But when lease rate differences are negligible and everything is just about the same distance from work and fun, what can make one apartment complex or building stand out from the others are the community amenities it provides.
While perks like party rooms, bike storage and swimming pools can be found in just about every apartment community in America, sometimes it’s the more unique amenities that can swing your decision as to which property you choose.
So, when you’re on the hunt for your next home, here are 10 real apartment amenities you might discover along with your search, or wish you had right now.
1. Music room (Lyric, Las Vegas, NV)
Source: Lyric
Blasting your guitar amp or wailing on your drum kit may not make you very popular with your apartment neighbors. But what if your apartment complex had its own music room? Live out all your music dreams by jamming with your buds or inviting your friends over for a private concert or fundraiser.
Lyric in Las Vegas offers what they call the “Lyric LP Lounge.” The space includes a soundproof room with a riser for a stage complete with a portable sound system and storage lockers for equipment and a seating area with couches and barstools ready for your fans to yell “Free Bird!” at you. Or, a spot to just sing some karaoke.
Situated in the residential southern Las Vegas neighborhood of Silverado Ranch, Lyric is a medium-sized luxury apartment complex. Along with the music room, Lyric also features a barbecuing patio, electric car chargers, a coffee lounge and two resort-style pools with in-water loungers, cabanas and poolside ping pong, foosball, cornhole and spin bikes.
2. Recording studio (M2 Apartments, Denver, CO)
Source: M2 Apartments
Rocking out with your bandmates not enough for you? How about an entire recording studio to help make you a Spotify or Soundcloud star? And if music isn’t your thing, a private studio is the perfect spot to lay down the latest episode of your true-crime podcast or livestream your adventures in Minecraft.
Denver’s M2 Apartments has just the space. The complex’s recording studio is a soundproof, professional space complete with a fully-equipped mixing board, sound system and a Mac workstation loaded with digital recording production software. Record your band’s latest hit record, stream a full-on concert or upload all your thoughts on the latest episode of “Westworld” directly to Google Podcasts.
The apartment complex itself sits in the very southwestern corner of Denver’s city limits between Littleton and Lakewood, just across from Marston Lake. M2 is an upscale complex at the foot of the Rocky Mountains with additional amenities including a winter-ready outdoor pool, a ski, snowboard and bicycle bike repair shop and a dog agility course. And it’s just 10 miles from Red Rocks Amphitheatre for when your music career takes off.
3. Outdoor gym (Club River Run, San Diego, CA)
Source: Club River Run Apartments
Do you even lift, bro? Well, if you’re going to live in a place like San Diego, you’d be wasting all that sun and 76 degree summers doing it indoors. Apartment gyms can be hot and sweaty — and stinky. So, why not take advantage of the gorgeous always-perfect weather and hit the gym outdoors on the regular?
The outdoor gym space at Club River Run features a great selection of workout apparatus, all under a sun-protective canopy. The equipment structure has several stations, including dual battle ropes, a mini trampoline rebounder and a selection of medicine balls, a heavy bag, pull-up bars, balance bars, step platforms and TRX training straps. The 24-hour outdoor gym is just past the doors of the 24-hour indoor gym, perfect for a workout change-up.
The gym isn’t the only outdoor facility Club River Run offers. When you get tired of lifting and pulling, hit up one of their three lighted tennis courts, wayward jump shot-protected basketball court or junior Olympic-sized heated swimming pool with 16-person Jacuzzi. And when you’ve worked up a good post-workout appetite, it’s just a short walk to the nearest In-N-Out Burger from this Mission Valley East neighborhood complex.
4. Barre room (El Royale, Los Angeles, CA)
Source: El Royale
Intimidating gyms with giant weight benches and hulking treadmills aren’t the only place to get a good workout. Sure, there’s yoga and Pilates and jazzercise, but have you tried ballet? The latest fitness craze to sweep the nation is barre fitness, a workout based in classical ballet moves utilizing the ballet barre. And like most crazes, barre was popularized in L.A., championed by barre fans like Jessica Alba, Drew Barrymore, Dakota Fanning, Natalie Portman and Zooey Deschanel.
So, how L.A. would it be to have a ballet studio and barre right in your apartment building? Very, and that’s what you’ll find at the historic El Royale in the heart of where Los Angeles’ Beverly Hills, Hollywood and Downtown neighborhoods all meet. The room is quaint and classic, a private, mirror-laden ballet room available for residents’ barre or traditional ballet needs.
