Carnegie Hill: what it costs to live there and what you get for the money.

 
In 1901, Andrew Carnegie built a vast, 100,000 square foot mansion at the corner of 91st Street and Fifth Avenue, and thus gave his name to the area bordered approximately by 86th and 96th Streets, Fifth and Third Avenues. 


The Carnegie mansion now houses the Cooper-Hewitt
National Design Museum (Wikipedia photo)

Home to many of the private schools parents would kill to get their children into, Dalton, Nightingale-Bamford and Spence, for three, it's the kind of neighborhood where the children are more likely to be seen in plaid skirts and blazers with crests than piercings and tattoos.

While residents here are not necessarily as beyond-the-dreams-of-avarice rich as those in the blocks farther south (or if they are, they keep it quiet), if those lower blocks are the Rolls Royce of Manhattan, Carnegie Hill is the Bentley.

You won't see huge perambulators pushed by nannies in uniform, as you occasionally do on those lower blocks, but you will see lots of Bugaboo strollers pushed by young mothers with Goyard or Louis Vuitton tote bags slung over their shoulders.  The large prewar apartments that abound in the neighborhood are highly attractive to families.

Carnegie Hill is also home to a large section of Museum Mile, which stretches along Fifth and Madison Avenues from the Metropolitan Museum of Art at 82nd and Fifth to the Museum for African Art at 110th Street.

Photo courtesy Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum







Carnegie Hill's portion includes five of the ten museums, among them the Guggenheim, the Neue Galerie, and of course the Cooper-Hewitt. 

Like that of the rest of the city, the real estate market here is starved for inventory, but there are some excellent properties available.

At present, there are 14 three-bedroom, three-bath apartments, in prewar co-op buildings with doormen, available in the neighborhood, at prices ranging from around $2,000,000 to more than $6,000,000.

In the last six months, sixteen similar apartments have sold with an average selling price of about $4,500,000, which means that this segment of the market favors the seller (no surprise). 

Sixteen similar two-bedroom co-ops are available priced from something over $1,000,000 to about $4,000,000. 

Average asking price for a one-bedroom co-op in a prewar doorman building is currently a bit over $700,000, but there are a number of them available at less than $500,000.

The largest co-ops now available, those with four or more bedrooms, can be had for between $4,500,000 and $14,500,000.

Condos are scarce, as the neighborhood was built and converted in an era before they became popular.  At present, there are only 34 condos available, ranging in size from one bedroom to six.  Twelve are in prewar buildings.  Average price per square foot for all of them together is about $1,700.

Rent for a three-bedroom apartment in a doorman building (nearly all were built after World War II) averages out at about $14,000 per month, although it's sometimes possible to find a three-bedroom for under $10,000.

For a two bedroom apartment, the average is a little over $8,000, and a one bedroom will cost somewhere between $2,000 and $4,500.