87 Hicks Street
87 Hicks Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn
BBL 3002260006 · BIN 3001689
- Year built
- 1889
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 20
- Floors
- 5
- Landmark
- Designated
- Pets
- Not documented in the materials reviewed — confirm against the current house rules
- Subletting
- Board consent by resolution, or on refusal by written consent/vote of shareholders owning at least 66-2/3% of outstanding shares; consent may be arbitrarily refused within the bounds of law; board may impose conditions and charge reasonable legal and managing-agent expenses
Compiled by The Roebling Research Desk from the building’s offering plan, amendments, and related building documents (primary source dated 1984 plan documents). Reported and subject to confirmation. Board policies can change by amendment — confirm at the offer stage.
Every recorded sale at this building, 2006–2026
Bedroom-by-bedroom medians, the full transfer record, and how units trade against ask.
- Recent range
- $430K – $430K
- Listing discount
- 0.4%
- Recorded transfers
- 16
Own an apartment here? See what it would sell for.
A Private Pricing Opinion — what your apartment at 87 Hicks Street would likely sell for today, what it costs to sell, and what you’d walk away with — reviewed personally against condition, exposures, renovation quality, and the competition actually on the market.
87 Hicks is the small end of the Brooklyn Heights cooperative market, and it is a clean example of what that end actually consists of: an 1889 walk-up on a Fruit Streets corner block, nineteen apartments, no elevator, a part-time superintendent, and a maintenance line that reflects all of it. Buildings like this are how people who are not buying a Promenade floor-through get into the historic district.
The paperwork is a period document of the 1980s conversion wave at its most ordinary. Urban Associates 1982-II — a partnership run by two principals out of a 60 East 42nd Street office, working through a Great Neck management company — bought the building from private owners in December 1982 and brought a non-eviction plan two years later, on October 26, 1984. Every apartment was rent stabilized; one was empty. Shares were priced to insiders at $187.50 apiece against a total purchase price of $1,742,008, and the plan projected the sponsor's profit at roughly $452,000. That is the whole story: a small Brooklyn rental building, a leveraged sponsor, statutory tenant protections, and a shareholder corporation at the end of it.
The plan also captures the physical scale. The share schedule runs a garden level of three apartments and four upper floors of A, B, C and D lines. The apartments are small — most are two- or three-room layouts, and the plan's own footnote records that every apartment except one contains exactly one bathroom. The exception is a garden-level unit of about five and a half rooms with two baths, the building's largest apartment and still its outlier.
For buyers, this is a walk-up purchase in the district's best-located quiet pocket, priced accordingly. For sellers, the case rests on the block, the historic district, and the running cost of a building with almost no staff.
Architecture and unit composition
Five stories of 1889 masonry inside a designated historic district, with a garden level opening below the stoop line. The 1984 share allocation ran from 166 shares on the smallest fourth-floor C-line unit to 471 on the garden-level two-bath apartment, and the concentration of value is tight: most units sat between 230 and 300 shares. Two- and three-room apartments dominate, which in current market terms means studios, junior one-bedrooms and one-bedrooms, with the occasional two-bedroom created by combination or by reading a three-room layout generously.
Because the building is small, renovated and unrenovated apartments diverge sharply in price, and there are rarely two comparable sales in the same line within a normal underwriting window. Original detail — mantels, casings, floors — survives in some units and has been stripped in others. Condition matters most; usable light on a block of close-set masonry neighbors matters second.
Anything touching the exterior runs through the LPC, and the plan's special-risk language is a useful reminder that this includes windows and through-wall air conditioners. Price Landmarks review into a renovation schedule rather than the contingency.
Building operations
87 Hicks Street Tenants Corp. has operated the building since the mid-1980s closing. This is a shareholder-run walk-up: no elevator to modernize, no doorman payroll, no lobby to renovate. The conversion budget's staffing line — a single part-time non-resident superintendent for ten hours a week — is the clearest statement of the operating philosophy, and while current staffing should be confirmed, buildings of this scale in the district generally continue in that register.
The trade is that capital work lands harder when it comes. A nineteen-unit corporation spreads a façade cycle, a roof or a boiler across a small share base, and assessments are the normal mechanism. The co-op's financial statements in The Roebling Research Library show how the board has handled that historically — reserve levels, assessment frequency and maintenance trajectory are the three numbers to trace. For an 1889 masonry building, the FISP/LL11 façade cycle is the recurring item.
Policy framework
Resale and subletting: Board consent by resolution, or on refusal by vote or written consent of holders of at least 66⅔ percent of shares. The plan expressly permits arbitrary refusal within the bounds of law, allows the board to condition a sublet consent, and permits recovery of the corporation's legal and managing-agent costs from the applicant.
Undesirability: The proprietary lease permits termination on a determination by two-thirds of shareholders that a lessee's tenancy is undesirable — standard prewar co-op language, rarely invoked, worth knowing.
