439 Hicks Street (Cobble Hill Towers)
439 Hicks Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Cobble Hill, Brooklyn
BBL 3003107502 · BIN 3331327
- Year built
- 1876
- Type
- Condominium
- Units
- 72
- Floors
- 6
- Landmark
- Designated
- Pets
- Not documented in the plan materials reviewed — confirm the current rules and regulations at offer stage
- Flip tax
- 1% minimum seller-paid transfer fee to the association based on purchase price; purchasers of sponsor units contribute 2 months' common charges to working capital
- Financing
- Fannie Mae approved 2014-12-04; conventional lenders cleared at <=80% LTV; FHA eligibility contingent on owner-occupancy threshold
- Subletting
- standard condominium right of first refusal; lease-term minimums not documented in materials reviewed
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 2018-2019 (Amendment 39 reporting date)). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
439 Hicks Street is where it started. In 1876 Alfred Tredway White, then thirty years old, put up the Home Buildings at the corner of Hicks and Baltic to test a proposition he had brought back from English reform housing: that working families could be housed decently — private water closets, real windows, cross-ventilation, a courtyard for children — and that the resulting building could still return five percent to its owner. The Tower Buildings followed a block north in 1878–79, the Warren Place Workingmen's Cottages in 1878, Riverside on Columbia Place in 1890. Together they became the most-cited model-tenement enterprise in the country, and the Home Buildings are the prototype for all of it.
William Field & Son's plan is the whole argument in brick. Circulation was pulled out of the interior and expressed on the façade — stair towers and open iron balconies reaching the apartment doors — so that no apartment depended on a dark internal hall and every one could take air on more than one side. The buildings frame an interior court that was designed as usable ground for the residents, with covered space for children and, in White's own program, summer entertainment. It has been described as among the first semi-public communal space in New York housing, and it is still the amenity that residents talk about first.
The modern story is a conversion story. The White family held the complex into the twentieth century; it was sold in the 1940s and renamed Cobble Hill Towers; Frank Farella bought it in 1975 for $450,000 and put it through a restoration that ran into the mid-1980s. In 2010 Hudson Cobble Hill Towers LLC and Cobble Hill Towers Associates filed a non-eviction condominium plan, accepted for filing March 15, 2010 and declared effective in October 2011 once 28 of 186 offered units — the statutory fifteen percent — were under contract with tenants in occupancy or bona fide owner-occupant purchasers.
That fifteen percent threshold is the fact a buyer has to sit with. The plan expressly reserved to the sponsor an unconditional right to rent rather than sell any unsold unit, and warned that owner-occupants might never gain control. In practice the building has moved steadily toward owner control: by the thirty-ninth amendment 118 units had closed and four more were in contract across the condominium, 101 units were held by primary homeowners, the sponsor no longer controlled the board, and Fannie Mae had approved the building for its lending programs. Sixty-eight units remained unsold and occupied by rent-regulated tenants at that reporting date. The building is genuinely mixed — owners, investors, and long-tenured stabilized households — and the condominium's own documents are candid that those groups do not always want the same capital budget.
What the buyer gets in exchange is a landmarked building of real historical consequence at a price the rest of Cobble Hill does not offer, on a block that has been quiet since 1876 and cannot be redeveloped.
Architecture and unit composition
The Home Buildings group holds the Hicks and Baltic corner and wraps east along Baltic, enclosing the courtyard. Six stories of red brick, mid-1870s cut-brick and Neo-Grec detail, brick stair towers pierced with openings, and the iron balcony galleries that carry access across the elevations. The complex's spired roofline is the silhouette that reads from Baltic Street.
Apartments are compact and were laid out for air rather than for square footage. The plan's Schedule A records units in this group running from roughly 370 to 900 square feet, in studio, one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom-with-one-and-a-half-bath configurations. Original fireplaces and curved brick wall conditions survive in some apartments and recur in the building's resale inventory. Ceiling height, cross-ventilation and courtyard exposure are the qualities that carry these apartments; storage and closet counts are period-typical, meaning thin.
