House39

An update 6 months later— I’ve reported my neighbors for smoking in their apartment for years which is in breach of the lease agreement with the building and nothing has changed. This building is lawless. Constant noise disruptions from the same units. Smoke that fills your apartment and causes respiratory issues. I wake up mornings and nights lightheaded because of all of the secondhand smoke. It’s a massive health concern and no one is here to help you. Original post: I agree with a lot of the other reviews here. I’ve lived in the building for 4 years, and the management and front desk staff cannot handle noise complaints or serious smoking issues that infiltrate other apartments and cause problems with sleeping and health for several other residents of the floor. The front desk doesn’t even call back up to your apartment when you’ve tried to get in touch with them - you’ll have to head down to the front desk in the middle of the night to get help with neighbors who sound like they’re killing each other while their child screams. The packaging department also gets packages mixed up and misplaced far too often. I like the building overall, but there are just too many issues with neighbors and mismanagement that go completely unaddressed. The mailroom I could live with, but the situations with some of the neighbors are outright unsafe. If I had known this before moving in, I would have selected another building.

The Most Deplorable & Disgusting “Luxury” Building Manhattan Has To Offer: Where do I even begin? The staff is so completely rude. I hope the building management for House39 is reading this. Your staff needs a customer service 101 boot camp. Living in a luxury building, you expect the staff to treat you with respect, resolve issues, and not lie about things from the get go and that has not been our experience at all here. We picked House39 because they represented themselves as a luxury building, which couldn’t be further from the truth photos to follow. We picked House39 because the leasing agent represented that we could work out with our personal trainer on the terrace area, as the gym is laughably closet sized. Turns out after months of living here, they decided that we would not be able to work out with our personal trainer in unused portions of the building even though we explicitly asked about this prior to moving in, as this was very important to us and one of the reasons we picked this building. We also picked House39 for the view of the river, and quickly after we moved in the windows became coated in a slime as of November 2018 that completely obstructed our view and left gross streaks down the entire window and across the entire window. The building refused to do anything about it and keeps blaming it on "the facade." It is now March 27th, 2019. The windows continue to be disgusting. The door to our apartment was covered in black marks, which we were told would be painted over upon moving in. Not only was that not the case see photo below, I had to nag them to even come paint the door over! Next, the carpeting in the hallway is covered in spackle and paint and we were told prior to moving in that the carpeting would be replaced. That’s also not the case and it's still not fixed and disgusting. Finally, we were told in order to break our lease it would be 3 months of rent, as this is something we asked our leasing agent prior to moving in. It's a good thing to know about. Now that we have inquired about breaking it since we are having so many issues, that number is now magically 6 months of rent. The bottom line here is House39, their management, and their staff doesn’t understand the first thing about being a luxury building. It’s the most disgusting place I have ever lived and cannot wait to move out. I was so excited to live here and I cannot believe the disaster and nightmare this residence has turned into. It is not hard at all to have your employees treat your residents with respect, and it's certainly not hard at all to fix the issues we have had, and yet House39 clearly doesn't care to do so. I would NOT recommend living here at all. There are so many amazing luxury buildings in the area that actually live up to being a luxury building.

Management is non existent. Most times you can’t get a correct response about anything from anyone-not even the community Manager. It’s very disappointing-I’ve been living here for about four years and it hasn’t always been this way. There is a clear lack of professionalism within management if most tenants request are purposely ignored. Bottom line the building has potential but the experience with management makes it very difficult to enjoy living at H39.

The reception staff and maintenance staff are 5*, especially during the difficult lockdown period last year. They were professional and caring, strong assets for the building. Otherwise, significant issues negatively impacted our stay. To summarise: [1] NOISE: We lived in the i-line, directly facing a construction site across 40th street. During the viewing, the leasing agent lied to us by branding it as a very quiet unit. Quite the opposite, the construction noises started as early as 6 or 7am for a full day every day, and would started again after 12:30am midnight till early in the morning. This happened most weeks for Monday - Saturdays during our stay! We constantly had interrupted broken sleep as a result. [2]. POOR MANAGEMENT: Management did not care about resident retention. A couple of months before the expiry of our contract, we were actively in touch with Management to discuss renewal. Every single time we sent an email query, it took between 3 to 7 days to get a reply. Called the office during working hours, voice mail every time; left voice messages, never received a call back. Good deals/units were popular. Due to this extremely careless working attitude, all response we got after each attempt was the apartment was already taken. We often had to escalate to the big boss to get responses. [3]. POOR QUALITY HARDWARE: Quality of the appliances in the apartment is below market standards for the price tag of the rent. We moved in last March and had a broken air con in the bedroom all the way through to summer. Maintenance staff were here several times trying really hard to fix it but didn’t succeed a few months later. Living room air con was also on and off. Our laundry machine broke down 3 times within a year with only normal usage – not a joke: that was more washing machine breakdowns than we have seen in our entire life so far. [4]. LIMITED COMMUAL AREA ACCESS: Club level outdoor space was supposed to open to all residents. However, majority of the time the doors were locked for reasons unknown. One had to ask reception staff to open the door, sometimes can take 10-20 minutes if they were busy. They often used “bad weather” “strong wind” as excuses for shutting the club level access, even though the weather was nice.

