What 172,703 renters said they actually wanted

Most amenity debates are run on instinct and on what the competing building did. There is a better input available, and it is free: the NMHC and Grace Hill Renter Preferences Survey, the most comprehensive study of its kind in the sector.

What came out on top

The features renters rated most important were, without much ambiguity, the practical ones. In unit laundry and air conditioning tied at the top, each rated important by 93 percent of respondents. High speed internet access followed at 90 percent. Reliable mobile reception was the community level amenity most often called very important, at 86 percent.

There is a pattern in that list and it is not aspiration. Every one of those is something a resident touches daily and notices immediately when it is missing. None of them is the kind of feature that photographs well for a leasing brochure.

The survey also found appetite moving toward things that support how people actually live now rather than how they entertain. Interest in shared workspaces rose to 48 percent from 35 percent in the previous edition, which is the sort of shift that follows a change in behaviour rather than a change in taste.

What the report says, in its own words

The authors summarise the modern renter as someone who still wants the basics done well while expecting the building to fit a different rhythm of life. Renters, the report notes, continue to desire creature comforts while also seeking modern features and amenities that reflect a very mobile and connected lifestyle.

That is a more careful claim than the one usually made on its behalf, and it is worth keeping it careful.

What the report does not say

Two honest caveats, because a statistic borrowed loosely is worth less than no statistic at all.

• It does not rank convenience hubs. The survey measures the amenities it asked about. Smart locker based, on demand product access was not a line item, so nothing in it can be read as an endorsement of what we build.
• It is a preference survey, not a usage study. It records what renters say matters when asked. It does not track what they open on a Tuesday night, which is a different and in some ways more useful number.

You will also see the findings compressed into a neat three part slogan in various places online. That framing is not in the report, the press release, or Grace Hill's own summary of it. We are not going to repeat it as though it were.

What we take from it

This next part is our argument, not the report's finding. We think the data points at something specific about how amenity budgets get spent.

If the features renters rate highest are the ones woven into an ordinary day, then the useful question about any amenity is how often it touches an ordinary day. A gym is used by the people who use gyms. A roof terrace is used in good weather by people who are hosting. Running out of dish soap, needing a drill for forty minutes, needing a suitcase twice a year: these happen to everyone in the building, at unplanned hours, and the current solution is a trip to a shop that is probably closed.

An amenity that requires planning, scheduling, or a trip offsite is competing with a resident's free time. One that is forty steps from their door and open at midnight is not competing with anything. That is not a finding from the survey. It is the conclusion we draw from it, and we would rather label it that way.

How to use a study like this

Not as ammunition for a decision already made. The productive use is narrower: check your own assumptions against it, notice where your planned amenity spend is going toward features that photograph well rather than features that get used, and then go and ask your own residents what they run out of.

The survey is the general case. Your building is the specific one, and the specific one is the only one you are leasing.