Hudson Square

At a glance

Where it is: Between SoHo and the river, roughly Clarkson Street south to Canal, and Varick Street and Sixth Avenue west to the Hudson, with SoHo directly north and east Share of recorded sales: condominium 64 percent · cooperative 16 percent · commercial 12 percent · condop 5 percent · townhouse 2 percent Market character: 47.9 percent arm's-length across 2,391 recorded sales, sponsor-flagged activity at 39.7 percent — the lowest arm's-length share and the highest sponsor share of any Manhattan neighborhood we publish. The Index publishes it with a caveat: new-development-heavy, with a thinner resale base than the sale count implies Defining control: the Special Hudson Square District, established March 20, 2013, which permitted housing on land zoned M1-6 for manufacturing Transit: 1 at Houston Street and at Canal Street, both on Varick; C and E at Spring Street and Sixth Avenue; A, C and E at Canal and Sixth Watch for: 246 Spring Street, the second-most-traded address on the map. Its residences are hotel condominium interests carrying an occupancy restriction — no more than 29 days in any 36-day period, and no more than 120 days a year. Those trades sit in the price record and do not price a primary residence

Daily life and getting around

Hudson Square is a small grid of very large buildings. The printing lofts along Hudson, Varick and Greenwich run ten to fifteen stories across full blockfronts, brick and terra cotta with freight bays still cut into the base, giving the streets a canyon quality unrelated to height. The register changes twice within a few hundred feet: cross Varick going east and the scale collapses to two- and three-story Federal row houses on Charlton, King and Vandam from the 1830s and 1840s; go west toward the water and it changes again, into towers finished between 2014 and 2021.

Ground-floor retail is thin, and structurally so: a district built for printing plants has few small storefronts. Spring Street and Hudson Street carry most of it, weighted toward the daytime office trade, and for groceries the neighborhood leans on SoHo and the West Village. Green space is across the highway — Hudson River Park and Pier 40 at Houston Street — plus Duarte Square at Canal and Varick.

The Holland Tunnel dictates daily life here. The westbound tube begins at Broome Street between Varick and Hudson; the eastbound tube surfaces at the rotary built on the site of the old St. John's Park freight terminal. Watts, Vestry and Laight were widened for it in the 1920s and still work as approach roads. Varick and Hudson carry the queue, and the afternoon backup is a daily fact of the blocks nearest Canal.

Transit is better than the neighborhood's low profile suggests: the 1 at Houston and at Canal on Varick, the C and E at Spring and Sixth, the A joining at Canal. Only the blocks west of Greenwich make the walk to a train a real variable.

Why Hudson Square trades the way it does

Nearly two of every five recorded sales here carry a sponsor flag — 39.7 percent, against 47.9 percent arm's-length across 2,391 transactions. Both are the most extreme figures on the Manhattan map, and they are related: most of the half of this neighborhood's price history that falls outside the arm's-length classification is a developer selling out a new building rather than a household selling to another household. That is why the Index publishes Hudson Square with a caveat for a thin resale base, and the caveat is an instruction rather than a footnote — the sale count is respectable, the resale count underneath it is not, and only 111 addresses carry the whole record.

So an address's own transaction history is usually the wrong tool. At a building that closed two hundred first-sales on a sponsor's schedule, those prices describe a release strategy — a price list moving in one direction, with concessions that never reach the recorded consideration. Separate the sponsor closings out before drawing any conclusion, which is the opposite of the instruction that works in a deep board-governed market like Lenox Hill. The series bears the point out: indexed to 2025, the condominium line is up 14.5 percent nominally since 2016 and down 14.7 percent in real terms. A market absorbing its own supply for a decade does not compound the way a scarce resale market does.

The stock

The inventory divides by the date its zoning allowed it to exist.

The pre-rezoning condominiums sit on western blocks already zoned C6-2A, where housing needed no special action. 505 Greenwich Street, fourteen stories and 102 apartments from 2003, is the most-traded address in the neighborhood at 320 recorded sales; 255 Hudson Street, 64 apartments from 2005, carries 180. They are the closest thing here to a seasoned resale market.

The post-2013 towers are the volume story and sit on former manufacturing land. 110 Charlton Street, twenty-seven stories and 170 apartments completed in 2018, carries 200 recorded sales; 77 Charlton Street, a Toll Brothers building of 162 apartments completed in 2020, carries 199. 70 Charlton Street (2014), 565 and 570 Broome Street (both 2016), 111 Varick Street (2018) and 102 Charlton Street (2021) fill in the rest. Per PLUTO, every one sits on a lot zoned M1-6 inside the special district.

The loft conversions the neighborhood is known for are a smaller tier than its reputation implies — 80 Varick Street, a converted printing building, is the clearest example, while 100 Vandam Street is a hybrid: a retained nineteenth-century warehouse façade with a new 25-story residential tower rising within it, to be compared with that building form in mind rather than as an old loft. Together the two hold roughly 126 apartments. And 246 Spring Street, which opened as Trump SoHo in 2010 and has been The Dominick since December 2017, is a forty-two-story hotel condominium of 391 units; its 215 recorded sales are the second-largest block of trades on the map and the least comparable to anything else on it.

Price the condominium stock per square foot and the small cooperative tier per room with board terms attached. Do not price the hotel units against either.