I lived in another building managed by Rose Associates for over 3 years and it was great - I thought this would be an upgrade since its a newer building and I was WRONG. I moved during the pandemic thinking it would be convenient to live in an amenity building that is resort-like, but they actually abide by the same restrictions commercial buildings abide by. Meaning, the gym was closed for a period much longer than any other residential building in the area and they are too lazy to extend the hours past 8pm. They have so many restrictions for the amenity spaces like the rooftop and lounge, that it makes no sense to pay a premium to live in a building like this. I would have been much better off if I had just stayed in my old building. I moved in May at the height of the pandemic and they totally dropped the ball on cleaning my apartment between tenants. When I complained, they tried to shrug it off as no big deal until I told them I would just move out. Then, they offered me valid options. The worst thing they did was mislead me with false information about the building. The broker who showed me apartments told me that people are not visible in the units due to the "mirrored" exterior of the building. I believed this and it wasn't really an issue until recently. Thanks to covid, the commercial building directly across the street from me has been vacant all of these months...until they came back to work...and now....people are waving to me from their desks. So, clearly they can see right into my unit. This is so incredibly intrusive and soooo insulting to the intelligence of any tenant...not sure why they think they can just outright LIE to tenants and have it be ok. I reached out the the building manager this week for resolution/options given that I do not have any privacy in my very expensive unit. He pretended to listen and be considerate, but told me today that my options are to keep the curtains closed on my floor to ceiling windows for privacy. Anyone looking for privacy, a well-managed building, a building that will consider your requests, DO NOT move into House39. You will pay premium prices to be treated like a tenant in a subsidized building and like they are doing you a favor when we all know there is no shortage of vacant luxury units in Manhattan these days.

House 39 is my little piece of paradise. I have been a very happy resident for the last two years. One of the things this building does so well is create a great sense of community. They put a lot of thought into fun events and activities which help bring residents together. I’ve become closer with a lot of my neighbors this way. It is a modern luxury building with all the amenities but never feels too large, or overcrowded. There is space to breathe and yet feels cozy. All the staff have been warm and friendly. I’ve felt at home from the day I moved in. Another great thing about this place is the location. Since it’s between 2nd and 3nd avenues it’s kind of removed from the bustle and sits in what feels like it’s own island. There is a peacefulness to it, but then steps away you’re back in restaurants, shops, Duane Reade, etc. So the best of both worlds. The amenities themselves have been a treat. I personally love the club level which has the best coffee machine I’ve ever seen in my life, beautiful areas to plug-in and work on projects, and a beautiful outdoor space. I’m also a big ping pong and pool player so I use those amenities a lot as well. It’s great for entertaining friends and family. On the roof I love how there is an indoor and outdoor hot tub, and great outdoor kitchens for BBQing. I also love the gym. It’s super clean and has a lot of options in terms of machines and equipment, and the locker rooms are really well designed. Overall I am very fortunate to have found this place. It has been very good to me. For any prospective residents, I hope you decide to come and give it a good look!

All issues I had here were fixed, particularly the lack of air conditioning. I really like it here and enjoy the convenience of everything! The new event coordinator is wonderful! I can’t say enough! The door men are so helpful and always keep your packages organized and safe!

I love it. This is a dream place. With roof top terrace, swimming pool, hot tubs, bbq grills. It's has more than most of the hotels here in Manhattan. I just added pictures for everyone to see, it has a such of great view to downtown Manhattan it's a breathtaking. I recommend to everyone. And use my name ill referred you. This would be the best investment of your life. Guaranteed! Join us!

tldr: my lease ended on 5/31/2020. More than two months later House39 still has not fully returned my deposit due to the management’s incompetency and total lack of professionalism. I am now seeking legal action and you should avoid this place to save yourself a serious pain in the rear. Pay attention to how long it took them to respond to any of my emails. Also I could only email because whenever I called, either no one picked up or it was some guy saying he’s not responsible. I had stayed in House39 since December 2018 and moved out in March 2020 due to COVID. I had to end the lease early and agreed to pay a $1500 cancellation fee according to the contract. My account was immediately charged this amount in March, and I paid it along with the rent then. After my lease officially ended on 5/31/2020, I didn’t hear anything about my deposit for two weeks and emailed them about it. Two days later, they told me the refund amount, which was $1500 short because they charged me again the cancellation fee I already paid for. I immediately corrected them and attached screenshot of payment history in March as proof. Another two days later on 6/19, they apologized for the mistake and sent me a document detailing full amount owed to me. After not hearing from them for two more weeks and not receiving the payment, I emailed to follow up on 7/3. Three days later on 7/6, they claimed without proof that they mailed a check on 6/19, which I guess magically didn’t reach me, and said they will send another check. After another week of no news, I followed up on 7/13 and was told on 7/16 the same exact response that “a check was mailed on 6/19, do you want the check sent again” as if our earlier conversation never happened. Note this is all with the same person so it’s either unbelievale incompetency or flat-out playing dumb to deflect. Another week later on 7/24, I did receive a check mailed on 7/16, but with the $1500 cancellation fee deducted... I emailed immediately and they didn’t respond to me until 7/28 when I brought up pursuing legal action they ignored my other civil follow-up emails before this, but simply stalled me again saying “looking into it”. On 7/29 they asked again for my address that I already sent to them three times in the same email thread. After not hearing from them again for four days, I sent an email on 8/3 letting them know I will be pursuing legal action if they don’t give me a response, to which they *surprisingly* replied immediately and told me a “check is being sent”. On 8/6, I sent my last email to them saying that I am filing a complaint to the New York State Attorney General’s Office, to which they have ignored. So here I am, after wasting so much time communicating with them for over two months, now trying to pursue legal actions for a god damn $1500. If you are looking to live here, know that the management only cares about you until the moment you sign the lease. After that, they would not bother showing common courtesy and professionalism, and will only do the bare minimum to not get into legal trouble. No one should ever be dealing with a pathetic management team like this when you are paying this much for the rent.

The amenities here are sick. Skee ball, grills, cabanas, hot tub, the list just goes on. It's like the best of Soho House and Dave & Busters in one spot. It makes never wanting to leave your apartment in the Winter actually fun.