480 Degraw Street

The building wraps the corner: eighty-five feet along Degraw, a hundred and twenty-one down Bond, with a twenty-foot notch at the southeast corner. Four stories and fifty feet of height, a single elevator, a cellar, and a penthouse level. The plan is candid that its own unit designations — 1A through 1D, 3A through 3F, and PHA through PHC — do not correspond to Department of Buildings floor numbers, so a buyer reading a floor plan and a certificate of occupancy side by side should expect them to disagree.

Three residence types. The ground-floor homes (1A–1D) run from the cellar through the first floor and a mezzanine, with private rear yards from roughly 85 to 722 square feet, front yards on some, and balconies — a townhouse configuration inside a condominium. The middle group (3A–3F) are upper duplexes with balconies and private roof decks of up to about 513 square feet. The three penthouses take the top floor, with terraces from roughly 89 to 410 square feet under 10'-2" ceilings. Interior areas run from about 1,228 square feet at the smallest to roughly 1,987 at unit 1A, which reaches about 3,287 counting its cellar level; bedroom counts run from two to four.

Construction is reinforced concrete over corrugated metal deck on a foundation of timber piles with waterproofing membranes — a consequential detail on a site this close to the water. Floors are engineered wood over an adhesive and vapor-barrier layer with sound attenuation; terraces and roof decks are porcelain pavers; heating and cooling runs through a fan-coil and split system with interior air handlers.

There are no employees. Janitorial service is provided through the managing agent and a superintendent cleans twice a week. There is no lobby attendant and no gym. The common program is the roof deck — roughly 1,050 to 1,091 square feet with two shared outdoor kitchens and grills — the bike room for fourteen bicycles in the cellar, one elevator, and the robotic garage.

That garage is the operating story. A twenty-one-space automated system is specialized machinery with its own maintenance contract, its own downtime risk and its own eventual replacement cost. Determine the allocation between the garage unit, licensees and residential owners from the governing documents. The offering plan carries an annual maintenance contract with the system's manufacturer, and the garage licensees pay a separate common-charge pool on top of the building's general charges. Any buyer — whether or not they want a parking license — should ask for the garage's service history, its uptime record, the current maintenance agreement, and whether the sponsor has yet assigned the garage unit to the Board.

The reserve posture in the plan was a budget line sized at roughly ten percent of the operating budget, consistent with secondary-market mortgage guidelines. That is a starting position, not a track record. First closings were in 2022; ask for the current budget, the actual reserve balance, and any assessment history since.

The second amendment on file, dated February 2022, added a flat prohibition on e-bikes and lithium-ion battery charging anywhere in or near the building, including the garage, and requires owners who lease to carry that prohibition into the lease. In a building whose ground floor is an enclosed automated garage, that is a sensible rule and a real restriction for a household that relies on an electric bike.

This is the section a buyer at this address should read first, and it needs to be stated precisely, because the record contains both more and less than the neighborhood's reputation suggests.

What is documented on the site. The offering plan discloses that Hydro Tech Environmental, Corp. prepared a Phase II environmental site assessment dated August 16, 2016 which identified semi-volatile organic compounds and organic vapors in the soil, and that a vapor barrier beneath the foundation was designed and installed to mitigate those conditions. The plan also states that the property carries no environmental restrictions or environmental designations from the New York City Department of Environmental Protection or other authorities with jurisdiction. Independently, no (E) designation, restrictive declaration, active remediation program, site management plan or environmental easement appears in the plan, and the foundation is described as timber piles with waterproofing membranes and seals against water and vapor infiltration. There is no sub-slab depressurization system described — the mitigation is the passive barrier.

What the plan does not address. The offering plan does not mention the Gowanus Canal, the Environmental Protection Agency, or the canal's Superfund status anywhere. That is a documented public fact independent of the plan: the EPA added the Gowanus Canal to the Superfund National Priorities List on March 2, 2010, describing it as one of the most contaminated water bodies in the country, and the canal runs a few hundred feet east of the building, in the channel between the Bond Street and Nevins Street lot lines. Dredging and capping work under that program has been underway on the canal for years, and it is an ongoing construction condition in this part of Brooklyn — barge traffic, staging areas, street work and the associated noise — as well as a long-term amenity argument once complete.

What that adds up to. The site's own soil findings are disclosed and were addressed at construction with a passive vapor barrier; the plan's summary does not say where those compounds came from, so source and pathway are questions for the Phase II report itself. The canal is a separate matter: a federal cleanup site a short walk away, with construction impacts today and a different waterfront on the other side of them. The plan does record that the property sits in FEMA Zone X — outside the special flood hazard area — which is worth knowing on a parcel this close to the water. A buyer who wants more than the plan's two-paragraph disclosure should ask for the 2016 Phase II report itself and for the as-built documentation of the vapor barrier, and should read the EPA's current schedule for the canal reach nearest the property.

Ownership form: Condominium. There is no ground lease or leasehold in the documents on file.

Transfers: No board approval and no right of first refusal. The by-laws permit conveyance or lease free of any restriction, conditional only on clearing violations against the unit and paying outstanding common charges. The only stated purchaser restriction in the plan is that the offer was made to persons over eighteen.

Leasing: Unrestricted, provided the lease subjects the tenant to the declaration, by-laws and house rules. There is no minimum lease term in the documents on file.

Pied-à-terre and investor ownership: Expressly permitted, and the plan warns that a substantial share of owners may always be non-residents. That is a risk disclosure in the plan and a feature for some buyers; either way it is a fact about the building.

