I just finished reading about an apartment building in Los Angeles that is currently retrofitting its amenity spaces to include, among other things, an appropriately spread out co-working space, two podcast rooms, and a TikTok studio. This latter amenity will be a roughly 100 square foot room with camera-ready lighting, tripods, and mirrors. It was described in the article as the perfect place for one or two people to create things and entertain themselves.

The gist of the article is that home offices are the new must-have amenity and that developers have started to rethink apartment amenities in light of this. But I also take this to be a sign of the times. We are living in a world of content creation. Whether you're a so-called influencer or not, TikTok has, for a lot of young people, replaced many other forms of entertainment and everybody, at this point, probably needs their own podcast.

It is also true that there's an "amenities arm race" going on within the apartment sector. This is nothing new and doesn't have much, if anything, to do with this pandemic. Amenities have been how you differentiate your offering. And when you're constantly selling (i.e. leasing all the time), they do become important. So here's to podcast rooms and TikTok studios. If you had your pick, what kind of amenities would you like to see in your building?

Last night I casually asked the Twittersphere what the most important condo amenity is, besides a gym. 

That tweet got quite a few responses – everything from rock climbing to a proper facility for realtor lock boxes.

Given the response, I thought it would be worthwhile to be a bit more rigorous in this analysis. So I have created an online survey that you can very quickly fill out by clicking here. 

Here’s how this is going to work:

- You have to enter your email address. Sorry, some friction. I figured that would make the data a bit more reliable. Don’t worry your email is safe.

- You can select a maximum of 3 amenities. One of them can be “Other”, in which case you would then enter in an amenity not already found on the list.

- The order of the amenities in the survey is being randomized so as to avoid any possible it’s-near-the-top-and-I’m-too-lazy-to-scroll bias.

- You’ll be able to see the results of the survey after you’ve responded. I’ll also post the results to this blog so that it’s public and people learn things. Individual emails will, of course, never be published.

Developers should be building what people actually want and will use. Now is your chance to tell us what that is. Click here for the survey.