Baccarat Hotel & Residences, New York: What It Is and What It Costs

What the Hotel-and-Residences Name Means

The tower is one building with three stacked, legally separate programs. A public library sits at grade and one level below. A nine-story, 114-key hotel rises above that. The 61 condominiums occupy floors 18 through 49, according to Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s project records. A roof terrace at the 14th floor marks the hand-off between hotel and residences. Owners enter through a private lobby; hotel guests use a separate entrance. Nothing about owning a residence here makes it bookable by the night: that flexibility belongs to the hotel’s 114 keys, not the 61 privately owned units above them.

Who Lives Here: Unit Mix, Sizes, and Price

Sizing and initial pricing come from New York YIMBY’s 2015 construction coverage and Homes.com’s building profile. Most units face in three directions; only the four-bedroom floors and the penthouse see a full 360 degrees, from One World Trade Center south to Central Park north.

True Cost Beyond the Purchase Price

Minimum down payment on a purchase here runs 20% of the price, per CityRealty. The bigger surprise for out-of-state buyers is New York’s mansion tax: a one-time, buyer-paid closing tax on top of the purchase price, separate from the annual property tax bill. Under New York State’s transfer-tax law, it applies to the entire price, not just the amount above the threshold, so a unit priced one dollar into a new tier pays the higher rate on every dollar of the sale.

Rates and brackets per Hauseit’s published mansion tax schedule. A buyer at $9,999,999 pays 2.25%; at $10,000,000, the whole price jumps into the 2.5% tier, a $25,000 tax difference for one extra dollar of offer price. Sellers separately carry New York State’s real estate transfer tax, 0.4% under $3M and 0.65% at $3M and above.

Monthly common charges and each unit’s individual property tax assessment are not published as one building-wide figure. They are disclosed per unit in the condominium offering plan and in each listing sheet, and they vary by floor and stack.

Amenities and What Residents Get Access To

Residents share the hotel’s amenity floors: a 10,000-square-foot wellness center with a spa by La Mer, a 55-foot pool, a fitness center, the on-site restaurant, and the Grand Salon & Bar, per StreetEasy’s building listing. Access runs through a dedicated residents’ entrance. Housekeeping, valet parking, and 24-hour concierge are part of the standard service model.

Is Baccarat Residences a condo-hotel where I can rent nights?
No. Owners sign leases of at least 12 months, and the hotel does not let residents place vacant units into its nightly booking system, according to Homes.com. The two products stay separate even though they share a lobby-level wellness floor.

Can You Rent Out a Unit? Ownership and Lease Rules

Subletting is allowed at any time, with no minimum hold period before renting, subject to a fee equal to one month’s common charges. The catch is the lease term: 12 months minimum, so nightly or weekly rentals aren’t possible under the building’s own rules. Many units function as pieds-à-terre and are sometimes sold furnished.

Do residents share the hotel’s restaurant and spa, or is access limited?
Full, not partial: residents can use the restaurant, the Grand Salon & Bar, the spa, and the pool, and hold priority over hotel guests for reservations at all of them, per Homes.com.

Is board approval required to buy here?
Buying here does not require a co-op-style board interview. As a condominium, the board holds a right of first refusal rather than approval power, which is the structural difference from a co-op purchase – see Hauseit’s condo-vs-co-op comparison.

Location, Honestly

The building sits directly across 53rd Street from the Museum of Modern Art, with the nearest subway about a tenth of a mile away. Traffic on the block runs heavy enough that CityRealty lists it as a drawback, and not every north-facing unit clears the buildings between it and Central Park.

Is Asking Price the Real Price?

The 12.1% gap between the $3,122 average asking price per square foot and the $2,745 average on the ten most recent closed sales is the single most useful number a buyer can carry into a negotiation here: list price and closing price are different conversations at this building. One January 2026 example puts a face on that gap. Unit #18A, a 3,005-square-foot three-bedroom, had its asking price cut 18.4% – down $2,250,000 – to $10,000,000, according to CityRealty’s price-cut tracking, listed through Corcoran Group.

Are current asking prices realistic, or do sales close well below ask?
Recent closings run meaningfully under current asking averages, so an asking price here works as an opening position more than a settled figure.

Who This Building Suits

A pied-à-terre buyer gets furnished-unit flexibility and full hotel-service access without a long-term commitment to New York living. Full-time residents weigh that same service layer against the traffic and no-roof-deck tradeoffs CityRealty flags. For an investor, the 12-month lease structure supports steady rental income; it does not support a short-term-rental strategy, since nightly bookings stay with the hotel’s 114 keys.

How many residences does the building actually have – 60 or 61?
Sources use both. StreetEasy’s description says “sixty,” while the same building’s facts table and CityRealty both list 61 total apartments; 61 is the figure used consistently across both buildings’ facts tables.