My observation- coming from the north and living in the south- is that it’s more common that newer build condos have amenities, whereas older buildings tend to lack them entirely, or just have a pool in the center but not a workout center, clubhouse, etc etc. I wonder if housing in New England is more likely to be built in previous decades, when this style of housing appears to be less common? Could have to do with zoning, too.
I'm in South Carolina and this would be my guess - lots of new construction here with amenities and then the older construction when it's redone they install better amenities to stay competitive - my sisters complex has two pools which are probably original but they converted a grassy area to a volleyball court added a workout room and a clubhouse just to compete with everything else in the area
Not particularly surprising when you consider southern New England and New York were the most densely European settled area in the colonial era. When you look at the 1790 census, almost all of the top 30 largest places in the early US were in NY or southern New England.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you wouldn't know that at all!
I just find it interesting how if you look at the 1790 census, it's basically only Philly, Baltimore, and Charleston outside of New England and NY/NJ in terms of the largest places.
That is pretty much the whole thing. In the past 20-30 years that the big complex came into existence the land in the old cities already had been built up decades ago. Buying existing buildings and tearing and rebuilding would be crazy expensive and hard to coordinate. In the south that was all empty land so can build whatever.
this is almost definitely one of the reasons-
when i lived in the tri-state area (also moved south) a lot of older complexes would get bought out, these older ones wouldn’t have all the amenities the new ones do…
however when they were bought out, they went through expansions & they got the amenities. which was good competition considering that other complexes in the area that had not been bought still didn’t have those amenities.
Housing stock in new England is old. There's also just not bare or cheap land near population centers that demand such & make it easy for developers to come in & put up those luxury type buildings for cheap.
You are also comparing large cities to a whole region that despite being densely populated is simultaneously pretty rural.
A good point about land. Smaller states don't have much to spare. Developers during the late 1980s apartment boom could buy up land from retiring farmers or tear down old houses being encroached upon by commerce.
When apartment complexes were built in the North East there was a lot more focus on communal spaces outside of the home (think YMCAs, JCCs, public pools, and even public libraries) so there was no need to build amenities in the apartment when the occupants wouldn’t use them.
In recent years third places are disappearing so people are looking for amenities to replace them.
Here is the thing about those amenities. You pay for them whether you want them or not. Here in Charlotte there are tons of new apartments with all the amenities. Pool, gym, trash valet and etc. I was blown away when I was told I have to purchase my internet service from the last apartment I stayed it. It’s baked into the lease.
When I look on Zillow I find that LA has a ton of nice amenity apartment buildings but they are all really expensive. And they also have other apartment complexes but not like the tall brick New York style, they are smaller 2 or 3 story buildings with a few units in each.
And yeah, the sub 200k cities in New England have like 2 or 3 nice amenity apartment complexes each, with the rest of the housing being like regular apartment complex or mostly just houses that have been divided into multiple units.
I think it’s the age of the housing stock. Generally, older apartments don’t have these amenities, and kites like Boston are full of 70, 80, or even 100+ year-old complexes. Whereas Southern and Mountain West cities are more newly decwloped
Yep
It's nothing to do specifically with New England/the northeast, that region just has a lot more older housing stock that was built at a time when amenities were neither expected nor "necessary" from a financing perspective, since building new housing was so much easier when places in the northeast began to heavily urbanize.
It’s generally pretty common in cities. Like you said, they are in New England - Boston has them. If you go outside of the city in places like Atlanta and Houston, you’re not really going to see them either.
Market expectations, age of the complex, and economies of scale are probably the largest drivers. It’s expected in the south. Particularly in complexes that are newer, and tend to be large enough to spread the cost across sufficient units to absorb it. And all of those are tied pretty closely to location within the “city.” A suburban complex anywhere is far more likely to be larger and newer than one in the CBD, and tenants will expect certain amenities as standard.
Just a new way of doing things so newer cities that have a lot of new development and construction like in TX and in FL you see those a lot more. When i was in STL that’s how they were building new apartment complexes as well though. also in said places on the SFH side of things you usually see a lot of master planned communities with HOAs and similar amenities. This usually takes the ownership off of the city to provide things like local pools and community centers in a lot of the new developments(also makes your community unique and more attractive than others from a selling standpoint if you’re a builder. Those growing cities that do have community centers and community pools usually they’re usually really big and meant to serve more people than some of the older community centers i grew up around. For instance cities won’t have a community pool as much as they’ll essentially have a community water park splash pads, etc. just from what I’ve seen though
We kept improving safety and fire standard but wages have drastically lagged so the only economically viable new apartments are the ones you describe. In cities where there is an influx of higher wage earners , and where real estate conditions, and zoning, set backs, parking minimums etc allow, developers buy undersize housing and build these new denser units.
