Ritz Tower (465 Park Avenue)
465 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022
Midtown East
BBL 1013127502 · BIN 1036903
- Year built
- 1926
- Type
- Condop
- Units
- 134
- Floors
- 41
- Landmark
- No
Every recorded sale at this building, 2003–2026
Bedroom-by-bedroom medians, the full transfer record, and how units trade against ask.
- 2BR median
- $550K
- Recent range
- $125K – $4.5M
- Listing discount
- 16.2%
- Recorded transfers
- 152
The Ritz Tower was the first residential skyscraper in New York and, on completion in 1926, the tallest residential building in the city. Arthur Brisbane commissioned it, Emery Roth designed it with Thomas Hastings, and the Ritz-Carlton Company was brought in to lend its name and run the restaurants and the service. The building was an apartment hotel by legal category — suites without full kitchens, meals and housekeeping supplied by the house — which is precisely how it achieved a height and slenderness that a conventional apartment house of 1926 could not.
That regulatory origin is not a historical footnote. It is the reason the tower is 41 stories on a corner lot of roughly 10,250 square feet, with a built floor-area ratio around 24 against a residential FAR of 10 today. Nothing of this bulk could be built on this lot now. The building's massing, its terraces at the setbacks, and the light and outlook that come with them are grandfathered conditions, and they are a substantial part of what a buyer is acquiring.
Ownership changed hands early. Brisbane sold to William Randolph Hearst roughly three years after completion, and Hearst lived in the building. It was converted to cooperative ownership in December 1955, with shareholders in occupancy from 1956 — and, unusually for a conversion of that period, the hotel service model was kept rather than dismantled. The building is designated an individual New York City landmark, designated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission on October 29, 2002.
The structural fact most often missed sits in the tax record. The Ritz Tower is not a condominium, and it is not a plain cooperative either. It is a condop: a two-unit condominium in which the entire residential tower — 134 apartments across roughly 212,500 square feet — is a single condominium unit owned by The Ritz Tower, Inc., the cooperative corporation, while the commercial base is a second condominium unit under separate ownership. Buyers purchase shares and a proprietary lease. Everything that follows from cooperative ownership follows here: board approval, board discretion over financing and subletting, and a share allocation rather than a common-interest percentage. But the building's real estate taxes, its commercial income and its capital relationship to the base are governed by a condominium declaration recorded in January 1991 and amended in 1993 and 1997. Reading only the co-op documents, or only the condominium declaration, gives an incomplete picture of the economics.
Architecture and unit composition
Roth and Hastings organized the tower in five diminishing stages. A limestone commercial base carries neo-classical ornament at the street; above it the shaft rises in setbacks that produce terraces at each transition and culminates in obelisks and a pyramidal crown. The setback terraces were a genuine innovation in 1926 and they remain the defining amenity of the upper stack.
The apartment plans reflect the apartment-hotel origin and seven decades of subsequent combination. Because the building was designed as suites rather than as full apartments, the floor plates were not laid out on a repeating line-by-line logic, and combinations over the cooperative era have produced a genuinely non-standard inventory. Department of Buildings filings carry a dwelling-unit count that has drifted between 133 and 140 across recent decades, which is the documentary trace of that process. The practical consequence is that no two apartments here are reliably comparable, and building-average pricing is close to meaningless.
The commercial base is a separate condominium unit. Its retail and office space — roughly 34,215 square feet by the Department of Finance record — is separately owned, separately taxed and separately capitalized. A buyer should understand where the boundary between the residential unit and the commercial unit falls, and what the declaration says about shared systems, façade responsibility and cost allocation between the two.
Building operations
The building operates on a hotel-derived service model that survived the 1955 conversion. That is the building's principal differentiator among Park Avenue cooperatives and also its principal cost driver: staffed service at that level is expensive per apartment, and the maintenance charge should be evaluated on that basis rather than against a conventional prewar co-op benchmark.
