The Capri

Shares the building with a dormitory for Marymount Manhattan college. I believe the dorm has the lower floors, and the condo has the higher floors. I had a colleague who lived here - other than convenience to midtown, it had little to offer. The street is unpleasant - looks at the truck entrances to the post office, and the dorm in the same building means kids outside talking and smoking at odd hours. If I recall, the finishes were pretty standard for condos of this vintage - nothing special. Some very good views in the north facing units, I think the views to the south are fairly well blocked. You'd have to really want to live near work to bother with this building.

The dorm has floors 1-32 (71% of the building) and the condos start at 33. There're separate entrances and elevators.

Thanks for your input, Lanzz and NWT. It's weird that a building this recent (10 years) doesn't even have a gym! The other issue to consider about the building--something that's giving me pause--is that the tax abatement just ended this year. (Basically, an increase of $1000 / month). This building will be a good case study to see the immediate effect on prices when tax abatement suddenly ends.

For 38C, the increase is $300 per month from the current tax year to the one that begins on July 1st.

A 10-year 421-a abatement phases out at 20% every two years. The current owner got a total of ~$45,000 in benefit over 6.5 years. He paid more in 2008 because of that $45,000 in future abatement, but as of next week will have used it all up. (That's not to say people didn't pay too much for future abatements.)

I would recommend anyone wanting to live in Midtown East, look East of 2nd Avenue to the river. Much more residential with lots of mom & pop stores along First Avenue. Also much quieter and less hectic.

A plus for the neighborhood: the new Whole Foods on 57th, between 2nd and 3rd AVe…. taking the long view, Midtown East in general could have a big upswing in the next 10 years… Not sure about the Capri, though, LOL

Penthouse B has been on the market for most of the last 6 years, at prices ranging from $2.5m to $3.4m. During that time it's been labeled PHB, PHB1, PHB2, and PHBW. Strangely, it was listed under all those different names by the same broker, Gilad Azaria at Douglas Elliman. Even more strangely, the apartment's size has grown from 1,369 sf in 2007 to 1,600 sf in the early 2010s to exactly 1,603 sf in 2015. StreetEasy makes it so easy to keep track of these shenanigans. I went to see the apartment many years ago and there's no way it's 1,600 sf.

As others have mentioned, it's so odd to see a new-ish "luxury" condo building with no amenities - a doorman and two elevators, that's it. The new Second Avenue subway entrance at 63rd and 2nd will be farther from this building than the existing E/M/6 train entrance at 53rd and 3rd. And the building going up at 252 East 57th St will block a lot of the northern views from the Capri. At the open house I went to, a broker (not Gilad) told me that the new building probably won't be that big. I just looked it up - it will be 65 stories!

Overall it's hard to make any kind of bullish case for this building. So many better choices in this neighborhood...

If you go to the current broker's dedicated website for Penthouse B, the first thing you see is a sleek, gray-on-black presentation of a Google map with an animated pin that lands at... East Houston St near Avenue D? That's definitely going to confuse people!

Well they fixed the map at least... Otherwise the marketing website for PHB looks pretty good...

Add PENTHOUSE-B and PENTHOUSEB to the list of unit names for PHB.

The full list:
PHB, PHB1, PHB2, PHBW, PENTHOUSE-B, PENTHOUSEB

At least it's still 1,603 sq ft...