What Do You Value In an Apartment?

It’s been too long since I posted because I’ve been preoccupied. I am moving to yet another apartment and preparations are tedious and time consuming, however the topic of moving always makes for good blog fodder. I have lived in 6 apartments since I stopped living (regularly)with my family. I can honestly say that I’ve been disappointed by each one of them in one way or another, regardless of roommate issues (when I had roommates).

The older I get I think the more see the value of community amenities. When I was in college I couldn’t afford the fancy schmancy apartment communities that had pools, workout rooms, and game rooms. I always went for the best (cleanest, safest, newest) apartment I could afford and didn’t stop to worry about extras not knowing how they could’ve changed my experience for just a few dollars a month. Recently I’ve come to realize the value of community amenities and discounts.

The average gym membership is about $30-50 a month regardless of the length of the contract. The vast majority of gym contracts are impossible to break and usually end up costing people a lot more money than they intended to spend. I discovered that if you find a community with a workout room and a pool, hot tub, or sauna, you might pay 5-10 dollars more on rent per month but it is worth it for the convenience and the lack of an unbreakable never expiring contract.

I don’t have to get up get dressed in street clothes and drive to the gym to change into workout clothes and vice versa to come home. I also don’t have to use a public restroom populated by stinky and sweaty women of all ages when my apartment is a two minute walk away. I’ll be more inclined to get up and go to the gym at 5 or 6 in the morning because it won’t be a big production and require me to be awake enough to drive. This particular gym does not have free weights, so the chances that there will be a lot of men there is slim. The competition for the equipment will mostly be with other ladies which I’m used to at the gym anyway. I’m not seeing the downside to this yet. I guess I’ll have to report back on what it’s really like when I move in early next week.

Other amenities which I think should be in every rental community (if possible) are a dog park, a playground for kids, and picnic areas. My current rental community has no amenities. That means that parents let their kids run in the parking lot to play, there are doggie doodles at random places, and there is no sense of community because there is no hangout area (not that I am social or would socialize with some of the folk around here). It just makes for a very boring and depressing rental experience. There are other reasons that I am leaving, but I think that if the community had more to offer I would be more reluctant to leave.

I’ve visited friends who have spent exorbitant amounts of money to live in apartments the size of a closet to be closer to a city or a university campus. I never understood why anyone would do that to themselves, but everyone has different ideas about convenience. I am interested in finding out what you look for in an apartment community. What makes you love your apartment and what makes you hesitant to sign a lease?

Tags: amenities, apartment, gym, Me

Related posts

March 24, 2007 | Filed Under Me 

Comments

2 Responses to “What Do You Value In an Apartment?”

  1. Ryan on March 25th, 2007 10:50 pm

    I know exactly what you mean about the apartment gym and its ease. I’ve worked as a personal trainer for quite some time and in that time I have found training people in apartments has been the best training environemnt. From a motivational point, I just used ring their room number (clients) until they woke up and gave me a valid reason why they weren’t joining us.
    In regards to the membership costs theirs a great website called http://www.transfermymembership.com that’s starting to take off in Australia it has details of US and UK as well. Worth checking out for discounted memberships I imagine in the future. Well I’m not quite there financially to afford to live in the apartment environment so good luck to you.

  2. David H Dennis on April 18th, 2007 10:52 pm

    When I lived in a massive apartment complex, it seemed like the swimming pool and pretty much everything else were very underused. I guess people think they are going to use amenities, and then don’t use them, which certainly makes things easier for complex management.

    I never really liked the claustrophobia of apartment life and I eventually discovered that I could rent a single family house for not much more than what a high-end apartment would have cost me. You can find these rentals on sites like craigslist.org . Usually I found quirky, eccentric landlords more appealing than the huge impersonal corporate types anyway.

    I think Raleigh is a relatively low cost of living area (compared to Los Angeles, the city I know best), so you might want to give that some thought.

    But if you’re in love with amenities and think you’ll use them, it’s a personal decision and there’s no right answer, really.

    Hope that was of interest.

    D

Leave a Reply

    Subscribe

     Subscribe in a reader

    License

    Creative Commons License
    itsreallyjustme.net by Elise Hines is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

    Visitors

    Blogroll

    • Big Ass Belle - progressive. southern. red state. pissed. if you’re not fired up, you’re not paying attention
    • Bill2me.com - Bill Toomey’s site on games, tech, and WordPress.