high floor as-is or low floor renovated?

What neighborhood is this in?

I think it depends on many factors. What are you expecting to do? Are you living there 5-7 years? 20 years? How much is the one that needs no work? How much is the one that needs the renovation? Personally I would rather the view as well as having a kitchen and bathroom that I designed in my taste rather then what the last owner wanted

You can CHG the condition of the property but you can't CHG the view. More info needed on prices though

Also on the low floor overlooking the busy ave, have you carefully considered street noise? Visited during rush hour? Is the top floor facing the same direction just higher, or on a quieter side?

High floor with renovations and view. I passed on 2 apartments, all renovated beautifully, on the 1st and 2nd floors and took a "fixer upper" on a high floor. The lower floor apartments took a long time to sell. My new kitchen flows better than the lower floor apartments.

hands down high floor with views.

absolutely hands down high floor with views.

...After you buy you can renovate AND add to the square footage but can't make or add a view. That's done.

The coop is in Harlem at 145th st. The price for the renovated unit is 440,000 and faces St. Nicholas. The high floor unit is 415,000. The high floor unit has higher maintenance - about 200 more/mo. We are going to be first-time buyers and have heard it can be difficult to get renovation plans past a coop board. Maybe this isn't always so? We also have a weird superstition that being elevator dependent is a bad thing - spouse grew up in the city and remembers the blackout of 1977 as if he'd gone through a war.

It only becomes difficult to get a full gut renovation through the board if you are changing things like wet over dry or want central air. Other than that is isn't difficult

Some of it depends on your cash position. You can finance the purchase price but may not be able to finance the renovation costs. So if you were planning on putting down $88,000 on the renovated unit, you may have to put down $83,000 on the unrenovated unit and another plus another $50,000 or $75,000 for the renovation. In addition you will have to live somewhere else and carry the unit during the process and odds are that you won't even be able to submit your renovation plan to the Coop for approval until after you have closed. If you can swing that, then I agree with the higher floor probably being the better investment.

But also you may have issues getting a good contractor to take a project under $100,000 these days.

dubious, you need to think of the premium for high floor vs low floor after you have renovated the higher floor including the trouble to renovate and cost overruns. The premium is highly dependent on whether the surrounding buildings are low rise of high rise. If the building you are interested in surrounded by high-rise, the lower floor is unlikely to get too much light. In such cases, the premium for high floor with view may be 20-30% in Harlem (Manhattan will be even more). For low-rise townhouse neighborhood, the premium may not exist if the lower floor has higher ceilings.

Lower floor. Negotiate.

The coop is an ugly basic brick post-war high rise surrounded by low-rise pre-war buildings. The view is towards the Bronx and Northern Manhattan -so perhaps its not as valuable as a city-facing view?

We aren't financing the purchase ( we got an inheritance) so we could conceivably buy the cheaper high floor and renovate I suppose but I had no idea that it might be hard to find a contractor to do a project under 100K (!).

Why is the maintenance so much more for high floor apartments?

Shares are assigned based on the price / value of the apartment in the initial offering. The more the price / value, the more shares.