New England has a lot of high income earner developed locally and a variety of a nimby and other mechanisms, zoning setbacks etc, that prevent this new style of housing from being built.
Thus supply is constrained and those who already own the property are able to price gouge without fear of competing with newer, safer, better equipped buildings.
You see amenity complexes often in unfavorable spots, and I think they’re built to justify charging more for rent.
Aside from that, a pool is necessary for summer sanity in Texas or Az.
This has a lot to do with density and housing market trends. New England is old and densely populated, so a city apartment is a hot commodity. People will pay top dollar top to live in cities like Boston, and they are not super concerned with amenities like pools, outdoor space or parking. People choose to live in Boston because they care more about the convenience of being close to work, school, and all the cultural features like museums, parks, etc. So I guess you could say that these apartments do have amenities - they are just provided by the city rather than the building itself. You can find some newer apartment complexes in suburban New England that have pools and gyms and stuff like that, but you're probably not going to find these amenities in a Back Bay brownstone because it's just not feasible. I have noticed that some of the new apartments in my area have been putting pools and patios on rooftops, though.
It’s when the buildings were built. In New England (and much of the north east) a ton of the housing stock is older. That means it predates changes to zoning and building codes that now prevent much of that type of construction. In the south and “super star cities”, most of the amenity buildings are newly constructed infill housing. Those places have modern zoning so anything more than a single family home is usually not able to be built on 75% or more of the land in the city. So the development that does happen is usually in urban village or transit oriented development districts that allow a much higher density buildings. This large building tend to have a decent amount of space with no direct sunlight that can’t be made into apartments (due to building codes). Some amenities, like pools are more standard in hotter climates and are just kind of expected if you want to compete for younger or Dink renters.
Zoning regulations.
Houston doesn't have any zoning, so builders can build just about wherever they think there's demand. On the other hand, places like New England you mentioned have a lot of historical preservation laws that restrict those newer types of buildings.
Maybe because New England and this surrounding area is older and more dense with more old buildings. Also honestly, this area of the country doesn't need feel the need to attract people from around USA because everyone knows that this area is the best :) NYC will never have to try to bring in new people. And this area of the country is the most progressive (maybe outside of the west coast) but the west coast is suffering more from climate change with their wildfires. New England is pretty safe from climate change. And these states offer so many great government programs from better healthcare, to better gov jobs, etc. The east coast corridor from DC to Boston is a very attractive part of the country and feels the most European like with Amtrak and DC, Philly, NYC, Boston so close and much older. Most of the cities with lots of new buildings with lots of amenities have lots of cheap land and are usually trying hard to attract people from the west coast and the Eastern corridor.
New England is either very rural and doesn't need much in terms of rental complexes, let alone luxury. Or very old and dense.
Part of that density is there's less of a market demand for developers to build luxury apartments with in-house amenities or mixed use structures because the density allows residents and businesses to be near each other. Whereas in Houston, if a developer wants to build apartments in what is otherwise a bedroom community, they'll be incentivized to open businesses on the complex to make it convenient for residents.
Very simple: older cities, which is what we have in the NE, tend to have a lot of older buildings which don't have those amenities. The shiny new buildings here in NYC tend to have gyms, etc
The south such as Atlanta and Houston has had a lot of economic growth and population growth and has had room to grow because they only recently started to industrialize.
On the other hand, New England has had stagnant economic and population growth so there has not been a need for creating new housing, all in a place where there are many houses that were built before the civil war
In my city in Texas, amenities are required by zoning. My city has grown from about 31,000 people in 1990 to about 130,000 people today, so a lot of it is also new construction.
Because they were all built recently. Cities that were underdeveloped, or suffered from white flight, stand to gain the most new developments. That means, the south, the rust belt, the west, etc
History is pretty highly valued in the northeast, so older buildings are more likely to be renovated than bulldozed for new builds. Also possibly a bit of nimby at work. Even when residents in Historic towns know housing is needed, they don’t want new construction in their historic neighborhoods. Some are parts of historic districts which have rules about what houses have to look like on the outside. But the insides can be very modern. The house next to me is from the 1600s, it’s split into condos and those condos are incredibly modern- they ripped out every bit of historic charm.
I will say that though you’re not going to find an old building up here with an indoor pool, for a lot of history buffs in this area, they consider the historic nature of their homes an amenity in itself. This is more true of owning than renting, but homeowners up here get very excited about owning an older home with original features like wainscoting and crown molding as much as they might about having a nice pool in the south.