Along with its sister facility the infamous Chateau Marmont, the El Royale was long-known as one of the ultimate luxury spots for stars and starlets to live, party and be seen. Throughout the decades, it has served as home to some of Hollywood’s biggest celebrities, from the dawn of the motion picture industry up through today, from Al Jolson to Nicolas Cage.
The Central L.A./Wilshire property recently underwent a modern upgrade, creating 56 of the most alluring apartment homes in La La Land, offering formal dining rooms, parquet floors, a grand piano lobby and a rooftop sundeck underneath its iconic neon green rooftop sign.
5. Golf simulator (Icon Central, St. Petersburg, FL)
Source: Icon Central Apartments
If you’re a golf-lover on an apartment budget and live in a sun-soaked state like Florida, it might seem like living near a place where you can swing your driver isn’t in the cards for you. Tooling around and passing all the pricey golf course-adjacent condo communities might fill you with envy. But what if you lived in an apartment building that had its own golf simulator? You wouldn’t even have to go outside to get your swing on!
The brand new Icon Central apartments in St. Petersburg, FL, is a golf-lovers dream. Located just off the outdoor swimming pool is the luxury building’s Virtual Game Room, a sports lounge featuring a giant virtual athletic training screen. Set the system for the Blue Monster at Doral and swing away virtually while the software tracks your every drive and chip.
Golf not your game? The simulator is a multi-sport playground with a virtual baseball swing, lacrosse shot and hockey slapper settings, as well. And bring your friends to come to watch from the comfort of the leather game room couches in the viewing area.
Just a mile from Tampa Bay and a half-mile from the Rays’ Tropicana Field, Icon Central couldn’t be more convenient at the foot of Downtown’s Edge District. The 368-apartment mid-rise opened in mid-2019 on the site of the historic 1926 Union Trust Bank building.
If you can tear yourself away from the simulator, you can partake of such amenities as a large palm-shaded infinity pool, rooftop patio, outdoor kitchen, theater room, steam and sauna facility, wine room, billiard parlor and Peloton training center.
6. Arcade room (Pierce Boston, Boston MA)
Source: Pierce Boston
Fitness centers, tennis courts and lap pools are great amenities when you want to raise the adrenaline and burn some calories. But if you’re more into chilling out with a lower heart rate activity, sometimes the usual billiard parlors and movie lounges just aren’t enough. What if you could have the best part of a trip to the mall when you were a kid available right in your apartment building? What if you had a full-blown arcade room just an elevator ride away?
Dream no more, because that’s exactly what you’ll find at the shimmering Pierce Boston. Eighteen stories up and overlooking Boston’s Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood is the skyscraper’s resident lounge complete with an ’80s kids’ dream — a fully-stocked arcade room. The gaming lounge isn’t the purview of Overwatch and Fortnight fans. This is an oasis of pure classic video wonder with childhood standards like NBA Jam and Mrs. and Ms. Pac-Man, Skee-Ball, pop-a-shot, shuffleboard and stand-up bell and flipper pinball machines.
Not to be confused with Boston Celtic Paul Pierce, the Pierce Boston is a mixed apartment and condo high-rise at Boyleston and Brookline, just a block from Fenway Park and under a mile from the Charles River near Boston University. The luxury building rises 30 stories, with retail on the bottom two floors and condos on the top 10 floors, with 240 apartment units in between.
The rooftop features a pool with hardwood deck and hot tub, patio lounge and barbecue grilling area, and the ground floor offers a number of restaurants, pubs and wine bars.
7. Tanning room (Station at Mason Creek, Katy, TX)
Source: Station at Mason Creek
The sun is dangerous. Every doctor, Buzzfeed article and TV news report tells us to avoid exposure and wear sunscreen. So, how do you stay away from the sun’s dangerous UV rays while still maintaining that classy golden glow? No one wants to go to some unsanitary tanning salon in a strip mall, exposed to customers, staff and worse. How about a home tanning bed? Great, if you have $2,000 lying around and a safe space to put it. But if your apartment complex had its own tanning facility, you’d never be pale again.
The Station at Mason Creek apartments in Katy, TX, have a newly renovated clubhouse facility with all the stops, including a cyber café, media room with video games, gift wrapping station, children’s play nook and, yes, a tanning room. The small spa offers a state-of-the-art commercial stand-up tanning booth with a small changing area in a private, secluded salon.
