52 East 4th Street (52E4)

The parcel is irregular. PLUTO records 5,793 square feet of lot area on a 43.59-foot East 4th Street frontage — the difference is the leg that runs through to the Bowery, which is why 351 and 353 Bowery resolve to this building in the city's address directory. Zoning is split, C6-1 over R8B, and recorded floor area works out to 4.62 times the lot area against a 3.44 residential and 6.00 commercial allowance — a simple comparison that does not establish legal zoning floor area or how the height was permitted.

Residential floors begin at four. Floors four and five are divided north and south, producing four smaller residences; floors six through twelve are single-residence plates; PH1, PH2 and PH3 occupy the top. The recorded unit schedule in ACRIS runs 1101 (4S) through 1114 (PH3) for the residences, 1115 through 1117 for the commercial units, and 1118 through 1121 for the four parking units. Parking is a separately owned condominium interest here, not a licence — a real distinction when a resale involves a space.

Interiors run to floor-to-ceiling glass, exposed beams and roughly 13-foot ceilings, with open kitchens finished in the mid-2000s downtown idiom. Several residences carry terraces. Because the plan is asymmetrical by design, floor-plate area and outdoor space vary meaningfully between lines, and building-average pricing is a poor guide to any specific unit.

52E4 runs as a small, part-staffed condominium: part-time doorman coverage, a building superintendent, video security, bicycle storage and the indoor garage. The pool deck is the operating centerpiece and a seasonal expense whose budget share should be checked against the actual accounts. Fourteen residences is a thin denominator for a serviced roof amenity and a garage, and prospective buyers should read the operating budget and the reserve position rather than the amenity list.

The building has now passed its fifteenth year of occupancy, which is the window in which a downtown glass-and-metal building of this vintage typically faces its first significant façade and roof cycle. Ask for the current Local Law 11 façade filing status, the roof and pool-deck waterproofing history, and any assessment history or open capital plan.

Ownership form: Condominium. Purchases run through the condominium's application and right-of-first-refusal process rather than a cooperative approval; confirm the procedure and timing in the declaration and bylaws.

Pied-à-terre, subletting, LLC, trust and foreign ownership: Not documented; confirm in the declaration, bylaws and house rules, including minimum lease terms and any registration requirement.

Pets and flip tax: Not documented in public records. Confirm both with the managing agent before pricing an offer or a sale.

Real estate taxes: The 421-a benefit is gone. DOF records show a ten-year, no-cap 421-a on the residential unit lots commencing in the 2011 tax year, phasing down across the decade and terminating at the end of its ten-year run. Residences are taxed at full assessment today. Any carrying-cost model built from a pre-2021 tax bill will be materially wrong; underwrite the current bill on the specific unit.

Commercial and institutional interests: Two of the three commercial units are tax-exempt in DOF records under a house-of-worship exemption. Understand how the condominium's common charges and any assessments are allocated between the residential and commercial sections before contract.

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 (2026 to date) cleared a median $1,654/sf (floor-adjusted) across 1 sale. Floor-adjusted means each sale is restated to a constant mix of floors, so the figure can differ from the plain median of the sales listed above. Median listing discount 2.6% from the last ask — a recurring negotiation gap worth pricing into any offer or listing strategy.

Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 1-00459-7502; 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.

Read the construction record, not the reputation. The architect of record was later barred from filing with the Department of Buildings over unrelated Brooklyn projects. The new-building job here was signed off by DOB in February 2010. Pull the DOB record and the certificate history yourself; it is public, and doing so converts an anxiety into a fact.

The commercial floors are a third of the building. Understand the common-charge allocation, the institutional and retail uses at the base, and what the commercial units' separate tax posture means for the residential section's share of any assessment.

Taxes are full and final. There is no abatement stepping up in the background. Model the current bill.

Confirm whether a parking unit is included. Parking here is a separately deeded condominium unit, and its presence or absence is one of the largest single value swings between otherwise similar residences.

Test the exposures. The neighbors to the east are landmarked and low, which protects light on that side. The Bowery side is a different story — evaluate what can be built adjacent before assuming a view.

Lead with the lot. Fourteen full-floor-scale residences with 13-foot ceilings, a rooftop pool and deeded parking on the edge of a historic district is a combination the surrounding blocks structurally cannot reproduce.

Present the tax position plainly. A fully burned-off abatement is a selling point against competing inventory whose taxes are scheduled to rise. Pair the current bill with a True Monthly Carrying Cost analysis.

Price by line, not by building. The asymmetrical plan means floor area, ceiling condition and terrace access vary more between units here than in a conventional stacked building. Building averages will misprice both directions.

If you're considering 52E4, also evaluate:

• 25 Bond Street — 2008 boutique NoHo condominium of the same development cycle and buyer profile
• 22 Bond Street — six full-floor duplex residences; the closest peer for scale and full-floor living in NoHo
• 1 Bond Street — the Robbins & Appleton Building; the landmarked loft-conversion alternative a block west
• 27 Great Jones Street — loft conversion of two 19th-century buildings; the prewar alternative at similar unit scale
• 250 Bowery — 2013 ground-up Bowery condominium; the newer, more conventionally stacked alternative
• 260 Bowery — ground-up condominium completed in 2021; the most recent new construction on the same corridor
• 195 Bowery — modern loft tower built above a former bank building; comparable ceiling heights, larger building
• 14 East 4th Street — The Silk Building; the large prewar loft conversion on the same street
• 445 Lafayette Street (Astor Place Tower) — 2005 Astor Place Tower; the other architecturally assertive downtown condominium of the era
• 21 Astor Place — 2003 conversion of an 1890 building; the loft-conversion alternative nearby