998 Fifth Avenue
998 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028
- Year built
- 1910
- Type
- Cooperative
- Units
- 17
- Floors
- 12
- Landmark
- Designated
- Subletting
- Highly restrictive
- Financing
- Not permitted — 100% cash purchases only
- Flip tax
- 2% of gross sales price, seller-paid
Every recorded sale at this building, 2006–2025
Bedroom-by-bedroom medians, the full transfer record, and how units trade against ask.
- Recent range
- $37.5M – $37.5M
- Avg vs. ask
- -18.8%
- Recorded transfers
- 14
998 Fifth Avenue is the building that proved wealthy New Yorkers would live in apartments. When McKim, Mead & White completed it in 1912, the conventional wisdom held that families of substantial means belonged in single-family Fifth Avenue townhouses — not in shared buildings, which were associated with middle-class tenements and rental hotels. James T. Lee (Jackie Kennedy's grandfather, who would later develop 740 Park Avenue) wagered against that convention. He commissioned McKim, Mead & White — the most prestigious American architectural firm of the era — to design an apartment house that would feel as substantial as the townhouses it would compete with.
The wager succeeded. Elihu Root — former Secretary of State, Secretary of War, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate — was Lee's first tenant, and his decision to leave his Park Avenue townhouse for an apartment at 998 Fifth was treated as cultural news. The building rapidly filled with Roots and their peers: Murry Guggenheim, Levi Morton, members of the Sloane and Whitney families, and a cohort of New York's institutional aristocracy. Within a decade, the great Fifth Avenue luxury apartment-house tradition was established — and 998 Fifth was its origin point.
McKim, Mead & White's design is restrained Italian Renaissance Revival — a limestone palazzo organized around a rusticated three-story base, a smooth-faced mid-section, and a deeply projecting cornice. The proportions, scale, and detail were deliberately calibrated to read as institutional rather than commercial. The building does not announce itself; it simply belongs.
The original plan called for one apartment per floor — a configuration that produced floor plates of approximately 5,500 square feet, with each apartment commanding a Fifth Avenue/Park exposure of roughly 60 feet of frontage. Some apartments have since been combined (or subdivided to a lesser degree), but the building retains its original one-or-two-apartments-per-floor character and its institutional culture.
Architecture and unit composition
Apartments at 998 Fifth are exceptional in scale. The original one-per-floor configuration produced apartments of approximately 5,000–7,000 square feet, with ceiling heights of 12 feet in primary rooms, formal entry galleries, library-living-room combinations, multiple primary suites, and extensive service infrastructure (servants' wings, separate service entrances, dedicated staff stairwells).
McKim, Mead & White's interior detailing was substantial — paneled libraries, plaster ceiling mouldings, marble mantelpieces, hardwood floors of generous board width. The building's residents have, on the whole, preserved this detail carefully across the century. Modern renovations at 998 Fifth are typically additive (kitchens and bathrooms updated for contemporary use) rather than substitutive (original detail removed).
Park-facing apartments (the eastern flank) have direct Central Park views across to the Metropolitan Museum's southern flank and the Park beyond. View permanence is essentially absolute — the Met sits opposite, and Central Park itself is the view further east.
Building operations
998 Fifth operates as a full-service pre-war co-op with 24-hour doorman, attended elevator, on-site superintendent, and dedicated private storage. The building's small unit count (approximately 17) produces an institutional culture characteristic of the smallest tier-one co-ops — residents and staff know each other across generations.
The 1953 cooperative conversion was earlier than most CPW or comparable Fifth Avenue conversions, reflecting the early commitment of the building's residents to ownership rather than rental. Specific policy details (flip tax structure, financing cap, sublet fee) are not publicly published by the building; buyers should review the current proprietary lease and house rules during due diligence.
Recent sales
998 Fifth Avenue's recorded turnover is minimal — a 27-unit 1912 McKim, Mead & White trophy across from the Metropolitan Museum where holding periods stretch into decades and most closings occur off-market. The 2005–2025 dataset documents only ~15 transfers, producing one of the lowest publicly-recorded turnover rates among Fifth Avenue trophy co-ops, and the building's institutional culture explicitly preferences private-network transactions over public marketing.
The September 2025 sale of #6W by William Lauder at $37.5M to a private buyer is the period's defining transaction. Lauder's 2017 acquisition basis on the same apartment was $23.5M — a 59.6% nominal appreciation across 8 years on this specific full-floor W-line apartment, one of the steeper same-apartment comp curves at the building's apex tier. The ACRIS recording on the $37.5M transfer reflects the multi-document structure typical of co-op transactions of this scale; trade press has confirmed the actual sale price.
