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I love it @NYCLatinaMe!  

[gardenman]

The $2,182 monthly maintenance is a tad up there. It's a smallish building with a limited roof surface that could be completely reroofed for a moderate price. That's $26,184 a year in "maintenance" and there's no yard, a relatively small roof, a largely maintenance-free exterior, and you're just one of several tenants paying those fees. That's a lot of money going someplace.

There's no obvious doorman, but the wheelchair access would imply an elevator was in the building. While elevator maintenance/replacement can be costly, I still think the $26+ thousand a year in "maintenance" for one unit is excessive. There are window air conditioners on each floor so I would assume that meant no central air. I guess if you can afford the $2 million asking price the extra $26+ thousand a year wouldn't bother you too much, but it would bother me.

Given its age, it's probably a "historic" building, and that adds to the maintenance costs, but even then the $26+ thousand a year seems excessive.

[MorningLover]

1,406 ft² apartment # 4

[stevieb]

I like the building and the rooms. The decor is not a look I could personally savor, but given what it is, it's done well and I'll say it's handsome, even though I wouldn't choose to live with it.

[stevieb]

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@MorningLover wrote:

1,406 ft² apartment # 4

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Thanks for posting. That's a good bit of square footage for an apartment. It's mostly open, which I gather many like and has some advantage, but with all that space, I'd have preferred a second bedroom and there's no way the only bath works for me with no access from and being that far away from the bedroom.

[NYCLatinaMe]

@gardenman Sorry for the late reply, but, welcome to NY!*  This building is a coop, which means the building itself is owned by a company and apartment owners own shares of that company.  So the building itself has a mortgage that the entity has to pay.  That is where most of the maintenance usually goes, to service the mortgage that the company pays and real estate taxes.  I am guessing the rest is for staff salaries and supplies, maintaining heating and cooling equipment and such.  Because any significant repairs or improvements are extra typically special assessments for the unit owners.  Most unit owners borrow to purchase their apartments, and pledge their shares in the company as security for the loan, instead of a mortgage.  The monthly maintenance for my modest 500 sq ft apartment is $1,400 and we have no doorman either, even though the company claims we do.  80 unit building for me, in a historic district.

*Imagine Taylor Swift is singing...

[NYCLatinaMe]

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@stevieb wrote:

I like the building and the rooms. The decor is not a look I could personally savor, but given what it is, it's done well and I'll say it's handsome, even though I wouldn't choose to live with it.

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@stevieb I think many expensive NY apts are sold sort of plain on the assumption that the apartment will be gutted by the new owner and styled to their taste.  But I found the contrast in cool grey kitchen next to a warm wood space striking.  Since I posted this, I have seen other NY spaces like that.  I guess this is a way of separating the open space and a current style.  In NY, we see "open" space a lot because each inch of space is precious, so no walls. 

That space in particular was manufacturing, so it was all open floor to begin with.

I meant to mention that to @Oznell, who commented she would have wanted to see more of the "original" preserved.  Since this was not a home, but manufactuting space (garment factory), with regards to preservation, the columns and ceiling beams are all that there is, and maybe all that there was. Since it was a factory, there probably wasn't much to preserve.  This is an illustration of a garment factory in 1875, close to the time this was built:

 

When I moved to New York in the 1980s, these buildings were practically abandoned, the areas were desolate, and artists moved in to use them as studios because of the high ceilings and big windows.  Rents were cheap.  I had an artist friend who had 3 studios but no apartment to live.  Of course many people really lived there, some were squatters who put in sweat equity, and eventually the City legalized these as residential spaces for artists. 

Which is why people like Robert De Niro and Taylor Swift live in this area.  But there is a lot of winking at the artist requirement.  I don't know if this specific building/unit is so restricted.

This apartment is in NYC's most expensive zip code, 10013, the sixth most expensive zip code in the United States.   https://ny.curbed.com/2015/7/7/9942870/shocker-tribeca-is-home-to-nycs-most-expensive-zip-codes

In 2020, an original artist just a few blocks north of that same street, sold her I would say unrenovated 2,200-square-foot loft for  $2.4 million:

[NYCLatinaMe]

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@stevieb wrote:

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@MorningLover wrote:

1,406 ft² apartment # 4

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Thanks for posting. That's a good bit of square footage for an apartment. It's mostly open, which I gather many like and has some advantage, but with all that space, I'd have preferred a second bedroom and there's no way the only bath works for me with no access from and being that far away from the bedroom.

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@MorningLover Thanks for posting the floor plan.

@stevieb I am looking at the floor plan and see that the bath and kitchen are on the same wall.  I am guessing plumbing is the issue.  And this was just a work studio for this architect and an investment I guess, so he probably didn't care.  1 Bathroom in that good size apartment, yikes!  The place is in contract waiting to close, so maybe we will see the price it actually sold at once it closes.  It shows still at $2MM, but if the apt was sold without financing, we may not know the actual price paid, because it is a co-op, and i don't think that would be public information without a lender putting a lien on it.

[stevieb]

@NYCLatinaMe  Everything you've said makes perfect sense. When space is at a premium, the seller can get top dollar and the buyer can retrofit it as they wish. I've always coveted a loft like space, even if it isn't necessarily industrial space or in NYC, though both would have been the ideal in my younger years. As much as I adore NYC, I'm not sure I could manage it as well as I once could and did on a regular basis. I've also dreamed of converting a large carriage house into residential space.