In the past we have talked about amenities, i.e. what “extras” come with the your lease when you are renting and apartment. But we only looked at it from the generalized point of what should be expected. This week I wanted to talk about what renters actually enjoy when it comes to amenities that are offered, or at least what my family and I have enjoyed.
We have lived in a few different apartments now, and we have experienced vastly different levels of amenities. Some of them we absolutely adore and others we really questioned why they were there.
Our favorite amenity out of everything has been having access to a pool. All of the places that we have lived in, except one, has had a pool, and it’s been our favorite thing to have access to with and without kids. As childless adults we would go to the pool for the day and swim on and off and then hangout in the lounge chairs with a book. It allowed us to cool down and still be close enough to the house that we could go home to eat and come back.
Some people may not consider this one an amenity, but as a mom of 4 little boys this next one was big for me—laundry machines. We have had both in-unit and not in-unit, and while I prefer an in-unit washer and dryer, just having access to them inside our building in general has been a check in the positives column for us. Some people without kids may not mind going to a laundromat and sitting there for a few hours and doing laundry, but when you have kids it is a game changer when you don’t have to load up your small humans into a car and then have them hangout with you at a laundromat without going crazy.
One amenity we have been indifferent on has been a gym. We have lived in two apartments that have offered gyms as part of the amenities, and honestly they have both fallen short. They were both located in smaller rooms and neither had a ton of equipment, which for the amount that we were paying in rent at both locations, we expected more equipment and a bigger room for them both. In today’s life, most people also prefer going to a physical gym because they have more variety of equipment and the option to work with a trainer. So, when it comes to a gym as an amenity, this one we would pass on.
I think there is also a thing as to many amenities. We lived at an apartment that offered a movie room and a game room and we never used either. The movie room to had to reserve to use, but the email that we had to use to reserve it would never get back to you, so we never knew if our reservation actually went through. They also had a game room that we were never able to find. We had asked around about it but nobody we had talked to actually knew where it was located. In theory they would have been great to use but they were never easily accessible or even able to be located.
What kind of amenities do you look for or want when looking for a place to rent? What’s on your must have list?