Alterations: Corporation consent required, not to be unreasonably withheld, with the shareholder bearing interior repair and decoration costs. LPC approval governs exterior work including windows.
Pets, pied-à-terre, washer-dryer, financing minimums and flip tax: Not documented in the materials reviewed. Get the current answers from management in writing before contract.
Local Law 97
This building is below the 25,000 sq ft threshold at which LL97 emissions caps apply. No regulatory capital pressure from this law specifically, current or 2030.
See full Local Law 97 analysis →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.
| Date | Unit | Apartment | Price | PPSF | vs. Ask |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 1, 2026 | 2B | 1 BR · 1 BA | $430,000 | -10.2% | |
| Aug 12, 2021 | 1D | 1 BR · 1 BA | $380,000 | -4.8% | |
| Jul 23, 2021 | 3C | 1 BR | $335,000 | -4.3% | |
| Apr 21, 2021 | 1C | 1 BR | $305,000 | -1.6% | |
| Oct 17, 2019 | 2D | 1 BR · 1 BA | $410,000 | +2.8% | |
| Jun 15, 2018 | B | 4 BR · 1,222 sf | $1,195,000 | $978/sf | +0.0% |
| Mar 23, 2018 | 2 | 1 BR | $402,000 | +0.8% | |
| Mar 23, 2018 | 2A | 1 BR · 1 BA | $402,000 | +0.8% |
Market read. $/sf is measured on the latest sales with reliable square footage (2018): a median $978/sf across 1 sale. The building has traded as recently as 2026. Median listing discount 0.0% from the last ask.
The retrade record
Lines that have traded more than once in the public record — the building’s appreciation arc, apartment by apartment.
Full closing history with price-per-square-foot over time, the complete retrade record, and every line that has traded.
Sales sourced from NYC Department of Finance recorded transfers (BBL 3-00226-0006) 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.
What to know if you’re buying
Reconcile the unit count and your share allocation. The plan covered 19 apartments; DOF shows 20. Your attorney should confirm the specific unit's shares, the current certificate of occupancy and any combination or subdivision history.
Price the walk-up honestly. Five stories with no elevator affects resale to a real segment of the buyer pool. It also keeps your maintenance low. Decide which side of that you are on before you bid.
Ask about assessments. In a nineteen-unit corporation, capital work arrives as an assessment. The history of those assessments is the best available read on the board's financial management.
Landmarks governs your windows. Any exterior work, including window replacement and through-wall air conditioning, requires LPC approval. Build that into any renovation timeline.
Get policy answers in writing. Pets, subletting practice, financing minimums and any flip tax postdate the plan documents. Management's current answers control.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the block. Fruit Streets quiet, two blocks to the Promenade, two to the Clark Street express. On a walk-up listing, location does more work than any interior feature.
Document the renovation. In a building where condition sets the spread, permits, Landmarks-clean alteration files and a clear record of what was done are price-makers rather than paperwork.
Show the carrying cost. Low maintenance is this building's competitive answer to the district's full-service co-ops. Put the monthly number in front of buyers early and let it argue for you.
Price against the district's walk-up set. The right comparables are small Heights co-ops of similar scale and staffing — not the Montague corridor's elevator buildings.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 87 Hicks Street, also evaluate:
- 66 Orange Street — 1912 conversion co-op around the corner at similar scale, with an elevator and courtyards
- 130 Hicks Street — small prewar co-op further south on the same street
- 145 Hicks Street — larger Hicks Street co-op; the full-service alternative on the same corridor
- 8 Old Fulton Street (Brooklyn City Railroad Company Building) — eleven-unit conversion co-op at the district's north edge; the smallest-scale comparable
- 54 Orange Street — Fruit Streets prewar co-op one block east
- 72 Orange Street — moderate-scale Fruit Streets peer
- 149 Willow Street — twenty-unit 1889 co-op two blocks west, converted in the same era
- 15 Clark Street — prewar elevator co-op at the express-train corner
- 35 Clark Street — prewar co-op peer on the Clark Street corridor
The full playbook — what goes in the package, how boards read your financials, the interview, and the timeline — plus sample cover, reference, and personal letters you can adapt.
How to read the facts on this page. Items attributed to an offering plan describe the building as it was offered at that filing — unit mix, square footage, the amenity program as planned. They are not a statement about how the building operates today. Tax and compliance figures are sourced separately to current City records and carry their own dates. House rules, staffing and fee policy can change by board resolution without any public filing: treat every policy line here as a starting point for diligence and confirm it with the managing agent. Where this page compares one building or neighborhood to another, that is our analysis of the recorded record — it names the measure, the period and the sample it rests on, and it is an observation about medians rather than a prediction about any particular apartment.
Considering a move at 87 Hicks Street?
Request a private building brief with the relevant comparable sales, current and off-market availability, and an apartment-specific view of value.