
Buildings·Cooperative

409 Grand Street

409 Grand Street, New York, NY 10002

Lower East Side

BBL 1003150001

At a glance
Year built
1960
Type
Cooperative
Landmark
No
Considering a sale?

Own an apartment here? See what it would sell for.

A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at Part of the Seward Park Cooperative would likely sell for today, what it costs to sell, and what you’d walk away with — reviewed personally against condition, exposures, renovation quality, and the competition actually on the market.

409 Grand Street is one of the towers of the Seward Park Cooperative, the largest and southernmost of the four cooperatives that together make up Cooperative Village — a community of labor-sponsored housing built along Grand Street west of the FDR Drive. Conceived by the United Housing Foundation and designed by Herman J. Jessor, the architect responsible for much of New York's mid-century cooperative housing, Seward Park opened at the end of the 1950s as affordable, member-owned housing for garment workers and their families. It remains, more than six decades later, one of the defining institutions of the Lower East Side.

What makes 409 Grand relevant to today's buyer is the building's transformation. For its first three-plus decades, Seward Park operated as a limited-equity cooperative, with resale prices held far below market in exchange for tax benefits. In the mid-1990s the shareholders voted to reconstitute the corporation; the price ceilings were lifted over a multi-year transition, and the cooperative now trades at full market value. The result is a rare combination: a large, financially conservative, well-staffed co-op with genuine scale and amenity — at Lower East Side pricing rather than the figures the same square footage would command a mile uptown.

For buyers, the appeal is concrete. These are substantial apartments, many with open city or river-facing exposures, in a quiet superblock with its own landscaped grounds, set two blocks from the East River esplanade and within walking distance of the LES restaurant and gallery scene. It is one of the most space-for-the-dollar propositions in Manhattan ownership.

Architecture and unit composition

409 Grand is a 20-story red-brick tower in the unadorned, functional idiom Jessor used across the cooperative-housing movement — emphasis on light, cross-ventilation, and efficient floor plates rather than ornament. The Seward Park buildings sit on a landscaped superblock with planted courtyards and gated parks between the towers, a layout that gives the development its open, campus-like feel in a dense corner of the city.

The apartments themselves are the draw: roomy one-, two-, and three-bedroom layouts with the solid plaster walls, real foyers, and generous proportions of mid-century construction, and many upper-floor homes capture open views toward the East River, the bridges, and the Manhattan skyline. Floor plans are consistent and rational across the line, which makes value easy to read from one unit to the next — an advantage in a building of this size.

Building operations

Cooperative Village runs on the labor-cooperative tradition of conservative, low-overhead management, and that posture shapes daily life at 409 Grand. The building maintains full-time staff and attended entrances, on-site parking, laundry, community rooms, a playground, and the landscaped private grounds shared across the Seward Park towers. Carrying charges are kept deliberately modest — a long-standing priority of the cooperative — because the development is run for its members rather than for profit, with operating revenue reinvested in the buildings and grounds.

On policy, the building is straightforward and ownership-friendly: pets are permitted, subletting is allowed after an initial ownership period subject to board approval and a sublet fee, and the cooperative charges a transfer fee (flip tax) on resale. Financing is available to qualified purchasers under a standard down-payment requirement. These are the policies of an established, owner-occupied community that prizes stability — exactly what most buyers at this scale are looking for.

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.

DateUnitApartmentPricePPSFvs. Ask
Jul 20, 2026B1208
1 BR · 1 BA · 800 sf
$720,000$900/sf-5.1%
Jul 3, 2026A1303
1 BR · 1 BA
$715,000+2.1%
Jun 29, 2026D301
1 BR · 1 BA
$745,000-2.6%
Jun 18, 2026B1006
3 BR · 2 BA
$1,375,000-3.5%
Jun 9, 2026B1406
3 BR · 2 BA
$1,800,000+2.9%
May 18, 2026C405
2 BR · 2 BA · 1,030 sf
$1,250,000$1,214/sf-3.8%
May 15, 2026A1806
1 BR · 1 BA · 1,000 sf
$945,000$945/sf-5.4%
May 13, 2026D1106
2 BR · 1 BA
$995,000-2.9%

Market read. Most recent trades (2026) cleared a median $945/sf across 3 sales. Median listing discount 2.7% from the last ask — a recurring negotiation gap worth pricing into any offer or listing strategy.

The retrade record

Lines that have traded more than once in the public record — the building’s appreciation arc, apartment by apartment.

C1007+145%
$479,000 2003$1,175,000 2021
B1103 · 800 sf+94%
$385,000 ($481/sf) 2012$745,000 ($931/sf) 2017
B1307 · 750 sf+83%
$420,000 2012$768,000 ($1,024/sf) 2015
C507 · 1,100 sf+68%
$725,000 2008$1,220,000 ($1,109/sf) 2019
E1007+67%
$485,000 ($606/sf) 2010$785,000 2018$810,000 2022

Other recent transfers

DateUnitPrice
Mar 2, 2016B1707$808,000
Apr 19, 2011E190$415,000
Dec 9, 2009902$195,000

Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 1-00315-0001) 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.

What to know if you’re buying

The case for buying here is space and value inside a sound, fully reconstituted cooperative. You are buying a full-equity co-op — resale prices are market-driven, not capped, so appreciation accrues to the owner. Carrying charges are intentionally low, a structural feature of the cooperative's not-for-profit management that materially improves monthly affordability versus comparably sized homes elsewhere. Pets are welcome and subletting is permitted after the building's holding period, which gives owners flexibility uncommon at conservative co-ops. Expect a standard cooperative board package and interview, a customary down-payment requirement, and a transfer fee due on resale. We help buyers underwrite the maintenance, read the building's financials, and target the lines and exposures that hold value.

What to know if you’re selling

Lead with value and scale. Few Manhattan buildings offer genuine two- and three-bedroom homes with river or skyline views at this price point, and that is the headline a resale here should own. The reconstituted, full-equity structure is a selling point — buyers get market ownership with the low carrying charges of a labor cooperative, a combination that is increasingly hard to find. Position against Cooperative Village and the broader Lower East Side, not uptown co-ops, and benchmark to the floor, exposure, and renovation level of recent trades in the same line. With a large, active shareholder base, well-prepared listings in desirable lines move; the building's stability and amenity package do real work in the marketing.

Comparable buildings

If you're considering 409 Grand Street, also evaluate other Lower East Side cooperative and condominium inventory:

Preparing a board package for this building?

The full playbook — what goes in the package, how boards read your financials, the interview, and the timeline — plus sample cover, reference, and personal letters you can adapt.

How to read the facts on this page. Items attributed to an offering plan describe the building as it was offered at that filing — unit mix, square footage, the amenity program as planned. They are not a statement about how the building operates today. Tax and compliance figures are sourced separately to current City records and carry their own dates. House rules, staffing and fee policy can change by board resolution without any public filing: treat every policy line here as a starting point for diligence and confirm it with the managing agent. Where this page compares one building or neighborhood to another, that is our analysis of the recorded record — it names the measure, the period and the sample it rests on, and it is an observation about medians rather than a prediction about any particular apartment.

Considering a move at Part of the Seward Park Cooperative?

Request a private building brief with the relevant comparable sales, current and off-market availability, and an apartment-specific view of value.

Prefer to speak directly? Schedule a consultation →
Corey Cohen, Principal · The Roebling Team at Compass
646.939.7375 · c.cohen@compass.com