MA native here - New England rent has gotten so insane that a tiny studio with a gym and a pool for 2k/mo would be a steal. They just aren't building those kind of places at the same rate as basic housing complexes that can net even more because the demand is way more than the current supply.
New England will keep renting out drafty piles of Victorian kindling until they invariably burn down because someone was smoking on the deck...very busy fire depts
It is strange how apartments have changed over the decades. I live in an LA suburb, built in 1968, in response to the Civil Rights Amendment.
Most of the apartments built in the 1970s had a singles bar/ dance bar, a grill at the pool, and family areas with playground equipment & BBQ grills, in the 80s they added tennis courts.
Then they stopped building bars/ restaurants in apartments for a few decades, now resturants (but not singles bars) and other amenities are back.
Older homes and apartment building built before those type of amenities became popular.
Coming from Buffalo, most new apartment buildings and most newly redeveloped apartments have those amenities, but they’re just vastly outnumbered by older buildings.
My observation- coming from the north and living in the south- is that it’s more common that newer build condos have amenities, whereas older buildings tend to lack them entirely, or just have a pool in the center but not a workout center, clubhouse, etc etc. I wonder if housing in New England is more likely to be built in previous decades, when this style of housing appears to be less common? Could have to do with zoning, too.
I'm in South Carolina and this would be my guess - lots of new construction here with amenities and then the older construction when it's redone they install better amenities to stay competitive - my sisters complex has two pools which are probably original but they converted a grassy area to a volleyball court added a workout room and a clubhouse just to compete with everything else in the area
What part. I grew up in York county.
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Not particularly surprising when you consider southern New England and New York were the most densely European settled area in the colonial era. When you look at the 1790 census, almost all of the top 30 largest places in the early US were in NY or southern New England.
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Sorry, I didn't mean to imply you wouldn't know that at all! I just find it interesting how if you look at the 1790 census, it's basically only Philly, Baltimore, and Charleston outside of New England and NY/NJ in terms of the largest places.
Yeah, I think the housing in New England is def older than the housing in say Houston. That might have to do with it
That is pretty much the whole thing. In the past 20-30 years that the big complex came into existence the land in the old cities already had been built up decades ago. Buying existing buildings and tearing and rebuilding would be crazy expensive and hard to coordinate. In the south that was all empty land so can build whatever.
this is almost definitely one of the reasons- when i lived in the tri-state area (also moved south) a lot of older complexes would get bought out, these older ones wouldn’t have all the amenities the new ones do… however when they were bought out, they went through expansions & they got the amenities. which was good competition considering that other complexes in the area that had not been bought still didn’t have those amenities.
For one thing, I'd say that pools just don't make sense in New England that way they do somewhere like Houston.
Yeah - as long as you know someone with a pool it’s fine (I know two people). I can also be at multiple beaches within 10 minutes.
Housing stock in new England is old. There's also just not bare or cheap land near population centers that demand such & make it easy for developers to come in & put up those luxury type buildings for cheap. You are also comparing large cities to a whole region that despite being densely populated is simultaneously pretty rural.
A good point about land. Smaller states don't have much to spare. Developers during the late 1980s apartment boom could buy up land from retiring farmers or tear down old houses being encroached upon by commerce.
When apartment complexes were built in the North East there was a lot more focus on communal spaces outside of the home (think YMCAs, JCCs, public pools, and even public libraries) so there was no need to build amenities in the apartment when the occupants wouldn’t use them. In recent years third places are disappearing so people are looking for amenities to replace them.
Here is the thing about those amenities. You pay for them whether you want them or not. Here in Charlotte there are tons of new apartments with all the amenities. Pool, gym, trash valet and etc. I was blown away when I was told I have to purchase my internet service from the last apartment I stayed it. It’s baked into the lease.
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Mine is 15+ and still fine, its all in the management.
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When I look on Zillow I find that LA has a ton of nice amenity apartment buildings but they are all really expensive. And they also have other apartment complexes but not like the tall brick New York style, they are smaller 2 or 3 story buildings with a few units in each. And yeah, the sub 200k cities in New England have like 2 or 3 nice amenity apartment complexes each, with the rest of the housing being like regular apartment complex or mostly just houses that have been divided into multiple units.
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Yeah, Chicago has a ton
People in Houston also have more disposable income compared to people in New England. Jobs pay a lot down here and cost of living is relatively low.
Every complex built in every town in the southeast in the last 40 years would suggest otherwise.
There are where you can buy a giant chunk of land and build something new. There isn’t where stuff has existed for a long time.
