How to Increase Apartment Revenue by Charging for Unit Amenities

Though many of your apartment community's units may have similar layouts, rooms, and square footage, each has unique qualities.

Those unique qualities are called unit amenities, both positive and negative differentiators that affect their value and desirability.

By charging for those differentiators in your rent pricing strategy, you can:

• Lease all units faster.
• Boost your apartment's revenue.
• Offer your renters more transparency when choosing which unit to lease. 

Here’s a step-by-step guide to implementing unit amenity pricing in your community.

Step 1: Identify Positive and Negative Unit Amenities

First, you must analyze every unit in your apartment community to identify each one's positive and negative unit amenities.

The focus area could be the environment surrounding a unit's location. Whether an amenity is positive or negative is subjective, but let your renter's preferences be your guide.

What are positive unit amenities?

Positive unit amenities are features that enhance the resident’s experience, such as a pool view or attached garage. 

They are far more than just the basics, like in-unit appliances, when those are standard across all units (unless there's an upgrade).

What are negative unit amenities?

Negative unit amenities are, honestly, much more challenging to identify. After all, you don't like to think anything is wrong with your apartment community, right?!

However, something true for every community is that some units are more costly to manage than others because they're harder to lease. Negative unit amenities, like obstructed views or noisy locations, explain why specific units struggle more than others.

Though it may be painful, acknowledging those negative unit amenities can make those units more rentable.

Step 2: Apply Rent Pricing Adjustment Based on Unit Amenities

After identifying each unit's positive and negative amenities, the next step is to apply standard prices appropriate for each.

Once you’ve identified each amenity’s value, add premiums for positive amenities and apply discounts for negatives to calculate a more realistic final rent.

See how that process plays out below with two imaginary units in the same floorplan with a starting base rent of $1,000/month.
 

Though both imaginary units have a negative amenity, their final rent price is still above the base rent you set for the floorplan.

Charging for unit amenities increases your apartment's bottom line, but more importantly, it helps renters make better decisions.

Step 3: Show Unit Amenity Pricing to Prospective Renters

By establishing unit amenity pricing, you're providing renters with more transparency and options.

And, with more options, we mean more reasons to choose your community.

After all, when you have detailed pricing breakdowns for each unit informing renters of the positive and negative differentiators, they can choose units by price or the features they value.

This transparency not only speeds up leasing for units with negative amenities but also builds trust, as renters can clearly see what they’re paying for.

Step 4: Regularly Review and Update Unit Amenity Pricing

Unit amenity pricing is not a one-time process. It's a tactic that you will want to refresh regularly to account for any unit upgrades or changes. That way, when a unit becomes available, your unit amenity pricing reflects its current condition.

The Takeaway

Charging for unit amenities increases transparency, offers renters more options, and maximizes community revenue by providing realistic rent price values for all units—especially ones that are typically harder to lease than others.

For more help with your rent pricing strategy, consider RentVision Revenue Management, the most transparent price-setting software for the multifamily industry.

Its detailed pricing breakdowns show every factor impacting each unit's rent price, including unit amenity charges, which results in more trustworthy pricing conversations with current and future renters.