Discovering Hidden Treasure in Your Unit Amenities – Same Amenity Charge

December 2, 2024 by Donald Davidoff

This is the fourth in a 9-part series of “quick hit” blogs on the quickest way to uncover hidden revenue from leasing based on the presentation Bryan Pierce, Carol Enoch and Donald Davidoff gave at NAA’s 2024 Apartmentalize conference.

Our fifth example of where amenity pricing frequently goes wrong is another example born of the right effort from operators and asset managers and just a slight flaw in execution.

Fail #5: All Amenities Have Same Amenity Charge

This is the situation where all of the units in a pricing group have the same amenity charge. Examples include all one bedrooms have balconies, all the two bedrooms have granite countertops or all the three bedrooms have fireplaces.

This takes rent out of the base rent which gives your revenue management system (RMS) less ability to move overall rents up or down as market conditions change. It’s much better to give as much of the rent to the RMS as possible so that it has more room to react over time. It’s still a good idea to tag each unit with that amenity—and imperative if your community website and/or leasing associate new lease pricing sheet list unit amenities. Just enter those as “$0 amenities.” This way they show up on the respective listings while still putting as much rent into the base rent as possible.

By the way, in our last blog, we mentioned how the base floor on floors levels should always be $0. That’s just another way to be sure to put as much rent into the base rent as we can.

Stay tuned for the next “quick hit” in this series