65 West 95th Street

The 1928 house is a plain, well-proportioned brick apartment building with an arched, awninged entrance and the interior fabric of its period — beamed ceilings, hardwood floors and moldings in the un-gutted lines. It carries no ornamental program worth cataloguing and no designation report to catalogue it from. The New Building application number, 144 of 1928, is the only primary handle we have on its origin; DOB's electronic job records for this address begin in 2000, and LPC has never surveyed it because it falls outside the historic district boundary.

The apartment stack runs A through G on the typical floor, above a garden level lettered on the same system, with three penthouses at the top. Layouts in a 1928 side-street building of this size run from studios and one-bedrooms through classic sixes, and the building has absorbed a great deal of combination work over the past two decades: DOB filings record apartment combinations in 2007 (a multi-line project covering more than a dozen units), 2008 (the two penthouses), 2011 (a seventh-floor pair, filed as a legalization of earlier work), and 2020 (a ninth-floor unit joined to a penthouse with an internal stair). That history likely accounts for at least part of why unit counts differ between sources, and is why line-by-line comparables here need to be read against a floor plan rather than a letter.

Staffing is modest and the operating statements show where the money goes: the largest single service line is a contracted lobby and security service, materially larger than the building's own payroll, alongside a live-in superintendent and porter staff. The building carries a central laundry room, bicycle storage, and rented private storage lockers, and management-sourced records describe a roof deck. There is no gym, no garage and no doorman payroll of the traditional kind.

DOB records show filings for façade repairs and a roof replacement in 2009, a new basement laundry room in 2014, an exterior restoration in 2016, a boiler burner retrofit and new chimney liner in 2017, and further façade work filed in 2023; the filings alone do not confirm completion or current condition. The audited statements for the most recent year on file record sidewalk replacement, Local Law 11 façade work and door replacement, plus a 50% deposit paid toward an elevator upgrade not complete at year-end. Ask directly whether that project has been finished and how it was funded.

Check the reserves against the capital work. Cash and the capital improvement fund together stood well under half a million dollars at the most recent year-end on file, against a building this size with a live Local Law 11 cycle and an elevator project in progress. The corporation also imposed a one-month assessment in 2019 to close a budget shortfall and offset a tax abatement passed through to shareholders, and raised maintenance 1.5% in 2019 and 5% in 2020. Taken together that describes a building funding capital work out of assessments and maintenance increases rather than a deep reserve — a legitimate way to run a co-op, and a fact a buyer should price; confirm the current position in the latest statements.

The underlying mortgage. The corporation refinanced with a co-operative bank on December 18, 2015 — a $4,750,000 first mortgage at 3.85%, ten-year term on a thirty-year amortization, maturing January 1, 2026, with a $500,000 revolving line that was undrawn at the most recent year-end on file. That maturity was handled ahead of time: ACRIS records a new first mortgage and companion line on November 21, 2025, with satisfactions of the prior loans the same day. The refinancing landed in a materially higher rate environment than 2015, and the debt-service line in the current budget is where that shows. Ask for the current year's budget rather than relying on the last audited statement.

Board package and interview. This is a cooperative: a purchaser buys shares in the corporation and a proprietary lease, and the sale is subject to board approval after a full package and an interview. The board is not required to give a reason for a rejection. Budget four to eight weeks from a fully signed contract to a board decision, and treat the package as the transaction's critical path.

Financing ceiling and post-closing liquidity. Neither is published, and neither is documented in the materials on file. Both are set by the board and both move. Establish the current maximum-financing percentage and the board's expectation for post-closing liquidity — commonly expressed as a multiple of the monthly maintenance and debt service — from the managing agent before making an offer, not after.

Flip tax. Documented in the by-laws as amended in 2006 and set by the board within a 0%–2% band; most recently set at 0% in the audited statements on file. A board can restore it. On a sale of any size the difference between 0% and 2% is real money, and the answer belongs in the seller's net sheet from day one.

Subletting. Permitted with conditions: reported permitted with board approval and, once residency has been established, without a fixed term limit. Confirm it in writing, because boards can revise sublet policy.