Pets: Permitted with nuisance limits — dogs leashed in common areas, owners required to clean up. No breed or weight cap in the documents on file.

Flip tax: None documented in the plan or amendments on file.

Working capital: Two months of common charges at closing.

Parking licenses: 49-year revocable licenses, $180,000 per space under the first amendment, sublicensing permitted as revised, renewal after the term capped at a nominal fee plus costs. Six licenses restricted to building occupants under Zoning Resolution section 25-412, with limited short-term sublicensing to non-occupants. Licenses are not deeded real property and should not be underwritten as if they were.

Real estate taxes — no exemption on record. No 421-a, J-51 or other exemption or abatement appears on any of the building's 14 unit lots in Department of Finance exemption records for tax years 2021 through 2027, and the FY2027 assessment roll shows zero exempt value on every unit lot. The offering plan does not discuss 421-a at all, in either direction. What the plan does carry is an explicit warning from its tax consultant that first-year taxes were projected on a partially completed building and may increase significantly once construction value is added, with the Department of Finance holding three years from the certificate of occupancy to do so. That warning has now run its course, and a buyer should underwrite the current actual bill on the specific unit, which is where any abatement would appear, rather than any projection.

Recent sales

Recent closings 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. Most recent trades (2024) cleared a median $1,278/sf (recorded) across 1 sale. Median listing discount -1.6% over ask.

Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00423-7501; each condominium apartment is its own tax lot). 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 from recorded condo declarations and offering plans.

Every city record says 280 Bond Street. All fourteen tax lots, the PLUTO record, and the assessment roll use the Bond Street address; the condominium's legal name is Degraw Gardens Condominium. The building you are buying is 480 Degraw. Expect appraisals, title work and data pulls to reflect the Bond Street address.

Measure your car before you buy a license. Seventy-three inches of height on most licenses, seventy-eight on five, with width, length and weight limits. Many SUVs will not fit. And the license is a 49-year revocable license, not deeded real property — finance and underwrite it accordingly.

Ask who owns the garage unit today. The sponsor retained it with a right to assign it to the Board. Whether that has happened, and on what terms, changes who bears the system's maintenance and eventual replacement.

Read the environmental file, not the reputation. The site's own disclosure is a 2016 Phase II finding SVOCs and organic vapors in the soil, mitigated with a vapor barrier under the foundation, with no city environmental designation on the lot. The Gowanus Canal Superfund site is a separate, nearby matter with active cleanup construction. Ask for the Phase II report and the vapor-barrier documentation.

Verify the garage cost allocation. Thirteen residences and a separate garage unit do not establish thirteen equal payers; licensees have a separate common-charge pool, and the governing documents determine the remaining obligations. Read the operating budget, the actual reserve balance, the garage maintenance contract, and any assessment history since the 2022 closings.

The absence of a right of first refusal cuts both ways. It removes a step from buying and selling here, though leasing by owners is still permitted only with conditions. It also means no mechanism exists to shape who owns or occupies the building, and the plan expressly contemplates a substantial non-resident ownership share.

No e-bike or lithium battery charging anywhere, including the garage, under the second amendment on file — and if you lease your unit, you must write that into the lease.

Sell the composition. Four bedrooms, eighteen-foot ceilings, a private yard or roof deck, and a parking space, in Carroll Gardens, without a board. Very few Brooklyn condominiums can put that sentence together.

Lead with the governance. No board approval, no right of first refusal, no flip tax, leasing permitted with conditions, and expressly permitted investor and pied-à-terre ownership. For LLC purchasers, foreign buyers, trusts and investors that is a shorter path to closing; confirm entity-ownership rules in the declaration and bylaws, and put it in the first paragraph of the setup.

Get ahead of the address and the canal. Buyers will find 280 Bond Street in the records and the Superfund listing in a search. Both have clean, documented explanations — provide them rather than letting them surface in diligence.

Have the garage file ready. Service history, maintenance contract, uptime, license terms, vehicle dimensions, and who owns the garage unit. A prepared answer turns the building's most distinctive feature into an asset rather than a question.

Price by unit, not by building. Thirteen homes in a single 2022 sellout leaves a shallow same-building record; interior area, outdoor area, level and parking will carry the argument further than any average.

If you're considering 480 Degraw Street, also evaluate:

• 344 Degraw Street — first-wave Carroll Gardens condominium on the same street, closer to Court and Smith; the older, larger alternative with a documented façade history
• 345 Carroll Street — ground-up Carroll Gardens condominium; the closest peer by neighborhood and construction type
• 145 President Street — ground-up condominium in the same pocket; a comparable boutique new-construction alternative
• Sackett Union (291 Union Street) — 2013 ground-up condominium on the Carroll Gardens–Gowanus seam; the nearest larger new-construction building
• Timber House (670 Union Street) — Gowanus new-construction condominium and the neighborhood's most architecturally ambitious recent building; the design-led alternative
• 229 9th Street (Luna) — ground-up condominium on the far side of the canal; useful for how Gowanus-adjacent new construction prices
• Court Street Lofts (505 Court Street) — loft conversion in Carroll Gardens; the converted-industrial alternative at similar scale
• The Arches at Cobble Hill (401 Hicks Street) — adaptive reuse of a 19th-century parish complex; the character-driven alternative one neighborhood west
• 110 Warren Street (Columbia Commons) — ground-up condominium on the Columbia Waterfront; a comparable low-rise, outdoor-space-heavy building
• The Brooklyn Grove (10 Nevins Street) — ground-up condominium at the Boerum Hill edge; the full-amenity, larger-building alternative