It depends on our income.
The “luxury” apartments we now live in have in-unit stacked washer/dryers. The dryer is awful, but thank God we can do laundry when we want or need to and don’t need to haul it anywhere. There are pools we use almost every day from Memorial Day to Labor Day. We go golfing, but not as often as we could. We don’t utilize the 19th hole, because they offer a limited selection of drinks and foods. We have central aircon and heating, which is such an improvement over the last place.
We have a carport with storage. Our bikes don’t fit in the storage closet, so the carport is bike storage. There’s a fitness center, but right now it is hardly convenient (limited hours due to PANdemIC). There’s a dishwasher, which helps make the tiny kitchen more tolerable. There’s even a pantry section in the utility closet. There are many other amenities we don’t use, like the tennis/pickleball courts, the dog park, the tech center, playground, sand volleyball court, unused ball field, fire pits, game room with pool tables, racquetball court, or the fitness classes (because we could never go when they were scheduled.)
It’s great for the price, but we would give up many of these amenities if we could afford our own house.
I live in a high rise with quite a few amenities. The best one is the pool which comes with an asshole. Let me explain. Obviously, pool season in Chicago is pretty much a Memorial Day to Labor Day thing. And of course, the weather can be unpredictable so not every weekend is good pool weather. The leasing office hires a summer temp to help out and part of their role is to be a pool asshole. I’m sure a pool party with all your friends sounds great, but they don’t live in the building and pay rent. So, they have to be the bad cop and enforce the two guests per UNIT rule. They’re also in charge of stopping people from trying to reserve the pool chairs by leaving stuff on them. Sounds harsh and draconian but there’s room at the pool for everyone and you don’t feel like you’re crashing someone’s party when you go out to use the pool you’re paying rent for.
I remember having to use community laundry. What a pain. I learned to wash clothes in my sink.
Ugh. I remember having to use community laundry. Even though our old unit had 2 washer/dryers on each floor it was still a PITA to always have quarters on hand. Our current place is so much better.
In-unit washer dryer
Parking garage with assigned spot
High ceilings (a bit too high. The building is converted factory so it’s almost like being a Hobbit living in a human apartment)
Bay windows
Waterfront view
AC / heat pump (wifi / Alexa enabled)
Custom features like built-in shelving units, 2 overhead storage lofts and an office nook.
Children’s playroom*
Gym*
Resident’s lounge*
Concierge service
Walking distance to public transportation to Manhattan (Ferry, bus)
Shuttle bus to rail/NJ PATH trains to Manhattan/JC
Our building is older so we don’t have a lot of the amenities some of the newer buildings have:
pool
rooftop area
It would be nice to have a private outdoor space (courtyard I suppose as we live on the ground floor). Rooftop would be better.
- Closed due to COVID-19
You’re surprised to hear that people like dishwashers? 
Yeah, I can understand for some people not having a dishwasher isn’t a dealbreaker. There’s plenty of people who never cook and when they do it’s a microwave meal. But, I think the vast majority of renters are quite happy to have one and I don’t think the existence of one really affects the rent.
I’m surprised that people like them so much they’d give up on an apartment that is otherwise fine because of the lack of one.
Except I cook all the time, do a lot of baking, etc. and still don’t have one. Most of the time it’s just me, though, so I’m not generating a tremendous amount of dishes.
And yes, having one does affect the rent because it’s one more appliance they can use as a reasons to pegged the rent slightly higher.
If you don’t value your time, time-saving appliances don’t add value.
I’m not convinced that there’s much “time-saving” in a dishwasher for me - I did have one as a kid growing up, it’s not like I have no experience of them. Sure, if I had to feed 10 people for every meal it would be a great thing but 99% of the time (especially this year) it’s just me. Cleaning up a plate, glass, and some silverware along with the one pot/pan I used to cook dinner just doesn’t take much time.
I most definitely would. I have actually never lived in a place without a dishwasher and I’d rather not hand wash - Hell, unloading the dishwasher is annoying enough for me :D.
This topic actually came up tonight in a discussion. The conclusion was that places without dishwashers tend to be older ones and less expensive thus appealing to younger people. Younger single people without kids are more likely to be the type eating lots of takeout and delivery, the stereotype of the bachelor fridge with nothing but beer, soda, leftover pizza and some condiment bottles does have a basis in fact. So, the lack of a dishwasher isn’t a big deal.
And yes, I know this is the SDMB and I’ll wake up to responses from those who saved every penny in their 20s, wouldn’t think of ever going to a restaurant and cooked every meal, stretching pasta, beans and rice.