The building's W-line — Central Park + Metropolitan Museum exposure on the eastern (Park) flank — is the architectural marquee, and the W-line transactional record provides the building's most useful apex-tier comp set: #1W $9.4M (2006) → $18.5M (2012) (97% appreciation across 6.5 years, an unusually steep curve), #2WEST $18M (2007), #3W $21M (2016, -17.65% from $25.5M ask), #4W $27.5M (2007 pre-Lehman peak), #5W $27,222,500 (2012, -19.93% from $34M ask), #6W $23.5M (2017) → $37.5M (2025), #8W $20M (2006), #11W $22M (2021).
The 17.65% ask-to-close gap on #3W (2016) and the 19.93% gap on #5W (2012) document that even 998 Fifth's apex inventory negotiates meaningfully against initial pricing — a pattern that recurs across cycles when the building's $25M+ aspirational tier meets the broader luxury-co-op market. The E-line duplex inventory shows a parallel pattern: #5/6E traded at $15.75M full-ask in 2006, $18.5M in 2012, and $16.5M in 2014 — extraordinary turnover for a marquee Fifth Avenue duplex with only ~5% nominal appreciation across the full 2006–2014 window. The 2025 #6W close calibrates the building's prime-floor, Met-facing inventory at roughly $9,400/sqft effective — useful context for any buyer evaluating comparable McKim, Mead & White or peer Gilded Age co-op inventory along the Museum Mile.
Recent transfers at this building, curated by The Roebling Team research desk. Apartment-level facts are independently verified before publishing; sale prices reflect the recorded transfer amount at the NYC Department of Finance.
| Date | Unit | Apartment | Price | PPSF | vs. Ask |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 22, 2025 | 6W | 4 BR · 5 BA · Central Park + Metropolitan Museum Closed Sep 12, 2025 at $37.5M (recorded transfer; off-market trade reported in trade press). William Lauder, the Estée Lauder Companies executive chairman, sold to a private buyer. 4 BR / 5 BA. Lauder acquired the same #6W in August 2017 at $23.5M — a 59.6% nominal appreciation across 8 years on this specific full-floor apartment, one of the steeper same-apartment comp curves at the building's apex tier. | $37,500,000 | off-mkt | |
| Sep 21, 2021 | 11W | 4 BR · 5.5 BA Closed Aug 25, 2021 at $22M (recorded transfer; no public public listing data listing on record at this closing — typical 998 Fifth off-market trade through private broker networks). 11th floor W-line full-floor apartment with Central Park exposure. The same #11W previously had a $0 ACRIS recording in April 2013 (zero-value transfer, likely intra-family or trust transfer); the 2021 trade represents the first arms-length transaction on the apartment in the modern dataset. | $22,000,000 | off-mkt | |
| Sep 8, 2017 | 6W | 5 BR · 3,173 sf Closed Aug 29, 2017 at $23.5M (recorded transfer). William Lauder's acquisition of #6W; the same apartment subsequently resold off-market in September 2025 at $37.5M — a 59.6% appreciation across 8 years on this specific full-floor W-line apartment. | $23,500,000 | $7,406/sf | off-mkt |
| Jun 27, 2016 | 3W | 3 BR · 6+ BA · 5,500 sf Closed Jun 16, 2016 (recorded Jun 20) at $21M — 17.65% under the $25.5M asking. 3rd floor W-line full-floor at 5,500 sqft = ~$3,818/sqft. The 17.65% ask-to-close gap on a marquee Fifth Avenue full-floor documents that even 998 Fifth's apex inventory negotiated meaningfully against the broader 2016 luxury-co-op correction. | $21,000,000 | $3,818/sf | -17.6% |
| Jun 25, 2014 | 5/6E | 5 BR · 5 BA Closed May 14, 2014 (recorded Jun 19) at $16.5M — 5.71% under the $17.5M asking. 5/6E duplex E-line spanning floors 5 and 6. The same E-line duplex had recorded a $18.5M transfer in December 2012 — the $2M decline across 18 months on a substantially-the-same configuration suggests either a renovation regression, distress repricing, or component disaggregation between the two transactions. | $16,500,000 | -5.7% | |
| Jan 4, 2013 | 1W | 5 BR Closed Dec 21, 2012 at $18.5M (recorded transfer). 1st floor W-line — substantial ground-floor or maisonette-level trade in the post-2008 recovery. Same #1W previously sold at $9.4M in June 2006 — nearly doubled in 6.5 years, an unusually steep appreciation for the W-line ground floor. | $18,500,000 | off-mkt | |
| Jan 16, 2013 | 5-6E | 5 BR Closed Dec 18, 2012 at $18.5M (recorded transfer). 5/6E duplex E-line. Same configuration subsequently re-recorded at $16.5M in June 2014 (-10.8% across 18 months) — see annotation on 2014062000736001. | $18,500,000 | off-mkt | |
| Apr 5, 2012 | 5W | 5 BR · 5 BA Closed Mar 23, 2012 at $27,222,500 — 19.93% under the $34M asking. 5th floor W-line full-floor. Among the largest 998 Fifth ask-to-close gaps in the modern dataset; the ~$6.78M absolute-dollar gap from initial pricing reflects the building's specific apex-pricing-vs-clearing-price tension that recurs across cycles. | $27,222,500 | -19.9% |
Market read. Most recent trades (2017) cleared a median $7,406/sf across 1 sale. Sales close on average -11.8% below ask — a recurring negotiation gap worth pricing into any offer or listing strategy.
