Pandemic Changes What Renters Want in Apartment Amenities, Plus Other Reports

What apartment amenities did renters prioritize the most during the pandemic? You’d think it was charm and character, like the House Hunters folks say. But not so much.

Zumper crunched the data in search rates and came up with some interesting findings, revealing differences in desired amenities and how generational age groups differed from each other.

Zumper, a San Francisco-based rental platform, also analyzed how much a premium these desired amenities added onto listing prices.

Zumper measured data from December 2019 to December 2020. Its findings:

• Six of the top-10 amenities with the largest year-over-year search rates were related to outdoor space where one can safely get fresh air. Outdoor space had a +143 percent growth rate in searches. Other most sought-after outdoor-related amenities included Roof Deck at (+91 percent), balcony (+87 percent), garden (+86 percent), swimming pool (+78 percent), and deck (+73 percent).
• In-unit laundry added the most cost to a listing, averaging $170 or more.
• Walk-in closets and dishwashers (not walk-in dishwashers) made it the most desired amenities in the Generation Z (ages 18-24) and Millennial 25-40) age groups.
• Hardware floors were the top amenity that was exclusive to Millenial renters.
• Gen X (41-46) couldn’t live without swimming pools.
• Baby Boomers (57-plus) really needed central heat and air (I can vouch for that).

Zumper didn’t have geographic trends in its report. But if it did, yes, the Dallas-Fort Worth renters would require AC. Probably all the generation categories would.

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Other Notable Reports

• STORAGECafé: Dallas received the nation’s seventh-largest number of renter applications in 2020, according to a recent STORAGECafé mobility report. STORAGECafé analyzed 1.7 million renter applications to determine migration patterns. About 80 percent of new Dallas renters were already based in Texas. About two-thirds came from other urban areas. Garland was the most common originating place for inbound renters. The top out-of-state originating city for renters interested in Dallas was New York City. Far North Dallas and downtown Dallas drew the most interest with 45 percent new renters. Millennials represented the largest share of renters headed to Dallas with 56 percent. Learn more here.

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• RENTCafé: The average rent in Dallas increased by 1.1 percent compared to March 2020, according to the RENTCafé March Rent Report. The average rent for a one-bedroom Dallas apartment rose at a slower pace than in its surrounding cities, such as Arlington ($1,087), where prices went up by 3.7 percent, and Fort Worth, where rents went up by 4.8 percent, reaching a $1,188 average. Flower Mound is the priciest city for renters in D/FW with 1BRs renting for $1,588 per month. Learn more here.

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• SmartAsset: Frisco, McKinney, and Plano ranked second, third, and fifth in SmartAsset’s list of safest cities. Carrollton and Denton were 27th and 30th. SmartAsset compared safety in 200 cities using five criteria: city violent crime rates, city property crime rates, county vehicular mortality rates, county drug poisoning mortality rates, and the percentage of each county’s population that reported drinking in excess. Learn more here.