The conversion carried an explicit capital program across all nine buildings: masonry re-pointing and foundation-wall re-grouting, fire escape survey and repainting, replacement of bluestone stair treads, new parapet copings throughout, cellar remediation, new steam branch piping, courtyard paving and gates, exterior lighting, hallway renovation, and a master Landmarks approval for window replacement with new sash required to be reinstalled in the original frames. That work is now more than a decade behind, and the association's reserve study — analysis date January 2013 — is the document that governs what comes next.
Building operations
Nine buildings, one association, no doorman. Beyond common charges the association books laundry income, storage income from the seasonal air-conditioner program, and transfer fees. The reserve fund stood at roughly $457,000 at the end of 2017 against a nine-building reserve study; the 2018 budget set a required reserve contribution as a percentage of income and carried a total cash requirement of about $1.18 million.
Two structural items belong in any carrying-cost model. The sponsor's obligation to contribute three percent of each unit sale price to the association's capital reserve was fully satisfied at $1,293,948 and expired in January 2017 — that funding stream is closed. And because association staff have historically maintained sponsor-owned rental units, the sponsor reimburses a declining share of the association's labor cost that steps down with each unit sold; the share stood at 25 percent at the end of 2017, and the board may terminate the arrangement on thirty days' notice. Management history and current agent details are maintained in The Roebling Research Library and confirmed with clients during diligence.
Recent sales
Recent closings 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 17, 2019 | 1D | $505,000 |
| Jan 16, 2018 | 6D | $555,018.75 |
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00310-7502) 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
Get the current sponsor and owner-occupancy numbers. The plan permitted indefinite renting of unsold units. The trend has run toward owner control, but you underwrite today's schedule of unsold units and today's occupancy percentage, not a figure from an old amendment.
Confirm financing before you sign. Fannie Mae approval dates from 2014 and FHA eligibility turns on an owner-occupancy test. Re-confirm both at application.
It is a walk-up. No elevator appears in the condominium's capital documents. Evaluate the specific stair, the floor and the resale horizon honestly.
Read the reserve study and the assessment history. Nine 19th-century buildings, a modest reserve, and a sponsor capital contribution that ended in January 2017. This is where the diligence effort belongs.
Landmarks governs the envelope. Window replacement, façade repair and courtyard work all require Commission review — protection and constraint in the same breath.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the Home Buildings. This is White's first model-housing building, 1876, William Field & Son, inside the Cobble Hill Historic District — the origin point of a program that includes Warren Place and Riverside. Very few listings at this price have a provenance line at all.
Stage the courtyard. It is the amenity residents actually use and the feature that distinguishes the complex from every other walk-up in the borough. Photograph it in leaf.
Assemble the financing package early. Current Fannie Mae standing, owner-occupancy percentage and association financials, ready before the first showing, keep a financed buyer on schedule.
Document original detail. Fireplaces, brickwork and Landmarks-compliant windows are the quantifiable differentiators inside the complex.
Comp within the complex. Matched sales at 439, 443 Hicks and the Baltic Street buildings — same floor band, same exposure, same condition — are the anchors that survive scrutiny.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering Cobble Hill Towers, also evaluate:
- 417 Hicks Street — the Tower Buildings group of the same condominium, one block north; the direct in-complex comparison
- 401 Hicks Street (The Arches at Cobble Hill) — the church-and-academy conversion two blocks north; elevator and amenity at a higher tier on the same street
- 58 Strong Place (The Landmark at Strong Place) — 1851 church conversion; the boutique end of the Cobble Hill condo market
- 501 Hicks Street — former school conversion further south on the same street; institutional-stock peer
- 200 Congress Street — the district's large elevator co-op; the accessible-tier alternative in cooperative form
- 214 Clinton Street — small 1892 Romanesque Revival co-op; prewar walk-up character in a cooperative structure
- 145 President Street — boutique Carroll Gardens condominium a short walk south
- 344 Degraw Street — small-format Carroll Gardens condominium at overlapping price points
Considering a move at Cobble Hill Towers?
Request a private building brief with the relevant comparable sales, current and off-market availability, and an apartment-specific view of value.
Own an apartment here? See what it would sell for.
A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at Cobble Hill Towers 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.