BLS ATUS EHM does show younger people spending less time per day on food prep. And men less than women. I didn’t see young men broken out.
And while just 5 minutes per day does add up to 30 hours over the year, I wasn’t going to trade much higher rent for that back when I was making <$10/h.
Although the energy savings of a modern dishwasher might be appealing to those who care about such things.
I LOVE having a dishwasher, and would be unhappy to do without. But if it was just me… I wouldn’t care as much.
And to those who talk about cooking – the dishes I dirty while cooking mostly get washed by hand anyway. It’s the plates and bowls and flatware and glasses that the dishwasher is great for. Oh – and I use it to sanitize my cutting boards, especially after cutting raw meat. But I wash those by hand, first. I just don’t stress about washing them perfectly, because I know they will run through a HOT cycle in the dishwasher.
Most of the apartments I had in Boston didn’t have a dishwasher. It wasn’t a big deal for me especially since I didn’t cook much; I got free or discounted meals at the restaurant where I worked. But I did feel the lack of a garbage disposal in the one apartment that didn’t have it, especially since I went vegan that year and finally got into cooking.
My BIL and SIL have a large piece of property with a main house and a guest house occupied by SIL’s mother. The guest house has a small kitchen with a full-sized fridge, oven and range, and even a dishwasher, but no garbage disposal. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
As much as I enjoy everything my building has to offer, I think if I were to live alone again, I could be content with a small studio and no amenities other than parking and laundry in the building. (My husband insists on laundry in unit, which I have to admit is a significant step up). But I might install a garbage disposal if the place didn’t have one.
Come to think of it, at my old place (where I lived 20 years) the “garbage disposal” was pretty much the compost heap in the garden. Which worked very well. I think I miss having a place to recycle kitchen waste of that sort. But since I no longer have space for a garden, either, it’s not like I have a use for a compost heap.
One thing common in Asia that I found extremely useful was the ability to hire the building’s maintenance staff to do little odd jobs for you around the house. Like, if you had a light fixture that needed replacing or the water heater was having problems or you needed some IKEA furniture assembled, you could call up the staff and they would give you a quote for how much it would cost for them to handle it for you. The biggest benefit was that they had all the right tools to do the job and they were able to do it quickly since they were so practiced at it.
As someone who was raised in believing assembling your own furniture was a basic prerequisite of self reliance, it definitely felt overly indulgent to hire out the work but I probably used them 5 or 6 times over the year and it cost me less than the price of buying a cordless drill.
Hiring out the maintenance staff is fairly common in the USA as well. They make extra money tax free and I don’t waste hours getting mad at Ikea directions.
Probably because they use a septic tank and you dont want to use a disposal with a septic tank.
You think apartments in Boston have septic tanks? I associate those with rural areas. I think it was just that the buildings were old, and a lot of them hadn’t been retrofitted with non-essential modern appliances. That particular apartment had just one 15-amp circuit breaker for the whole place; I had to turn off my window AC unit to run the coffeemaker. When I forgot, I had to walk down 5 flights of stairs to the basement to flip the switch, because we also didn’t have an elevator. I still loved that little studio. For all it lacked, it was the only home that was ever all mine.
ETA: Maybe you were referring to my BIL’s guest house, but since the main house has a garbage disposal, I think you’re mistaken there too.
I only lived in an apartment for a couple of years, and the building I lived in was built in 1925, and it did not have amenities like an elevator or dishwashers in the units. I lived on the 5th floor for most of that time and had to schlep my laundry to the basement to wash and dry it.
So from my experience, if I was to move to an apartment again, must-haves would be:
- On-site laundry that is open 24 / 7.
- Adequate storage in the unit or dedicated storage lockers for each tenant in the basement or somewhere similar.
- Adequate sound proofing between units and floors (one reason I liked the top floor was nobody was above me to make noise).
- Some sort of package receiving service / concierge / doorman. My apartment building was one of several that was owned by the same outfit so there was a central package receiving office in the building across the street. I had to walk over there to pick up and Amazon packages.
Some things that would be nice to have, but probably wouldn’t be a deal-breaker if it didn’t:
- In-unit laundry, dishwasher, garbage disposal.
- Front-door lock that can be deactivated from in the unit. Cell phones have made this somewhat less important than in the past, but going down 5 flights of stairs to let the pizza poy in was a pain.
- A deck or balcony.
A part of me misses living in my apartment. I felt safer, somehow, living there. And the uniqueness of living in an almost 100 year old building that had never been modernized was something I quite enjoyed.