Landmark designation adds a second operating layer. Because the Ritz Tower is individually designated, any exterior work — including façade and parapet restoration, window replacement, terrace repairs and storefront changes at the base — requires Landmarks Preservation Commission review before Department of Buildings permits issue. For a 41-story limestone and brick tower with an ornamental crown, that means Local Law 11 cycles are slower and more expensive than they would be on an undesignated building of the same age. Buyers should ask for the current façade cycle status, the most recent engineer's report, and any assessment history tied to exterior work.
The condominium structure adds a third. The commercial unit's obligations under the declaration, and any shared-systems arrangements between the residential and commercial units, are the kind of thing that surfaces in a capital event rather than in a routine year. Both the cooperative's financial statements and the condominium declaration should be read together in diligence.
Policy framework
Ownership form: Cooperative shares and a proprietary lease, issued by The Ritz Tower, Inc., which in turn owns the residential unit of a two-unit condominium. Purchases require board approval and a board package. Expect a cooperative timeline, not a condominium one.
Financing, subletting, pied-à-terre, LLC and trust purchases: Governed by the cooperative's bylaws, house rules and board policy. These are not established in any document reviewed for this page, and they should not be assumed from the building type. Confirm the current financing ceiling, minimum down payment, sublet policy, pied-à-terre policy and flip tax with the managing agent before making an offer.
Landmark constraint: Individually designated. Exterior alterations require LPC review. Interior alterations are not landmark-regulated unless an interior designation applies, which it does not here.
Real estate taxes: Class 2 cooperative assessment on the residential unit. No 421-a, J-51 or 485-x benefit applies. The small residual exemption in the roll is not a program abatement and should not be modeled as one.
Local Law 97
- 2024–2029 annual penalty
- $11,707/yr
- 2030–2034 annual penalty
- $200,790/yr
- Per unit / month range
- $7 – $125
Source: NYC LL84 benchmarking and PLUTO · The Roebling Research Library. City record last verified September 2026.
See full Local Law 97 analysis — emissions history, scenarios, methodology →Facade safety — Local Law 11
The latest available filing classified the facade as Unsafe — conditions requiring corrective action, which under FISP means a protective sidewalk shed and repairs. Review the subsequent filings, the repair status, and the building’s board and financial materials — we pull the repair scope and funding picture for you.
How to read this, and where it comes from
QEWI = Qualified Exterior Wall Inspector — the licensed engineer the city requires to sign the report (the independent expert, not the managing agent).
Source: NYC DOB facade filings (FISP) · The Roebling Research Library. City record last verified September 2026.
Recent sales
The Ritz Tower trades as a landmark prewar Park Avenue cooperative with a hotel-service overlay, which places it in a small and idiosyncratic peer group. Pricing here is driven by the specific apartment far more than by the building: the apartment-hotel floor plates and decades of combination mean square footage, ceiling height, terrace access and layout coherence vary enormously between homes that sit on the same stack.
On a per-room basis the building prices in the upper band for Midtown East and lower Park Avenue cooperatives, and the setback terraces on the upper floors command a distinct premium that is not reflected in room counts at all. Buyers accustomed to condominium underwriting should account for the cooperative's maintenance charge covering underlying taxes and a service level well above the market norm, which makes a raw comparison of monthly figures against condominium common charges plus taxes misleading in both directions.
The right comparable set is the small group of full-service prewar Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue cooperatives with landmark constraints and heavy staffing, not the newer Midtown condominium towers within a few blocks, whose policy framework, tax posture and buyer pool are structurally different. Index market statements to the last complete year rather than to partial-year data, which is thin in a building of this size and inventory turnover. Unit-level transaction history is maintained in The Roebling Research Library and shared with clients during diligence.
