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 may be a material part of the building's economics. Roughly 7,700 square feet of cellar and ground-floor retail sits on Mercer Street; whether its income reaches the corporation and offsets shareholder maintenance depends on the terms of that arrangement — lease, expiry, rent, and whether the space is held as a commercial cooperative interest or leased by the corporation — which should be established before contract. If the corporation receives rent, establish its net contribution and significance from the lease and current budget rather than from the ten-apartment count.

The policy documents needed to establish this building’s current rules were not located in the two libraries reviewed. No offering plan, proprietary lease, house rules or audited financial statement for 93 Mercer Street was located in either of the two document libraries reviewed. 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. Establish the building's maximum permitted loan-to-value and minimum down payment from its governing documents before you set a price.

Post-closing liquidity. Requirements vary by building and lender; confirm this building's post-closing liquidity requirement from its application instructions before you bid.

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. Confirm the building's occupancy, pied-à-terre and ownership-entity rules from its proprietary lease, house rules and application instructions before you bid.

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, 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 (2023): a median $1,456/sf (recorded) 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). 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.

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.

Obtain the current policy documents. Financing, sublets, pets, pied-à-terre and flip-tax terms are not established in the materials reviewed. 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. Confirm who holds the retail space and whether its rent flows to the corporation; if it does, establish its share of operating income from the current budget and lease. 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. Board review and lender appraisal are separate conditions; the reviewed record does not establish which most often prevents a closing. 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 materials reviewed do not contain the current policy documents; obtaining them helps counsel evaluate the rules. 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. Supply the corporation’s written position on artist certification and the open 2020 alteration, together with current DOB records and counsel’s analysis. A board statement does not itself resolve lawful occupancy or the alteration status.

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