And after you’ve got your tan on, slather up the sunblock and cool off at the suburban Houston complex’s split saltwater swimming pool with sundeck, poolside veranda and grilling area.
The Station at Mason Creek also offers a number of other appealing amenities, like an enclosed grassy pet park and wash station, a café bar with free Starbucks coffee and stone fireplaces all convenient into downtown Houston via nearby Interstate 10 while enjoying the peace and quiet of the suburbs.
8. Sauna (The Shoreline, Cleveland, OH)
Source: The Shoreline
After a long day at the office, you can come home to your apartment building and lie down in bed or flop on the couch in front of the TV. Nice, yeah. Relaxing, sure, a bit. But wouldn’t a tranquil, soothing rest in a gorgeous, steamy, refreshing sauna simply just melt the day away? Swimming pools and hot tubs are fine but impractical in most apartment complexes in the north in the winter. A steam in a sauna is the answer if you live in a community fortunate enough to have one.
The Shoreline just outside downtown Cleveland on the lakefront is such a place. Just off the five-story building’s expansive 24-hour fitness center is a traditional wood-planked Scandinavian steam room and sauna with adjustable coal-fired heat and multi-tiered wood-slat benches. Sit and meditate in the heat alone or bring some friends and gossip over a group sweat.
Nothing is more refreshing after a steam than a dip in the pool. The Shoreline features a unique resort-style heated pool at the end of the breakwater on which the building sits offering unobstructed views out over Lake Erie when the brutal Ohio weather allows.
Just three miles northeast of downtown, The Shoreline is convenient to Cleveland’s variety of sports, dining and nightlife, while allowing for a bit of open coastline space, adjacent to a grassy waterfront park and surrounded by E55 Marina and the Forest City Yacht Club, perfect for gazing at passing sailboats.
9. Splash pad (Canterbury Circle, Ocala, FL)
Source: Canterbury Circle
Massage tables. Wine cellars. Co-working spaces. There are a lot of high-end amenities that make renters’ jaws drop. But your kid couldn’t care less. Apartment building and complex amenities rarely cater to kids aside from a basic playground or a kiddie pool. But if you want to open a child’s mind, especially on a hot day, there’s no better way to spark imagination (with minimal supervision) than a whimsical, refreshing splash pad.
Sitting in the middle of a triangle equidistant from Orlando, Jacksonville and Tallahassee, Ocala, FL, is not quite close enough to any of those to make them convenient. So, in between visits to big box stores and national restaurant chains, if you’re not going to go horseback riding, you better make some fun for yourself and your family.
Thankfully, Ocala’s Canterbury Circle offers a fanciful splash pad for water play in the full viewing area of the complex’s beach-entry swimming pool. The pad offers a number of cooling activities for the kids including ground jets, water dump-buckets and a water cannon, with a dry land playground just a few feet away.
Opened in 2018, Canterbury Circle is a new pet-friendly gated community on the outskirts of Ocala just off Interstate 75 at the junction with the retail and fast food-heavy College Road. The complex features more than 300 units spread out over 20 buildings.
10. Soccer pitch (Cove on 44th, Phoenix, AZ)
Source: Cove on 44th
Many apartment complexes have basketball courts, tennis courts and even racquetball courts. But what about something a little less common? Soccer is the most popular sport in the world and 2.3 million kids aged 6-12 play it recreationally or on an organized team.
Even for adults, soccer is cheap to play, easy to learn and requires no more equipment than just a ball. Why wouldn’t you want a soccer pitch offered as one of your apartment’s amenities?
The Cove on 44th in Phoenix converted one of their athletic spaces into a surfaced, fenced soccer pitch, complete with goals and properly painted line markings. Alongside a full-sized tennis court and a designated volleyball court, the Cove’s soccer facility is open to residents for games, practice and just kicking a ball around with friends.
The green, rust and orange adobe-inspired resort-style Cove on 44th complex sits in the neighborhood of Maryvale, Phoenix’s most populated urban village and one of the first master-planned communities in the nation. Just six miles down Grand Avenue from downtown Phoenix, the complex offers two swimming pools with a whirlpool Jacuzzi and a clubhouse for residents renting studio and one-bedroom units.
