Topic: Unique Apartment Amenities

We have a client working on a new property and he asked us for a few ideas on creative amenities that they may add to their 500 unit upscale property. Through some crowd sourcing we've gotten a few great response.

Here's what we have so far:
- Hot Tubs throughout community
- Rock Climbing Walls
- Car Wash
- Dog Parks (leashes optional)
- Bike Storage Rooms
- Gift Wrapping stations in the clubhouse
- mid-level wall and cable plugs for the purpose of hiding your flat screen tv wires (Mike Brewer)
- Wake-up calls
- Grill pits/bonfire setups
- Lawn chess
- Wine Refrigerators
- built in iPod docks and
- mounted 42'' flat screen TV
- free WIFI
- in-wall charging stations at front door (Mike Whaling)

Have you seen anything unique we should add to the list?

- Onsite Child Day Care
- Stocked Ponds (Catch & Release)
- Golf Putting Greens
- Driving Range
- Bike Trails
- Jogging Trails
- Dry Sauna
- Tanning Salon
- Elevators

As a former competitive swimmer, who wants to get back into masters level competitiion (I miss it); I am disappointed by the pools that many communities offer. Either they are funny irregular shaped holes in the ground that are useless for lap swimming; or if they are marketed as a lap pool, they do not meet ANY regulation dimensions for training purposes. Regulation dimensions are as follows:

US Short course (yards); 25 yards in length, can be 6-8 lanes wide. A lane is usually 5 feet in width, with a line marking the middle of each lane. This allows groups/teams to swim laps and share the space by always swimming on the right hand side of the marking.

International short course: 25 meters, same width.

Long Course: 50 meters

Usually, pools that meet international long course standards measure 50M x 25 yards, and have lane markings for each on the bottom (the pool I trained in while I was in high school had these markings made of 1/2" square tiles and I KNEW exactly how many tiles were used to make the markings).

If you have the space to put a pool; make it at least 25 yards in length and you can market it as a genuine lap pool.

I would also suggest setting aside some regular time in the property clubhouse for use as a learning center for your students. Equip it with WiFi access and bring in a substitute teacher (if you have a resident that is one, you can do this in exchange for a rent credit) to provide homework help.

This is to piggy-bank on Johnny's comment above. I did the classroom idea at a lower income property in San Antonio with an ESL instructor, no reason why it couldn't work on a higher income prop with a tutor for school-aged people, and use the space for workshops for residents - tax tips, investment ideas, how to use social media, going green, etc.

Temperature controlled wine lockers in a central location, bike storage lockers, shoe racks with down lighting, cedar-lined hall closet (incredibly easy to do), pull-down drying rack in the laundry room (behind door or above dryer), radiant floor heat, energy usage monitors, two dishwasher drawers instead of a regular drop in dw.

...and NO WINE RACKS ABOVE THE REFRIGERATOR, that only ruins the wine!

Any property that is built without integrated pest control (such as Home Team Pest control or Taexx) is missing a huge opportunity. Fiber optic connections for large quantity of high definition TV channels is obviously important as well. Design for door-to-door trash pick-up and comprehensive recycling program.

I like the idea of providing a wall mounted LCD TV (1 per unit in the living room area); with power and cable connections located behind the TV. If you have walk in closets, incorporate a section of shelves and/or drawers inside.

If you do not provide a refrigerator in the unit, it is critical to at least have a water connection for the icemaker.

If you have the space, you can have a bank of small lockers that residents can use to keep emergency supplies and food items as part of your disaster plan. You can partner with the local fire department or red cross to help the residents assemble and maintain them.

I have seen properties that have community loaner bicycles and shopping carts (if shopping is nearby, it encourages residents to walk).

- electricity plugs in the floor (in LR)
- movie theatre (not as unique, but certainly not common yet)
- doggie day spa 2x/mo with certified vet tech to pick up the dog and groom it on site, then return to the apt and for general use by the residents the rest of the time, or at least grooming areas in one spot of building near an exit; tags along nicely with the dog park mentioned in an earlier resonse
- massage room
- get a lot of musicians? dedicated music practice rooms
- get a lot of artists? artist studios/gallery space for common use
- outdoor, giant (3' high?) chess set
- water misters by the pool, like in the Vegas (which would be unique here in MN, but might not be where your client is located)
- outdoor fire pit
- outdoor/rooftop movie theatre area(for resident use and good for resident events)
- outdoor pizza oven/fireplace

Wow, maybe I need to move someplace warmer so I can spend more time outdoors?

I like the idea of power outlets in the floor... I also like the idea of building IN Uninterruptable Power Supplies (UPS)/battery backups in at least one of the rooms for computer use.

I'd love to know what the proforma rents are before I open my big mouth, but I recently built a 316 unit complex and put a demo kitchen in and we hire a chef to come in on weekends and do made-to-order omelettes. biometric locks are also very sexy...and not that expensive. We also did rain shower heads- which people think is cool.

another area where we did some cool stuff was in our courtyards (3, each with very different feels). one of them was super cool it had a sort of modern zen pavilion that sat over a rectangular reflecting pool (12" water depth), at either end was another seating group (1 with a bubbling fountain and 1 with a double sided gas fireplace). once again, the key to making the ammenities work is integrating multiple functions.

my main advice would be to worry less about being kitchy with your amenities. I would concern yourself more with integrating them in a way that actually creates a sense of community. bring the people together with open and adjacent (or integrated) ammenities so that the residents dont have to go out to bars, etc to be together.

The other thing that a 'real' community will do is increase your word-of-mouth traffic and will help your ammenity areas show well for tours.

With online shopping increasing 45% by 2016 and residents expecting you to accept and hold their packages (plus answer questions about their whereabouts all day long)... an awesome amenity is online package logging software with alerts by SMS & email, plus a lobby display board for tours, etc (it also doubles as a resident retention and marketing tool via all those customized SMS & email package notices appearing to come directly from your community's email).