Jenny Mollen and Jason Biggs Reveal Their NYC Home — and Why They Have a Ghost to Thank for It

Jenny Mollen and Jason Biggs landed their family's gorgeous NYC apartment with a little encouragement from beyond the grave.

"I decided that the house that we bought in L.A. was haunted," Mollen, 43, tells PEOPLE in this week's issue (on newsstands Friday) of how she and her husband, 44, decided to make the move from West Coast to East — and eventually ended up in their stylish 4-bedroom condo in Manhattan's West Village.

"A psychic told me that it was a ghost dog, but he had an old man partner. And I was like, 'Listen, the dog can stay, but the old man needs to leave.' I can't have an old man here," she recalls. "The psychic said, 'Well, he wants to teach Sid [the couple's elder son, then a newborn] historical facts.' And that's when I was out."

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The only problem was the couple had just purchased the Los Angeles property a few months prior.

"I knew the only way I was going to be able to convince Jason to sell a house that we had only owned for six months was to tell him I wanted to move to New York," says the author, whose latest book, City of Likes, is out June 14.

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Biggs, who is a New Jersey native and had been itching to get back east, seized the opportunity. "I was like, 'That's insane.' But I saw my opening. I said, 'Sure, it's haunted. Let's sell it. We're moving to New York!'"

Mollen admits her maneuver was short-sighted. "I just thought I'll get to New York, then I'll devise my plan for how to get back to L.A." But the family — which in addition to Sid, now 8, includes Lazlo, 4, and dogs Gina and Shirley, — found themselves unexpectedly at home in the Big Apple. "I fell in love with New York and we ended up staying. It just happened," she says.

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They made the move in 2015 and, after a stint in Tribeca, found their current home in 2017. While the timing of the move couldn't have been worse — "We moved in the night before I had my second child," says Mollen — the condo itself, in a former 19th-century factory, has become an artfully curated haven for the family.

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Mollen, an interior-design enthusiast, collected unique pieces that instilled a personal, layered vibe in the space. She picked up a vintage Turkish rug at the famous Round Top Antiques Fair in Texas, found a sofa for $300 in Ohio and had it re-covered in eye-catching teal, and gathered art everywhere—from Hollywood dealers to Facebook marketplace.

"It was important to me that it really felt like us and that every piece had a story," she says. "At one point, I did have a midlife crisis where I decided I was a vintage-furniture dealer."

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She teamed up with Jennifer Harrison, a designer and fellow vintage lover, whom she found via her popular Instagram, Flea Market Fab, to get the details right.

While the place looks polished now, they're still making tweaks to make it more family-friendly: turning a powder room in the entry into a mudroom and an office near the kitchen into a walk-in pantry.

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"I'm never done," says Mollen, but they are settled in to city life. The boys share a room by choice (Lazlo calls his top bunk "upstairs"), and the family gather around the kitchen island for meals. "We don't really sit down to eat. Jason and I stand at the island like short-order cooks, constantly serving snacks," she jokes.

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As for what makes the place feel like home, Biggs says, "Art and books are the most important things to me." For Mollen, it's that there's "lots of food and screaming children. Oh, and if I'm freezing my ass off because Jason has the air-conditioning on so low, then I know I'm home."