716 Broadway

There is very little to operate. The building runs without staff, with an elevator, an intercom, and a superintendent arrangement rather than a payroll. Department of Buildings filings over the last fifteen years record the ordinary custodianship of a small masonry building: façade repairs in 2013, sidewalk vault reconstruction in 2018 and again in 2022, a boiler and burner replacement in 2019, a chimney liner and draft inducer in 2021, new roof skylights in 2024, and sidewalk sheds in 2013, 2024 and 2025.

The financial structure is the thing to underwrite. Commercial rent from the Broadway ground floor offsets a large share of a small operating budget, and the June 2021 financing — a $2,000,000 first mortgage plus a $500,000 line, replacing much smaller prior debt — represents real leverage spread across five apartments. Ask for the current audited financial statement, the commercial lease term and escalations, the reserve position, and the debt-service line as a share of the budget. In a five-unit cooperative, a single shareholder default or a single vacant retail space moves the budget materially, and there is no scale to absorb it.

Zucker built for storage and manufacture: heavy masonry, a Northern Renaissance Revival street elevation, deep floor plates, and the tall window openings that make these buildings convert well. The Landmarks Preservation Commission's building record classifies the original use as factory and warehouse and the style as Northern Renaissance Revival — masonry rather than cast iron, which is worth stating because "cast-iron loft" is applied indiscriminately to this stretch of Broadway. The lot is inside the NoHo Historic District, confirmed by tax lot against the Commission's own database, and the Commission recorded an instrument against the lot in 2021.

Joint living-work quarters for artists. Before the SoHo/NoHo rezoning adopted by the City Council on December 15, 2021, this stretch of NoHo sat in the M1-5 manufacturing framework, where residential occupancy was permitted only as joint living-work quarters for artists — the JLWQA regime, which required certification of a resident artist by the Department of Cultural Affairs and which, in practice, went unenforced for decades while creating a persistent title and lender question. The 2021 rezoning replaced that framework with paired manufacturing-and-residence districts inside the new Special SoHo-NoHo Mixed Use District. This lot is now mapped M1-5/R9A within the SNX special district, where residential use is governed by the paired residence district regulations and joint living-work quarters may convert to plain residences. The artist-certification overhang that shadowed NoHo loft cooperatives for forty years is, at the district level, gone.

What the record does not establish is how this particular building's certificate of occupancy describes its residential floors, or whether any apartment here was ever carried as JLWQA. That should be resolved from the certificate of occupancy and the offering plan at diligence, not assumed.

Loft Law and Interim Multiple Dwelling status. The building does not appear in the Loft Board's published Interim Multiple Dwelling material, and the sequence argues against it: residential conversion here was completed by recorded deed to a cooperative corporation in December 1979, and a J-51 benefit for the conversion alterations was initiated in tax year 1981 — both before Article 7-C of the Multiple Dwelling Law took effect in 1982. A building already converted and cooperatively owned before the Loft Law would not be expected to carry IMD status. No Board of Standards and Appeals variance for this lot surfaced in the records reviewed. Confirm both points against the offering plan.

The alteration job that created residential use is not in the online record. The Department of Buildings' online job-filing history for this building begins in 2001. The conversion filings from the late 1970s exist only on microfilm at the Department. What the digital record does establish is the outcome: every alteration filing from 2003 forward states five dwelling units and residential occupancy on the upper floors, unchanged.

No offering plan, house rules or financial statements for this building are held in either the Compass Offering Plan Library or The Roebling Research Library, and none of the policy stack appears in any public record. In a cooperative with five shareholders and no managing-agent portal presence, that is unsurprising, and it is more useful to say so than to infer.

Obtain from the managing agent, in writing, before offering: the maximum financing percentage and post-closing liquidity requirement; the flip tax and who pays it; the sublet policy; the pied-à-terre position; whether trusts and limited liability companies are permitted; the pet policy; the alteration agreement and whether any wet-over-dry restriction applies; the terms of the commercial lease; roof and outdoor-space rights, which in this building attach to specific floors; and the current underlying mortgage balance, rate and maturity.

Understand what a five-shareholder board means practically. Approval is a conversation among four people about a fifth neighbor, and there is no institutional buffer. Financing, sublet and alteration questions here are decided by the people who will be living above and below you. That cuts both ways: policy can be more flexible than a large cooperative's, and it can also change with a single board vote.

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 (2024): a median $1,064/sf across 1 sale. The building has traded as recently as 2025. Median listing discount 4.4% 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 1-00545-0010) 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.

Read the commercial lease before you read the floor plan. One retail tenancy on Broadway underwrites a meaningful share of a five-apartment budget. Term, escalations, credit and renewal options are the building's economics.

Price the underlying debt per apartment. A $2,000,000 mortgage plus a $500,000 line divided by five homes is a number worth carrying in your head alongside the purchase price.

Resolve the certificate of occupancy and the JLWQA question in writing. The 2021 rezoning removed the district-level artist-certification requirement, but what this building's certificate of occupancy actually says about its residential floors is a document question, and lenders sometimes ask it.

Landmark status governs the windows. Anything visible from Broadway requires a Certificate of Appropriateness. Budget the approval process, not just the work.

Understand roof and outdoor-space rights. They attach to specific floors here. Confirm what a given apartment actually owns rather than what it appears to use.

Lead with the plate and the ownership form. A 2,500-square-foot full floor with no neighbor on your landing, in a landmarked NoHo building a block and a half from Washington Square, is a product with almost no direct competition.

Assemble the diligence package before you list. The financial statement, the commercial lease summary, the underlying mortgage terms and the certificate of occupancy will all be asked for. In a five-unit cooperative, having them ready is the difference between a smooth deal and a stalled one.

Be exact about the building's history. It is an 1890–1891 Alfred Zucker masonry warehouse in the Northern Renaissance Revival, converted at the end of the 1970s — not a 1900 cast-iron building. Buyers who verify will discount everything else in the listing.

Renovation depth is the price. The building's own trading record shows that condition and outdoor space, not floor, drive the number. Run the Renovation Cost Calculator before setting an asking price.

If you're considering 716 Broadway, also evaluate:

• 718 Broadway — the 1908 loft cooperative immediately next door on the same block; forty apartments instead of five, and a useful contrast in scale
• 684 Broadway — 1905 store-and-loft building converted to a cooperative; the nearest like-for-like on lower Broadway
• 620 Broadway (The Little Cary Building) — one of the oldest loft cooperatives in Manhattan; a different block and a different era of construction
• 644 Broadway (Bleecker Tower) — 1889–1891 loft cooperative; the closest peer by construction date
• 200 Mercer Street — mid-nineteenth-century loft cooperative in the NoHo Historic District
• 20 Bond Street — 1894–95 store-and-loft cooperative conversion; the Bond Street alternative
• 10 Bleecker Street — 1893 cooperative one block north
• 22 Bond Street — six full-floor duplex condominium residences; the new-construction alternative at full-floor scale
• 1 Bond Street — Bond Street loft building at the district's western edge