The 2013 rezoning, and where it stops

Until March 20, 2013, almost none of this was legal. The land was zoned M1-6 — a manufacturing district permitting offices and light industry, not new housing as of right. The Special Hudson Square District, adopted that day and last amended December 5, 2024, applied C6-4A floor area regulations, capped buildings at 290 feet on wide streets with a subdistrict allowed to 430, and wrote both affordable housing and the retention of light manufacturing jobs into its stated purposes.

The scale of what followed is legible in the public land records. The special district covers roughly 90 tax lots, 87 still carrying M1-6 as their underlying zoning, and those lots hold about 1,176 residential units — 787 of them, across nine lots, built after 2013. Two-thirds of the housing in the Special Hudson Square District post-dates the rezoning that permitted it, and that single fact explains the sponsor share.

The rezoning stops at Varick Street, and so does everything downstream of it. East of Varick, the low ends of Charlton, King and Vandam sit in the Charlton–King–Vandam Historic District, designated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission on August 16, 1966 and listed on the National Register in 1973 — 69 tax lots of Federal and Greek Revival row houses on R6 and R7-2 zoning, where most exterior work needs Landmarks approval (a staff-level permit or a Certificate of Appropriateness, depending on the work). Two addresses on the same street can sit on opposite sides of that line and share nothing but a name. Further east, in the South Village and outside Hudson Square itself, the Sullivan–Thompson Historic District — 153 lots designated December 13, 2016 — was landmarked in response to the pressure this rezoning created.

Trinity's ground, and the commercial turn

The land under much of this belongs to one owner, and has since 1705, when Queen Anne's grant expanded Trinity Church's parish holdings to 215 acres of lower Manhattan. Trinity sold most of that over three centuries; what it kept is here — roughly fourteen acres in Manhattan today, holding on the order of 5.5 million square feet of commercial space concentrated in Hudson Square. One institutional landlord with no need to sell is why the office fabric stayed intact while SoHo's was converted apartment by apartment.

It also shaped what the upzoning produced, because the value released in 2013 went substantially into commercial redevelopment rather than housing. The clearest case is 550 Washington Street, the 1934 St. John's Terminal at the southern end of the High Line. A separate 2016 action moved 200,000 square feet of air rights from Pier 40 and added roughly 500,000 more, lifting the site's floor area ratio from 5 to 8.7. The residential program approved alongside it — 1,586 apartments, including senior and affordable units — was abandoned for an office conversion, which Google bought for approximately $2.1 billion and opened in February 2024.

Those 1,586 apartments would have roughly doubled the residential stock of the special district and given the neighborhood the resale depth it now lacks. They were not built, and the 12 percent of the sale record logged as commercial is the same story told in the transaction data.

What to know if you're buying here

Filter the comparable set before you use it. At 39.7 percent sponsor-flagged, close to two sales in five are not household-to-household trades. Pull the address's history, strip the first-sales, and see what is left. At several towers here that is a single-digit number of true resales, and it is the honest basis for a valuation.

Establish which side of Varick Street the property sits on. West of it, a rezoned lot with a 2014-to-2021 building on it; east of it, a landmarked row house where window and façade work needs Landmarks approval. They do not comp against each other.

At 246 Spring Street, read the occupancy restriction first. The 29-day and 120-day limits are the defining term of that ownership, not a detail. If you intend to live somewhere, this is not that; if you intend to hold it as what it is, price it against hotel product rather than the Charlton Street towers.

Check the tax position on anything built since 2013. New construction of this vintage frequently carries a time-limited exemption, and the gap between today's carrying cost and the post-step-up number is material and scheduled. Confirm the exemption code, start year and term against the Department of Finance record, then underwrite the number after it steps up.

Walk the tunnel approach at rush hour. A low floor facing Broome, Watts, Varick or Hudson is a different apartment on a Tuesday at six than on a Sunday at noon, and the gap is rarely priced.

What to know if you're selling here

Your building's sponsor history is not your comparable set, and the buyer's agent knows it. If your resale is one of a handful at the address, you are pricing into a vacuum in both directions. Build the case from the line, exposure and floor, and be ready to say why the sponsor's price list is not the benchmark.

Expect the comparison to run against SoHo, and get ahead of it. Buyers arrive comparing Hudson Square to the loft market immediately north and east, which trades at 82.3 percent arm's-length. The honest argument is the product and the quiet, not a claim to the same price history.

Bring the carrying cost forward on day one. Exemption status, common charges, assessments and any remaining sponsor-held units are the questions that re-trade deals here. A seller who answers them at the first showing removes the most common cause of a renegotiation.

Where it sits in the Index

Hudson Square publishes with a caveat, and it is the right call — 1,674 index-eligible sales across 111 addresses, with the largest sponsor share on the Manhattan map inside them. Read the condominium line as a supply-absorption series rather than a resale series, and the cooperative line, on a small annual sample, as directional only. See the Roebling Index for the current read.

Run the numbers

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Related guides

• SoHo — A Buyer's Guide — the loft market immediately north and east, and the most common mis-comp
• Nolita — A Buyer's Guide — another small Downtown leaf, with a far higher arm's-length share
• Manhattan Apartment Buying Guide
• NYC Real Estate Tax & Closing Cost Guide