565 Broadway

The Broadway and Prince elevations are the original Kellum work: an East Chester marble front over a cast-iron ground-floor storefront with Corinthian columns, arranged in the Renaissance-palazzo rhythm that Broadway's mid-century commercial architecture made standard. LPC's building database records stone as the primary material and brick as the secondary, which is the record's way of describing the marble base and the 1893 brick attic above. Despite the district's name, this is not a cast-iron-fronted building — the cast iron is at street level, the marble carries the composition, and buyers who have been told they are buying "a cast-iron loft" are buying something rarer and older than that.

The apartments are what nineteenth-century commercial construction produces when it is left alone: roughly 46,180 square feet of residential area divided among ten or eleven units, which puts most of them at or near a full floor of about 4,600 to 5,000 square feet. Column-free spans are not on offer — cast-iron Corinthian columns run through the interiors and are part of the architecture rather than an obstacle to be removed. Ceilings are tall, windows are oversized on both the Broadway and Prince exposures, and the elevators are keyed to open directly into the lofts. The building appeared as the setting for the first season of The Real World: New York in 1992, which is the most widely circulated image of what a loft in this building looks like.

Buyers should expect wide variation in condition. A cooperative that converted in 1979 with its loft tenants in place has apartments that were renovated across four decades and apartments that were not, and the spread between them at this scale is the largest single driver of price.

This is a small, self-contained building rather than a serviced one. There is no doorman and no amenity program; the elevators are key-locked, which is the security model. Department of Buildings filings across the past twenty-five years read as ordinary stewardship of an old masonry building — boiler and oil-burner replacements in 2001 and 2004–2005, façade work with sidewalk sheds and scaffold in 2005 and 2007, water-tank and standpipe modernization with new sprinkler and domestic services in 2011, window replacement at the east and north elevations filed in 2012, and repeated interior alteration filings on individual floors. Exterior work requires Landmarks approval, which lengthens timelines and raises unit costs on any façade or window cycle.

Because no financial statements for this cooperative are on file with us, we make no representation about reserves, the underlying mortgage, assessments or capital planning. Those are the documents to request first.

Financing is capped at 80 percent — a 20 percent minimum down payment — per the management-sourced policy record. That is at the permissive end for a Manhattan cooperative and a meaningful advantage over the 50 and 65 percent ceilings common in prewar houses uptown.

Subletting is permitted with board approval and appears to be renewable. The published fee schedule carries a subtenant application processing fee of $600, a $20 credit-check fee for each additional adult, refundable move-in and move-out deposits of $1,000 each, and — the telling item — a separate $300 sublet renewal fee. Buildings that permit only a single fixed sublet term do not publish renewal fees.

Purchase mechanics are a board package and interview, on published fees. A $650 non-refundable application fee, $150 per adult for credit reporting, and refundable $1,000 move-in and move-out deposits. The schedule also now carries a $40 registered-mail fee, which exists because New York City's 2026 cooperative application law requires a co-op to acknowledge a completed application in writing within fifteen days and to decide within forty-five days of that acknowledgment. That law materially shortens what used to be an open-ended timeline, and buyers should hold the building to it.

Post-closing liquidity, the flip tax, pied-à-terre use, and trust and LLC ownership are not documented in any source available to us. No offering plan, proprietary lease or house rules for this building exist in either library. What the public record shows is only this: every one of the twelve recorded share transfers since 2006 ran to named individuals, and no entity or trust appears as a purchaser. That is consistent with a restriction, and it is not proof of one. All four of these terms must be obtained from the managing agent before an offer is priced, and none of them should be assumed from the norms of neighboring buildings.

Recent sales

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.

Market read. $/sf is measured on the latest sales with reliable square footage (2021): a median $692/sf across 1 sale. The building has traded as recently as 2024. Median listing discount 8.3% 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 1-00498-0005) 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.

Settle the IMD question before anything else. The Department of Buildings record flags this building under Loft Board jurisdiction, and the June 2023 City settlement exempts current and former IMDs from artist certification, from converting JLWQA to Use Group 2, and from the $100-per-square-foot Arts Fund contribution. On a full-floor loft that exemption is worth roughly half a million dollars. Have counsel confirm the building's and the specific unit's status with the Loft Board — not with the seller, and not with the listing.

Read the retail lease. One ground-floor tenant on a prime Broadway corner underwrites a meaningful share of the building's income across ten or eleven shareholders. Term, escalations, expiry, renewal options and the tenant's credit are all material to your maintenance five years from now.

Get the documents, because we don't have them. No offering plan, proprietary lease, house rules or financial statements for this cooperative are held in either library. The flip tax, post-closing liquidity requirement, pied-à-terre policy and position on trusts and LLCs are all unknown to us and must come from the managing agent. Treat any figure quoted from memory or from a listing as unverified.

Budget for Landmarks on anything exterior. Windows, façade repointing, storefront changes and rooftop equipment all require a Landmarks permit in the SoHo–Cast Iron Historic District. That is a schedule cost as much as a dollar cost.

Underwrite the renovation, not the asking price. At 4,600 to 5,000 square feet, the difference between a finished loft and one that needs systems, kitchens, baths and egress work is the largest number in the transaction. Run the Renovation Cost Calculator before you decide what the apartment is worth, and remember that column placement and Landmarks review both constrain what is possible.

The financing ceiling is friendly; the board package is still a board package. Eighty percent financing is generous by Manhattan cooperative standards, but approval remains discretionary and requires a full package and an interview. Run the Co-op Board Qualification Calculator before offering.

Lead with the building, then the loft. Kellum, 1859, Ball, Black & Co., the marble front, the 1893 addition — this is one of the oldest and best-documented commercial buildings in SoHo, and the history is a genuine differentiator against the converted stock around it. Say plainly that it is marble rather than cast iron; the distinction is a point of interest, not a deficiency.

Neutralize the JLWQA question in advance. If the building's IMD record supports the exemption, get that documented before going to market. Left unaddressed it becomes a buyer's negotiating lever worth six figures; addressed up front it disappears.

Assemble the paper. Because no plan or financials for this building circulate in the usual libraries, a seller who arrives with the proprietary lease, the current financial statements, the retail lease summary and a written statement of the flip tax and sublet policy moves faster and holds price better than one who does not.

Price against condition, not against averages. In a market of ten or eleven full-floor lofts, comparables are thin and each one is idiosyncratic. Run the Renovation Cost Calculator against the buyer's likely scope and set the ask from that math.

If you're considering 565 Broadway, also evaluate:

• 92 Greene Street — SoHo–Cast Iron Historic District loft building with a Joseph Pell Lombardi association; the closest peer by conversion lineage
• 115 Mercer Street — boutique SoHo loft cooperative one block east
• 10 Greene Street — cast-iron loft building in the same district; the true cast-iron-front comparison
• 101 Wooster Street — SoHo loft cooperative of similar scale and vintage of conversion
• 105 Wooster Street — full-floor loft alternative a few blocks west
• 139 Wooster Street — SoHo loft building with comparable floor plates
• 15 Mercer Street — small loft cooperative on the same street grid
• 16 Crosby Street — boutique loft alternative on the district's eastern edge
• 113 Prince Street — the Prince Street comparison a block west
• 169 Spring Street — SoHo loft building one block south; similar scale, different exposure