9 East 96th Street

The building occupies a mid-block lot of roughly 7,317 square feet, about 72.5 feet wide and 101 feet deep, carrying some 73,000 square feet of building at a built floor-area ratio of about 9.99 against a 10.0 residential maximum in an R10 district. In other words the site is fully built out. There is no enlargement to be had here, which is one reason the block has stayed as it is.

The elevation is the argument, and the LPC's description is the best account of it: a stone base, now painted, carrying grouped window openings with neo-Medieval ornament; a secondary cornice setting off the second and third stories as a transition; cast-stone or terra-cotta surrounds at the third and again at the thirteenth and fourteenth; iron balustrades and cast-stone balconies at intervals up the facade; historic multi-paned double-hung wood sash and multi-paned French doors opening onto the balconies; a wrought-iron service gate at the east end of the base. The east and west party elevations are faced in the same brick with eight-over-eight sash — a courtesy that most mid-block buildings of the period did not extend.

Interior composition follows a 1926 plan: classic prewar apartments with defined entry, separate dining and windowed kitchens, in a stack that runs A, B and C lines through fifteen floors with a penthouse above. Combinations have occurred — Department of Buildings filings record apartments merged across floors and across lines since 2002 — so the practical unit count is lower than the forty-five that carried shares in 1980. Upper floors take Central Park light and outlooks west over the low Codman houses and the mansion blockfront, which is a rare condition on a mid-block lot.

The offering plan records the operating spine as it stood at conversion: a resident superintendent plus four building service employees under a 32B-32J contract, a laundry room, storage, and a ground-floor professional tenancy generating rental income to the corporation. Listing records describe a canopied, one-step-up entrance with doorman coverage that is not twenty-four hours, and architectural records note the absence of a garage and of a roof deck. All of that should be confirmed with the managing agent rather than assumed from a forty-six-year-old plan and a listing description.

Two operating facts do carry through and matter now. First, apartment gas and electricity are separately metered and are not included in maintenance — a real difference when comparing carrying costs against buildings that bundle them. Second, the corporation holds a small commercial tenancy at the base, which offsets maintenance but also means the building's income is not purely shareholder-sourced.

The capital picture is legible only through Department of Buildings records, because no audited financial statements for this cooperative were located in either the Compass Offering Plan Library or The Roebling Research Library. What DOB shows is a masonry building in a long relationship with Local Law 11: brick replacement in 2008, a chimney rebuilt in 2009, façade repairs and shed in 2011–2012, limestone repairs in 2013, scaffold in 2014, a new chimney liner and boiler gas conversion mid-decade, and a fresh cycle beginning in May 2023 with façade repairs, a sidewalk shed that July, and outrigger and hoist filings that December and the following January. All of it ran through landmark review, and none of it is offset by a tax exemption — the lot carries no J-51 and no other building-level benefit in the FY2021 through FY2027 rolls.

The underlying mortgage, its balance and maturity, the reserve position and the assessment history are therefore the three most valuable things a buyer can obtain here, and public records cannot substitute for them: a cooperative's underlying mortgage is recorded against the corporation, not against unit lots, so ACRIS will not answer the question. Request the last two audited financial statements and two years of board minutes.

The honest version of this section is short, because the building publishes almost nothing and the plan on file is from 1980.

Ownership form: Cooperative. A purchaser buys shares in the apartment corporation together with a proprietary lease for a specific apartment — not real property. ACRIS records apartment transfers on this lot as SP share transfers to individual purchasers, which is the confirmation that apartments here trade to separate buyers in the ordinary way. Approval is by the board at its discretion, after a full board package and an interview, and a board is not obliged to give a reason for a rejection.

Financing ceiling: Not published. Establish the maximum permitted loan-to-value with the managing agent in writing before making an offer.

Post-closing liquidity: Not published. Prewar Carnegie Hill cooperatives commonly expect liquid assets after closing measured as a multiple of the purchase price or of annual maintenance. Ask what standard this board applies — it is the most common reason a well-qualified applicant is declined.

Sublet policy: Not published. Assume restrictive until told otherwise; buildings of this profile typically permit subletting only after a period of ownership, for limited terms, with board approval each time.

Pied-à-terre, trust and LLC ownership: Not published. Resolve all three before contract if the purchase is to be structured through an entity or used part-time.

Flip tax: Not published, and it does not appear in the 1980 plan. A transfer fee of some form is near-universal in Manhattan cooperatives; whether this one charges on gross price, on profit or per share, and who pays it, changes seller net materially.