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.
| Date | Unit | Apartment | Price | PPSF | vs. Ask |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 30, 2026 | 8A | 2 BR · 2 BA | $550,000 | off-mkt | |
| Jun 24, 2026 | 26C | 1 BR · 1 BA | $320,000 | -1.5% | |
| Jun 1, 2026 | 409 | 1 BR · 1.5 BA | $500,000 | -16.5% | |
| May 11, 2026 | 8E | 2 BR · 2 BA · 1,200 sf | $375,000 | $313/sf | off-mkt |
| Jan 23, 2026 | 34E | 2 BR · 2 BA | $525,000 | -11.8% | |
| Jan 22, 2026 | 504 | 2 BR · 2 BA · 1,100 sf | $450,000 | $409/sf | -35.3% |
| Jan 15, 2026 | 406 | 1 BA | $450,000 | -5.3% | |
| Sep 11, 2025 | 6E | 2 BR · 2 BA | $450,000 | off-mkt |
Market read. Most recent trades (2026) cleared a median $446/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount 6.9% 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.
Full closing history with price-per-square-foot over time, the complete retrade record, and every line that has traded.
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 1-01312-7502) 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; square footage on co-ops is not officially recorded, figures shown are approximate.
What to know if you’re buying
Know what you are buying. These are cooperative shares, not condominium units, notwithstanding the condominium number that appears in city data. The condominium exists to separate the commercial base from the residential tower. Board approval, board discretion and cooperative closing mechanics all apply.
Get the policy stack in writing. Financing ceiling, minimum down, sublet rules, pied-à-terre policy and flip tax are not established in the public record for this building. Ask the managing agent and confirm against the bylaws and house rules before you write an offer.
Read the condominium declaration alongside the co-op financials. The January 1991 declaration and its 1993 and 1997 amendments govern the relationship with the commercial unit — including façade, shared systems and cost allocation. That relationship is invisible in the cooperative's own documents.
Budget for landmark-constrained exterior work. Individual designation means LPC review precedes DOB permits on any exterior project. Ask for the façade cycle status and any assessment history.
No two apartments are alike. The apartment-hotel plan and seven decades of combinations mean line-to-line comparables mostly do not exist. Price the specific home.
Terraces are the scarce asset. The setback terraces are a product of a 1926 massing that cannot be rebuilt. They carry their own maintenance and LPC obligations, and they are the building's clearest premium.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the building's position in the record. First residential skyscraper in New York, tallest residential building in the city at completion, Emery Roth with Thomas Hastings, individually designated in 2002. That is a documented argument, not a marketing claim.
Explain the condop up front. Buyers and their attorneys will find the condominium number and be confused by it. Getting ahead of that with a clean explanation removes friction from the board package stage.
Sell the service model. The retained hotel-derived service is the reason the maintenance is what it is. Presented as a feature with its cost explained, it converts; discovered late, it becomes an objection.
Comparable selection matters more here than almost anywhere. Given the inventory's variability, pricing from a building average will misprice in one direction or the other. Argue from the specific plan.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering the Ritz Tower, also evaluate:
- The Sherry-Netherland — the closest structural peer in Manhattan: a 1927 landmark apartment-hotel tower with retained hotel services, operating as a cooperative
- The Pierre — 1930 apartment-hotel tower with a live hotel operation alongside cooperative apartments; the same hybrid problem in a different configuration
- Hampshire House — Central Park South apartment-hotel-era tower converted to cooperative ownership with a comparable service tradition
- The Carlyle — Upper East Side landmark tower with hotel and residential uses in one building; the nearest analogue for mixed-use complexity
- 475 Park Avenue — Park Avenue cooperative immediately north; the conventional prewar co-op alternative on the same avenue
- 470 Park Avenue — across the avenue; prewar cooperative at a different scale and service level
- 480 Park Avenue — full-service prewar Park Avenue cooperative; the direct policy comparison
- 500 Park Avenue — postwar condominium a few blocks north; the tenure and tax contrast
- 432 Park Avenue — the modern condominium tower two blocks south; the opposite end of the Park Avenue spectrum in every respect
- 110 East 57th Street — same corridor on 57th Street; the postwar alternative with different approval mechanics
The neighborhood
For the full corridor — architecture, schools, transit, and pricing across Park Avenue — read The Roebling Team Guide to Park Avenue.
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.
Considering a move at The Ritz Tower?
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 The Ritz Tower 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.