11-02 49th Avenue (L Haus)
11-02 49th Avenue, Long Island City, NY 11101
BBL 4000627501 · BIN 4540102
- Year built
- 2008
- Type
- Condominium
- Units
- 123
- Floors
- 11
- Landmark
- No
- Flip tax
- Not documented in the records reviewed
L Haus is the building in Hunters Point that gave away its own floor area to build a yard, and two decades of Long Island City development have not produced many others like it.
The site is a large L-shaped parcel of roughly 28,500 square feet running through the block from 49th Avenue to 50th Avenue at 11th Street. A conventional developer fills that parcel and stacks the resulting floorplate as high as the zoning allows. CetraRuddy and the sponsor did the opposite: the building was drawn as an L, and the void inside the L became The Yard — more than 10,000 square feet of landscaped ground-level green space with a rolling lawn, a children's playground, an outdoor kitchen with grills, lounge seating and water features. In a district where private outdoor space at ground level is close to nonexistent, that is the building's entire argument, and it is a structural one rather than a marketing one. It cannot be added later and it cannot be taken away.
The façade carries a second, quieter argument. The building is buff-colored brick banded with ribbed pale-gray panels in horizontal courses — patterning rather than the flat masonry-and-glass idiom that Hunters Point produced almost uniformly between 2006 and 2012. Architectural records read the banding as a deliberate compositional device, and it does the work of breaking down what would otherwise be a very long and very flat street wall along two avenues.
The interior amenity program is unusually deep for an 11-story building of this vintage. Roughly 5,000 square feet of indoor amenity space is divided among a fitness center of about 1,700 square feet, a yoga room, a media room, and a club room of about 1,500 square feet with a catering pantry, alongside a pet spa, bicycle storage, private storage and on-site parking. The roof terrace carries private cabanas. Taken together with The Yard, the amenity package is closer to what a 2015-vintage tower offers than to what its 2008 peers do — and it is carried across 123 residences rather than across 400, which is the operating fact a buyer should understand before comparing common charges.
Inside the apartments, the specification is durable rather than showy: ceiling heights above nine feet, wide-plank white oak floors, triple-pane operable windows — genuinely rare, and the single best sound-and-thermal decision in the building given the site's proximity to the Long Island Rail Road and the 7 — and Bosch washers and dryers in the residences. A set of duplex apartments carries double-height living rooms, and a number of upper-floor units carry terraces of real size.
The condominium sold out in 2012. It has since traded as a mature resale building rather than as new development, which is the correct way to think about it: the systems are approaching two decades of service, the amenity program is fully built out, and the pricing argument rests on the courtyard and the layouts rather than on newness.
Architecture and unit composition
The building is eleven stories over an L-shaped footprint of roughly 28,500 square feet, carrying approximately 132,100 square feet of built area. City records count 122 residential units; brokerage and management-sourced records consistently give 123, and 123 is the figure the building itself uses. City records enumerate 155 units in total, the additional units being parking and ancillary space rather than apartments — a structure that matters at diligence, because a deeded parking space in this building is a separate condominium unit with its own charges and its own resale market.
The apartment mix runs from one-bedrooms through two- and three-bedroom configurations, including penthouse-tier units and a set of duplexes. The duplex plans are the most distinctive product in the building: an entry foyer opening to a double-height living room with an open island kitchen and outdoor space on the lower level, with bedrooms above. Several two-bedroom lines carry terraces of substantial size — one documented at roughly 576 square feet off an eleventh-floor unit, another at roughly 620 square feet off a penthouse.
The consistent specification across the inventory is ceiling heights above nine feet, wide-plank white oak flooring, triple-pane operable windows, open pass-through kitchens with islands on the larger plans, and in-unit Bosch laundry. Exposures divide between the two avenue frontages and the courtyard; the courtyard-facing residences trade skyline view for quiet and for a direct outlook onto The Yard, and they price differently for that reason.
