9 Laundry Options for Apartment Buildings

For those who live in an apartment, laundry options are a vital part of life. Laundry is a rather universal need, and apartment residents often prioritize laundry access over other amenities when selecting a place to live. 

If you are a property owner, selecting the right solutions for laundry for your apartment building can mean the difference between a fully-rented building and a failed investment. Let’s review 9 laundry options for apartments that you can opt for in your building.

No Laundry Solutions

The first option is to ignore the problem altogether and to offer no laundry solutions for your apartment residents. This doesn’t mean that your residents won’t need laundry access, of course, it just means that you are absolving yourself of providing the solution. 

With no on-premises laundry options, your apartment residents have the following options:

Laundromat

On their own time, and on their own dime (er, quarter), your residents can frequent the local laundromat, the old standby apartment laundry solution. Some residents love this option, while others would rather pay a higher rent for better options. For those who like it, they enjoy the ability to complete lots of laundry in a short amount of time by using multiple high-volume machines.

Wash and fold laundry

Wash and fold laundry services are becoming more popular apartment laundry options. Here, residents send their dirty laundry out in a bag, often picked up by the service provider, and then have it returned clean, dry, and folded. As you might imagine, wash and fold tends to be expensive, but many without laundry solutions for their apartments prefer this time-saving option. 

In-Unit Washer and Dryer Connections

On the flip side to offering no laundry solutions, you could opt to provide your tenants with in-unit washer and dryer connections. While in-unit laundry solutions are popular with some tenants, that popularity is waning. According to the Multi Housing Laundry Association, “An independent nationwide study concluded that when residents are given the option of a clean, convenient, attractive and affordable laundry room, most would not pay more rent to live in an apartment unit with laundry connections, or even a unit with a washer and dryer provided.”

Tenants have come to realize that in-unit laundry solutions for apartments take up valuable space in the apartment, and they raise utility costs across the board. For building operators, MillionAcres.com points out that washer and dryer connections are “costly, they require more upkeep, and they also add serious risk to your property” before detailing the increased utility costs, inevitable maintenance problems, and fire and flooding risk.

On-Premises Laundry Room

The best solution for those who wish to offer the best laundry options for apartment residents without the downsides of in-unit washer and dryer connections, is an on-premises laundry room. As we’ve detailed elsewhere on our blog, on-site laundry options for apartments can increase building rents, revenues, and property values.  

For on-premises apartment laundry, there are options available depending on the layout of your building. You may opt for:

Central Laundry for the Apartment Building

The most popular on-site laundry option is a single centralized laundry facility designed to serve the entire building. These laundry rooms provide easy access to laundry. 

Rent Cafe includes a laundry room as one of the most valuable amenities that renters can look for when seeking an apartment. They say “onsite laundry can be a great way to avoid spending time (and quarters) at the local laundromat. If your building is secure, it also means you can put some laundry on and then head up to your apartment while a load finishes, rather than waiting around at the laundromat staring at your phone.”

Laundry-per-floor

Some large buildings are able to carve out space for a laundry room on each floor of the building. All of the benefits of a laundry room, just more of them. 

With any on-site laundry solutions for apartments, operators can choose from a variety of pay and revenue models. They include

Open laundry access 

Some building operators will create laundry rooms that are free for residents to use. They estimate the costs of use and maintenance and roll those costs into rents.

Coin or card-operated laundry solutions for apartments

A more popular option is a pay-per-load option, whether coin operated or utilizing more high-tech options such as card payments or payment-by-phone app. In any case, this apartment laundry solution adds to the overall revenue of the building while raising property values. 

Property owners often rent equipment from a laundry equipment service, who will empty the machines, deduct their machine rental costs, and return any remaining revenues to the building. 

At SelfOp Laundry, we champion another model in which apartment building operators own their own equipment and keep all of the revenue. Self-ownership eliminates the middleman between you and your profit, and ensures total transparency. We can offer the best laundry equipment options for apartments. 
Think self operated laundry is the right choice for your building? Check out SelfOp Laundry here.