Pied-à-terre, trusts and entities. Pieds-à-terre and co-purchasing are reported permitted. Purchases in the name of a trust or an LLC are a separate question not established in the materials reviewed for this profile; boards that welcome pieds-à-terre often still require an individual on the proprietary lease with a personal guarantee. Ask the managing agent for the board's written position on trust and entity ownership.

Unsold shares. With nine apartments held by the holder of unsold shares at the most recent year-end on file, some of them occupied by rent-regulated tenants, a lender's sponsor-concentration test is a live question. Confirm the current count before you rely on a pre-approval.

None of these terms is published by the corporation. All of them come from the managing agent, and all of them should be re-confirmed for your transaction.

65 West 95th Street has used the J-51 program repeatedly across five decades, which is itself a signal about how the building funds capital work. DOF's historical J-51 records show grants in 1974 (twelve years at a 90% abatement), 1982 (extended to fourteen years), 2006 (fourteen years, on roughly $152,000 of qualifying alteration cost, with the pool exhausted around tax year 2017), and 2014 (fourteen years, on roughly $92,000). DOF's current abatement detail carries a J-51 on the lot with a benefit window running January 1, 2015 through December 31, 2034, present in the rolls through the most recent year available.

Two cautions. A J-51 abatement is capped by the abatable cost of the improvement and stops when that pool runs out regardless of the stated window — the 2014 grant's remaining pool was small enough by the end of the published historical series that it may already be exhausted. And the annual credit here is a few thousand dollars against a building tax bill in the high six figures; spread across seventy apartments it changes nobody's monthly. Do not underwrite this building as an abatement play, and do not fear a burn-off cliff. Ask the managing agent for the current year's tax bill and the abatement line on it.

The separate co-op/condo property tax abatement, running on this lot since 1996, does reach shareholders — but only those using the apartment as a primary residence, and it is passed through by the corporation rather than credited to a unit directly.

Recent sales

Recent transfers 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. $/sf is measured on the latest sales with reliable square footage (2025): a median $827/sf (recorded) across 1 sale. The building has traded as recently as 2026. Median listing discount 2.4% 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 1-01209-0006). 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 on co-ops is not officially recorded, figures shown are approximate.

Ask three questions before you bid. The current maximum financing percentage, the current post-closing liquidity expectation, and the current number of apartments held by the holder of unsold shares. All three are gating items here, and none is published.

Get the current budget, not just the last audited statement. The underlying mortgage was refinanced in November 2025 and the debt-service line has changed; the statements you are handed may predate it.

Ask about the elevator project and the Local Law 11 cycle. A deposit was paid toward an elevator upgrade and façade work has recurred. Whether those are complete, funded, or ahead of you in an assessment is the difference between two very different carrying costs.

Confirm the flip tax rate in force, and get the sublet and pied-à-terre policy in writing. The flip tax sits at 0% in the documents on file and the board may set it as high as 2%. The permissive sublet and pied-à-terre terms are the building's best features and the most likely to have been tightened since the records we can see.

Flexibility is the headline. Pied-à-terre, co-purchasing, pets, in-unit washer/dryer and open-ended subletting after residency widen the buyer pool well beyond what a typical prewar Upper West Side co-op reaches. Confirm each with the managing agent and state it precisely in the marketing.

Get ahead of the financial questions. Buyers' attorneys will find the reserve position, the assessment history and the 2025 refinancing. Presenting them alongside the capital work they funded turns a defensive conversation into a credible one. Have the current unsold-share count ready too — it determines which lenders your buyer can use.

Price on the plan, not the letter. After two decades of combinations, an apartment's line tells a buyer less than its floor plan does.

• 12 West 96th Street — prewar Upper West Side cooperative one block north
• 15 West 96th Street — building for comparison nearby
• 50 West 96th Street — Upper West Side co-op on the same corridor
• 110 West 94th Street — comparable side-street building one block south
• 150 West 95th Street — West 95th Street building west of Columbus
• 160 West 95th Street — same-street comparable at a different price point
• 212 West 95th Street — West 95th Street building toward Broadway
• 353 Central Park West — a nearby parkfront alternative to the east
• 360 Central Park West — 1928 Rosario Candela building at the corner of West 96th Street