Building operations
L Haus runs as a full-service condominium with a live-in superintendent and an attended lobby that includes refrigerated storage for grocery and meal deliveries — a small operational detail that has aged unusually well.
The operating cost structure is driven by the amenity program. A 10,000-square-foot landscaped courtyard with water features, a roof terrace with cabanas, roughly 5,000 square feet of indoor amenity space, a pet spa and an on-site parking operation together carry landscaping, maintenance and staffing obligations that a plain lobby-and-gym building does not. Spread across 123 residences, that shows up in the common charge. Buyers comparing L Haus to a bare-bones Hunters Point condominium should compare what the charge buys rather than the charge alone; buyers comparing it to a 400-unit tower should expect the per-unit share of the same amenity to be larger here.
No audited financial statements, offering plan, house rules or board communications for this building are held in The Roebling Research Library as of this writing. Reserve position, assessment history, Local Law 11 façade cycle status and any capital plan should therefore be pulled directly from the managing agent at diligence. For a building now approaching twenty years of service, the façade cycle and the mechanical systems are the two questions worth asking first.
What to know if you’re buying
The Yard is the asset. Price it deliberately. More than 10,000 square feet of landscaped ground-level courtyard is not reproducible in Hunters Point. Courtyard-facing residences trade view for quiet and for direct access to it; decide which you are buying before you compare lines.
Pull the façade and systems position. The building is approaching twenty years of service. Ask for the current Local Law 11 cycle status, the most recent audited statements, the reserve balance and any assessment history or plan.
Parking is a separate unit, not an amenity. Confirm whether a space conveys, what it costs to carry, and what it is worth on resale.
Confirm the tax position. A 2008-vintage 421-a benefit is at or near the end of its term. The difference between a running abatement and an expired one is the largest variable in the carrying cost here.
Check the unit count you are underwriting. City records and building records disagree by one residence and differ substantially on total units because of the parking and ancillary units. For common-interest and voting questions, work from the declaration, not from aggregators.
What to know if you’re selling
Lead with the courtyard. It is the single most distinctive for-sale amenity in Hunters Point, and no tower in the district can answer it.
Sell the layouts that towers cannot build. The duplexes with double-height living rooms and the units with 500-plus-square-foot terraces are the building's premium product. Market them as their own category rather than as line items in a building average.
Name the triple-pane windows. Buyers touring near the rail cut and the 7 notice quiet, and this is why. It is a specification worth stating rather than leaving to be felt.
Position against inland mid-rises, not the waterfront. A buyer cross-shopping Center Boulevard is buying river views. A buyer cross-shopping inland Hunters Point is buying space, outdoor room and amenity — and that is the comparison L Haus wins.
Comparable buildings
If you're considering L Haus, also evaluate:
- 27-28 Thomson Avenue (Arris Lofts) — the 1920s Eagle Electric factory converted in 2007; the closest analogue on courtyard-and-amenity structure, with a lap pool and a garden at the center of the block
- 3 Court Square (Skyline Tower) — the 802-residence Court Square tower; the newer, taller, view-driven alternative
- 22-18 Jackson Avenue (Galerie) — contemporary Court Square condominium; the newer-construction comparison inland
- 5th Street Lofts (5-09 48th Avenue) — Hunters Point loft-idiom condominium of similar vintage a few blocks west
- One Hunters Point (5-49 Borden Avenue) — Hunters Point condominium; the closest peer on scale and inland positioning
- Murano (5-19 Borden Avenue) — boutique Hunters Point condominium; the smaller-building comparison
- The Foundry at Hunters Point (2-40 51st Avenue) — Hunters Point condominium of comparable amenity calibration
- The View (46-30 Center Boulevard) — Center Boulevard waterfront condominium; the river-view price comparison
- Citylights (4-74 48th Avenue) — the district's original Queens West for-sale building; the long-horizon Hunters Point comparison
- The Powerhouse (50-09 2nd Street) — the converted Pennsylvania Railroad powerhouse on the waterfront; the character-and-conversion alternative
Considering a move at The L Haus?
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