500 4 Avenue

The building is a twelve-story slab on a corner site of roughly 20,200 square feet, with about 158,000 square feet of built area in a C4-4D commercial district — a floor-area ratio well above what the residential districts one block east permit, which is exactly what the 2003 rezoning intended. The long elevation runs down Fourth Avenue; the shorter one turns onto 12th Street, and the corner condition gives the units at that end two exposures.

Unit composition follows the corridor formula of its period: 156 apartments across twelve floors, weighted toward studios, one-bedrooms and two-bedrooms, with a small number of larger and higher-floor units carrying the top of the range. Non-residential space occupies part of the base — four units on the tax roll are not residential, and at least one commercial unit has traded on its own — which means the ground floor is retail rather than lobby-and-garden, and the residential entry is a lobby off the street rather than a stoop.

Exposure is the differentiator here more than in most buildings. Fourth Avenue is wide, loud and bright; 12th Street is quieter and lower; higher floors get the light and the distance from the traffic that lower ones do not. In a building of this kind, floor and orientation typically explain more of the price spread than finish level does.

No offering plan for this condominium is held in The Roebling Research Library, and no amenity program is documented in the public filings reviewed. Rather than describe amenities that may or may not exist, this page states the gap: ask management directly what the building carries in the way of staffing, roof access, storage, bicycle room, fitness space and parking, and get it in writing before it goes into a listing.

The condominium is professionally managed. The building's Department of Housing Preservation and Development registration names EBMG LLC as managing agent and 500 4th Avenue Condominium as the corporate owner.

The operating question that dominates everything else here is the tax abatement. The Department of Finance assessment rolls carry a 421-a-family exemption code on the residential unit lots from the 2010/11 roll forward, and through the published roll years reviewed the exempt value tracked nearly the whole assessed value — meaning owners have been paying real estate taxes on a small fraction of what the units are assessed at. That is the reason monthly carrying costs in this building have looked low relative to the sale price, and it is a temporary condition by design. A 421-a benefit runs for a fixed term and steps down in its final years, and when it finishes the tax line resets to the full assessment.

This page does not assert when that happens for this building, because the benefit's start year, term length and step-down schedule are not established by the records reviewed, and guessing at them would be worse than useless. What it does assert is the method: pull the current Department of Finance property tax bill for the specific unit, read the abatement line, note the remaining years and the step-down percentage, and model the fully taxed monthly alongside the current one. Any buyer who skips that step in a Fourth Avenue building of this vintage is underwriting a number that will change.

Beyond taxes, the standard requests apply and are more important than usual in a building with no public offering plan: three years of financial statements, the current budget, the reserve balance and assessment history, the current Local Law 11 façade cycle, the owner-occupancy percentage, and the record of any litigation or open construction-defect claims. A building that took six years to move from sign-off to final certificate of occupancy has a construction file worth reading.

Recent sales

Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-01027-7501) 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.

Pull the tax bill first. The residential units carry a 421-a-family exemption. Find the remaining term and the step-down schedule on the current bill and model the fully taxed monthly before you write an offer.

Ask for the documents that are not public. There is no publicly available offering plan for this condominium. Request the declaration, by-laws, house rules, current budget, three years of financials, reserve balance and assessment history through the managing agent.

Confirm the owner-occupancy percentage. A corridor condominium of this size will have investor owners. Lenders will ask, and it can determine which loan products are available to you.

Weigh floor and exposure honestly. Fourth Avenue is a six-lane arterial. Visit the specific unit at rush hour with the windows open, and price the difference between the avenue side and the 12th Street side.

Read the construction file. The job signed off in 2010 and the final certificate of occupancy issued in 2016. Ask what accounted for the gap and whether any related claims or work remain open.

Lead with the resale record. This building has real transaction depth. Use it — a defensible per-square-foot range drawn from the building itself is stronger than any argument from the neighborhood.

Disclose the tax position clearly. A buyer will find the abatement. A seller who presents the current bill, the remaining term and the fully taxed projection controls the conversation; one who does not will negotiate against a worst-case assumption.

Sell the corridor, not the brownstone belt. The buyer for this unit is choosing new construction, an elevator and square footage over a walk-up floor-through. Position it against the avenue's other buildings, where it competes well.

Have the building package ready. With no public plan on file, the seller who can hand over financials, budget and house rules at the first showing removes the building's main friction.

If you're considering 500 Fourth Avenue, also evaluate:

• 343 4 Avenue — the direct corridor comparison further north on the same avenue
• 445 5th Avenue — large Park Slope condominium one avenue east; the amenity-tier alternative
• 205 12th Street — six-unit boutique condominium a block west on the same street, for buyers who want new construction at small scale
• 10 Nevins Street (The Brooklyn Grove) — Boerum Hill new-construction condominium with a full amenity program
• 11 Hoyt Street — the amenity benchmark for new Brooklyn condominium product
• 505 Court Street (Court Street Lofts) — Carroll Gardens loft conversion at comparable scale, for buyers weighing prewar volume against new construction
• 291 Union Street (Sackett Union) — Carroll Gardens boutique condominium west of the canal