93 Mercer Street

The building is a store-and-loft structure of the type that defines the SoHo–Cast Iron Historic District: a limestone-faced base with cast-iron elements, brick above, large window openings on a fifty-foot frontage, and open floor plates originally designed for light manufacturing. It stands six stories on a 5,000-square-foot lot with roughly 27,500 gross square feet in total, of which about 19,800 is residential and about 7,700 commercial.

Residential floors are divided east and west into half-floor lofts, and the transfer record reads accordingly: 2E and 2W, 3E and 3W, and so on to the sixth floor. Half-floor plates in a fifty-by-one-hundred-foot building produce apartments of roughly 2,000 gross square feet before circulation — large by SoHo standards, wide rather than deep, and with the column grid and ceiling height that make loft space work. East units face the interior of the block toward Broadway; west units face Mercer Street.

Alteration filings across the past fifteen years describe substantial interior renovation at 2W, 3E, 3W, 4W, 5E, 5W and 6E — new windows, structural lintels, replacement mechanical systems, plumbing relocations. Two of the most recent filings, in 2025 and 2026, concern creating new window openings in lot-line walls at the third and fourth floors, work that required Landmarks Preservation Commission certificates for openings at secondary façades. That is a useful signal: light is being added where it can be, which is exactly the constraint in a mid-block loft building.

This is a small, quietly run cooperative, not a full-service building. The capital record visible in city filings is steady and unglamorous: façade restoration and roof work in 2013, bulkhead reconstruction in 2015, a roof replacement in 2016, relocation of the Siamese connection and extension of the cellar standpipe between 2019 and 2021, installation of ADA-compliant ramps at both the residential and commercial entrances in 2019–2021, and replacement of the steel sidewalk hatch with a reinforced concrete slab system in 2021. A 2002 filing records the creation of a cellar connection between 93 Mercer Street and 106 Spring Street.

Because the building is landmarked, exterior work runs through the Landmarks Preservation Commission. The permit record shows more than two dozen dockets since 1992 — certificates of no effect for restorative work, windows, roof work, air-conditioning louvers and signage, plus rooftop-addition certificates in 2009 and 2011. Any buyer planning window replacement or exterior alteration should budget both the LPC process and the co-op board's own approval on top of the Department of Buildings filing.

The commercial space at the base is a material part of the building's economics. Roughly 7,700 square feet of cellar and ground-floor retail on Mercer Street generates income that offsets shareholder maintenance, and the terms of that arrangement — lease, expiry, rent, and whether the space is held as a commercial cooperative interest or leased by the corporation — should be established before contract. In a ten-apartment building, the commercial tenancy can swing maintenance more than any other single line.

Nothing in this building's policy stack is published, and we will not guess at it. No offering plan, proprietary lease, house rules or audited financial statement for 93 Mercer Street was located in either the Compass Offering Plan Library or The Roebling Research Library. The following are the questions to put to the managing agent in writing, and the answers should be obtained before an offer rather than after:

Financing ceiling and minimum down. SoHo loft co-ops of this vintage commonly cap financing well below the conventional 80 percent, and some prohibit financing entirely. Establish the maximum permitted loan-to-value before you set a price.

Post-closing liquidity. Small boards frequently require liquid assets equal to one to three years of maintenance after closing, on top of the down payment. This requirement, not income, is what most often disqualifies an otherwise strong buyer.

Sublet policy. Whether subletting is permitted at all, after what period of ownership, for what maximum term, and at what fee.

Flip tax. Whether one exists, whether it is calculated on gross price, on profit, or per share, and whether it is payable by seller or buyer.

Pied-à-terre, trust and LLC ownership. Most small co-ops require occupancy as a primary residence and refuse entity purchasers outright; some permit a trust with the beneficiary as occupant and a personal guarantee.

Board package and interview. Assume a full financial disclosure package, personal and professional references, and an interview with the board. Budget four to eight weeks from signed contract to board approval, and understand that a co-op board may reject without giving a reason.

