Buyer of $5.3M Starr townhouse files 6-story enlargement

A buyer that paid $5.3M for a Upper East Side townhouse in 2025 has now filed to add two floors and merge its two apartments into one. DOB NOW job M01317990-I1, filed Oct. 12, 2026, comes 405 days after the deed was recorded.

Why it matters

Townhouse buyers on the Upper East Side often pay for a lot and a shell, then decide what to build. This one made its move more than a year after closing, which is the pace a full-house conversion tends to take once design and approvals are lined up. The seller was C. V. Starr & Co., Inc., with Starr, Park & Freeman, Inc. also named as a grantor on the deed, and the buyer was 168E75 LLC.

The lot sits in the New York market’s high-priced townhouse tier, where a single-family conversion is the exit.

The numbers

The deed (document ID 2025082700564001) is dated Aug. 21, 2025, and was recorded Sept. 2, 2025, at $5,300,000 for 100% of the property. The DOB NOW filing is an Alteration CO job. It lists the building at 4 stories and 2 dwelling units today, with 6 stories and 1 unit proposed. Total construction floor area is listed at 6,643.99 sq ft and the initial cost at $1,347,750.

The job description reads as a conversion from 2-family to 1-family with a vertical enlargement, and an amended certificate of occupancy. The filing names an architect, Tom Felton Architect, and an expediter, Frank Bueno Expediting, LLC. The owner of record on the filing is the buyer LLC.

Two Landmarks Preservation Commission documents, recorded in 2011 and 2020, sit against the same lot in ACRIS. We read that only as a sign that landmark paperwork exists for the property, not as a finding on what the enlargement requires.

What’s next

The job status on Oct. 13 was Pending Plan Examiner Assignment, so the Department of Buildings has not yet reviewed the plans. A vertical enlargement is a proposal until plan approval and a permit follow. We will watch for the permit and any work on the site.