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 1-01493-0001) 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
Financing is not permitted. 998 Fifth is among the Gold Coast co-ops that require 100% cash purchases — no mortgage financing of any kind. This is the building's most consequential structural fact and aligns it with 740 Park, 834 Fifth, and a small number of other tier-one Gold Coast co-ops where the no-financing posture is the screen that defines the building.
The board is among the most selective in the Gold Coast. Approaching 998 Fifth as a transaction misses the structural reality — the board has curated the building's residency for over a century, and approval criteria extend across financial, professional, and cultural dimensions. Personal references matter. Foreign buyers face additional friction. Investment buyers and pied-à-terre buyers have essentially no path.
Renovation is constrained by historic district status and institutional culture. Substantive renovation is feasible but must respect the building's architectural character. The board does not approve modernizations that erase pre-war detail.
View permanence is exceptional. The Met sits opposite; Central Park is the view east. No development envelope threatens the corridor.
Primary-residence intent is the working assumption. Buyers expecting to hold and live full-time are appropriate fits.
What to know if you’re selling
Marketing is largely private. Most 998 Fifth transactions occur with limited or no public marketing. The buyer pool is small, institutional, and accessible primarily through private broker networks.
Pricing requires building-specific context. Comparable sales are sparse given turnover velocity; apartment-to-apartment heterogeneity is substantial. Pricing benefits from familiarity with the building's small inventory history.
The buyer pool is committed but narrow. Buyers who pursue 998 Fifth know what they're pursuing — there is no education work to do; the work is matching the right apartment to the right buyer.
The 2% flip tax is seller-paid. Distinct from 740 Park's buyer-paid 3% flip tax, 998 Fifth's flip tax is borne by the seller at closing. On a $15M apartment, that is $300,000 of seller-side closing cost — and should be modeled into net-proceeds analysis from the outset.
Closing timelines are co-op standard but the package is heavier. 6–10 weeks from contract to closing, with substantial board package work.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering 998 Fifth Avenue, also evaluate:
- 740 Park Avenue — Candela/Cross & Cross 1930, the apex of pre-war American luxury
- 820 Fifth Avenue — 1916 Starrett & Van Vleck pre-war, smaller scale, very selective
- 834 Fifth Avenue — Candela 1931, Gold Coast tier-one
- 1040 Fifth Avenue — Candela 1930, Jackie Kennedy's building
- 907 Fifth Avenue — pre-war Fifth Avenue, slightly later vintage
- 1107 Fifth Avenue — Marjorie Merriweather Post anchor building
The Roebling Team at 998 Fifth Avenue
The Roebling Team at Compass specializes in Central Park West, the Upper East Side, and the broader Park-facing Manhattan market. We publish this building profile because Gold Coast buyers and sellers deserve building-specific intelligence — architecture, board culture, transactional mechanics, and the realities of pricing at the apartment level — not generic market commentary.
If you're considering a purchase or sale at 998 Fifth, a 30-minute consultation is the right starting point. We'll bring the full context this page provides plus the transactional specifics your situation requires — financial structuring, board approvability, comparable analysis at the apartment level, and the pacing strategy that fits your timeline.