JLWQA compliance. Whether the certificate of occupancy still designates the units as joint living-working quarters for artists, whether the corporation requires or has ever required Department of Cultural Affairs artist certification of purchasers, and what position the board takes on the point today.

Underlying mortgage and reserves. The corporation's audited financial statements, the underlying mortgage balance and maturity, the reserve position, and any assessment in force or contemplated.

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 (2023): a median $1,456/sf across 2 sales. The building has traded as recently as 2025. Median listing discount 5.0% 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 1-00485-0022) 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.

You are buying shares, not real property. Your closing will convey a stock certificate and a proprietary lease. Your lender will take a security interest in shares rather than a mortgage on real estate, which means a smaller pool of lenders, a recognition agreement with the corporation, and different closing costs — no mortgage recording tax and no title insurance in the ordinary sense.

Resolve the JLWQA question first. Ask for the current certificate of occupancy. Ask whether the corporation has ever required artist certification. Ask your attorney what the 2020 alteration application still pending sign-off is for, and whether it affects the apartment you are buying. If those answers are unsatisfactory, that is a reason to walk, not a detail to paper over.

Reconcile the unit count. PLUTO says ten residential units. The Department of Buildings' last signed-off count is nine. Ten apartment designations appear in the transfer record. Establish that the apartment you are buying is a legal dwelling unit on the current certificate of occupancy.

Assume no published policy stack. Nothing about financing, sublets, pets, pied-à-terre or flip tax is public here. Get it in writing from the managing agent before you offer, and have your attorney confirm it against the proprietary lease.

Price the landmark overhead. Windows, façade, storefront and anything visible from the street runs through the Landmarks Preservation Commission. That is time and money on any renovation, and it applies to the corporation's capital work as well as to yours.

Understand the commercial tenancy. Ten apartments carrying a building means the retail income is a large share of the operating picture. Read the lease.

Lead with the plate, not the finishes. Half-floor lofts of roughly 2,000 feet on a fifty-foot frontage, in a landmarked 1901 building on a cobblestone SoHo block, are the product. Very little of that inventory remains and none of it is being built.

Prepare the board package requirements before you list. In a small co-op, the deal most often dies at the board, not at the appraisal. Knowing the financing ceiling, the liquidity requirement and the interview standard lets your broker qualify buyers at the showing rather than at the package.

Have the documents ready. The absence of a published policy stack cuts against you as a seller — buyers' attorneys stall on unanswered questions. Assemble the proprietary lease, house rules, the last two audited financial statements and the current certificate of occupancy before the first offer.

Address the JLWQ certificate proactively. Buyers' counsel will raise it. A seller who has already obtained the corporation's written position on artist certification and on the open 2020 alteration converts a scare into a footnote.

If you're considering 93 Mercer Street, also evaluate:

• 43 Wooster Street — ten residences stacked 2E/2W through 6E/6W in an 1885 store-and-loft building inside the same historic district; structurally the closest analogue in SoHo, in condominium form
• 77 Mercer Street — ten residential lofts, two per floor on floors two through six, in an 1876 cast-iron building on the same street; the condominium alternative a block south
• 45 Crosby Street — twelve residences plus a commercial space in an 1895 building, also carried as building class D0; the nearest peer as a small SoHo loft cooperative
• 477 Broome Street — twenty-residence owner-occupied cooperative in an 1870s cast-iron loft; the larger co-op alternative
• 465 West Broadway — twenty-four residences in an 1889 building converted to cooperative in 1985; the west-side SoHo co-op comparison
• 22 Mercer Street — sixteen-residence condominium conversion of a mid-nineteenth-century loft; the same street, deeded ownership
• 105 Wooster Street — fifteen-residence loft condominium; boutique scale, condominium policy framework
• 93 Greene Street (The Greene House) — 1881 Henry Fernbach cast-iron building converted to condominium in 1985; the same conversion era, a different ownership form
• 131 Thompson Street — turn-of-the-century cooperative on the western edge of SoHo; the value-tier co-op alternative