Pets: Not documented in any source we treat as authoritative. Confirm.

Alterations: Because the lot is inside a historic district, any work touching the exterior — windows, air-conditioner sleeves, balcony ironwork — requires a Landmarks permit in addition to board approval and DOB permits. Budget for the sequence.

Real estate taxes: Paid at the corporate level and passed through in maintenance. No building-level exemption appears in the FY2021 through FY2027 rolls.

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. Most recent trades (2026) cleared a median $2,070/sf across 1 sale. Median listing discount 2.5% 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 1-01602-0009) 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.

The lot is landmarked, and that is a real constraint on renovation. Block 1602, Lot 9 is inside the Expanded Carnegie Hill Historic District, designated December 1993. Any exterior change — a window, a through-wall air-conditioner sleeve, a balcony railing — needs a Landmarks permit before DOB will issue one. Ask your architect to price the review sequence, and note that the street facade was preserved free of through-wall air-conditioner openings at designation, which constrains where a sleeve can go.

You are buying shares, not real estate. The purchase conveys stock and a proprietary lease. Title insurance and mortgage recording tax do not apply; a UCC-1 filing and a recognition agreement do. ACRIS records these transfers as SP share transfers.

Get the entire policy stack in writing. Financing ceiling, post-closing liquidity, sublet rules, pied-à-terre, flip tax and who pays it, and whether trusts or entities are entertained. None of it is published; the 1980 offering plan does not answer any of it.

Ask for financials we do not have. No audited statements for this corporation were located in either document library. The underlying mortgage balance and maturity, the reserve balance, the assessment history and the current Local Law 11 status are the four questions that matter, and they are answerable only by the managing agent.

Read the façade history before you underwrite maintenance. DOB shows exterior work in 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016 and a live cycle from 2023 into 2024. There is no tax exemption offsetting any of it.

Check the unit count assumption in any automated valuation. The building has 47 apartments including the superintendent's, but only 45 ever carried shares, and combinations have reduced the practical count since. Analyses built on the PLUTO figure will divide by the wrong number.

Price the utilities separately. Apartment gas and electricity are not in maintenance per the offering plan. Confirm that this remains true, and add it to the monthly comparison.

Lead with the landmark district, not around it. Buyers looking in Carnegie Hill are buying the block as much as the apartment, and the Expanded Carnegie Hill Historic District is why the Codman houses on either side will still be there in twenty years. State it accurately — designated district, not individual landmark — and let it do the work.

Assemble the document package before you list. Financials, house rules, proprietary lease, current underlying mortgage terms, assessment schedule and current façade project status. In a building with no financials in general circulation, the seller who supplies them quickly controls the pace of the deal.

Be direct about the capital picture. A live façade cycle with no tax exemption offsetting it is a fair question and is better answered by you, with documents, than discovered by a buyer's attorney.

Price per room and against condition. With combinations across four decades, in-building comparables are thin and averages mislead. The right frame is the Carnegie Hill prewar cooperative set, adjusted for floor, exposure and renovation state. Run the Renovation Cost Calculator against your asking strategy, and factor the Landmarks review into any renovation narrative you present.

If you're considering 9 East 96th Street, also evaluate:

• 8 East 96th Street — the Rosario Candela cooperative directly across the street; the blockfront's prestige comparison
• 16 East 96th Street (The Queenston) — prewar cooperative on the south side of the same block at Madison
• 14 East 96th Street — the 1981 "sliver" building on the south blockfront; the postwar alternative at very different scale
• 1150 Fifth Avenue — J.E.R. Carpenter's 1922–24 neo-Georgian cooperative on the Fifth Avenue corner of this blockfront, also of record as 1–5 East 96th Street
• 1148 Fifth Avenue — Walter B. Chambers's 1922–23 building at Fifth Avenue and 96th Street, also of record as 2–4 East 96th Street
• 70 East 96th Street — Rosario Candela cooperative east of Park; the same street, a different market
• 49 East 96th Street — Art Deco cooperative on the same tax block east of Madison, outside the historic district and therefore under no Landmarks review
• 65 East 96th Street (The Gatsby) — 1924 building converted to condominium in 2000–01, also on block 1602 and also outside the district; the condominium alternative on the same street
• 58 East 96th Street — prewar cooperative on the south side east of Madison
• 4 East 95th Street — prewar cooperative one block south, inside the same historic district