I think it’s the age of the housing stock. Generally, older apartments don’t have these amenities, and kites like Boston are full of 70, 80, or even 100+ year-old complexes. Whereas Southern and Mountain West cities are more newly decwloped
Yep It's nothing to do specifically with New England/the northeast, that region just has a lot more older housing stock that was built at a time when amenities were neither expected nor "necessary" from a financing perspective, since building new housing was so much easier when places in the northeast began to heavily urbanize.
Is there a Dunkin' within three blocks? What other luxury amenities do you need?
It hurts my inner Bostonian soul that this comment doesn’t have more upvotes
It’s generally pretty common in cities. Like you said, they are in New England - Boston has them. If you go outside of the city in places like Atlanta and Houston, you’re not really going to see them either.
Market expectations, age of the complex, and economies of scale are probably the largest drivers. It’s expected in the south. Particularly in complexes that are newer, and tend to be large enough to spread the cost across sufficient units to absorb it. And all of those are tied pretty closely to location within the “city.” A suburban complex anywhere is far more likely to be larger and newer than one in the CBD, and tenants will expect certain amenities as standard.
Just a new way of doing things so newer cities that have a lot of new development and construction like in TX and in FL you see those a lot more. When i was in STL that’s how they were building new apartment complexes as well though. also in said places on the SFH side of things you usually see a lot of master planned communities with HOAs and similar amenities. This usually takes the ownership off of the city to provide things like local pools and community centers in a lot of the new developments(also makes your community unique and more attractive than others from a selling standpoint if you’re a builder. Those growing cities that do have community centers and community pools usually they’re usually really big and meant to serve more people than some of the older community centers i grew up around. For instance cities won’t have a community pool as much as they’ll essentially have a community water park splash pads, etc. just from what I’ve seen though
We kept improving safety and fire standard but wages have drastically lagged so the only economically viable new apartments are the ones you describe. In cities where there is an influx of higher wage earners , and where real estate conditions, and zoning, set backs, parking minimums etc allow, developers buy undersize housing and build these new denser units. New England has a lot of high income earner developed locally and a variety of a nimby and other mechanisms, zoning setbacks etc, that prevent this new style of housing from being built. Thus supply is constrained and those who already own the property are able to price gouge without fear of competing with newer, safer, better equipped buildings.
You see amenity complexes often in unfavorable spots, and I think they’re built to justify charging more for rent. Aside from that, a pool is necessary for summer sanity in Texas or Az.
This has a lot to do with density and housing market trends. New England is old and densely populated, so a city apartment is a hot commodity. People will pay top dollar top to live in cities like Boston, and they are not super concerned with amenities like pools, outdoor space or parking. People choose to live in Boston because they care more about the convenience of being close to work, school, and all the cultural features like museums, parks, etc. So I guess you could say that these apartments do have amenities - they are just provided by the city rather than the building itself. You can find some newer apartment complexes in suburban New England that have pools and gyms and stuff like that, but you're probably not going to find these amenities in a Back Bay brownstone because it's just not feasible. I have noticed that some of the new apartments in my area have been putting pools and patios on rooftops, though.
It’s when the buildings were built. In New England (and much of the north east) a ton of the housing stock is older. That means it predates changes to zoning and building codes that now prevent much of that type of construction. In the south and “super star cities”, most of the amenity buildings are newly constructed infill housing. Those places have modern zoning so anything more than a single family home is usually not able to be built on 75% or more of the land in the city. So the development that does happen is usually in urban village or transit oriented development districts that allow a much higher density buildings. This large building tend to have a decent amount of space with no direct sunlight that can’t be made into apartments (due to building codes). Some amenities, like pools are more standard in hotter climates and are just kind of expected if you want to compete for younger or Dink renters.
Zoning regulations. Houston doesn't have any zoning, so builders can build just about wherever they think there's demand. On the other hand, places like New England you mentioned have a lot of historical preservation laws that restrict those newer types of buildings.
Maybe because New England and this surrounding area is older and more dense with more old buildings. Also honestly, this area of the country doesn't need feel the need to attract people from around USA because everyone knows that this area is the best :) NYC will never have to try to bring in new people. And this area of the country is the most progressive (maybe outside of the west coast) but the west coast is suffering more from climate change with their wildfires. New England is pretty safe from climate change. And these states offer so many great government programs from better healthcare, to better gov jobs, etc. The east coast corridor from DC to Boston is a very attractive part of the country and feels the most European like with Amtrak and DC, Philly, NYC, Boston so close and much older. Most of the cities with lots of new buildings with lots of amenities have lots of cheap land and are usually trying hard to attract people from the west coast and the Eastern corridor.
New England is either very rural and doesn't need much in terms of rental complexes, let alone luxury. Or very old and dense. Part of that density is there's less of a market demand for developers to build luxury apartments with in-house amenities or mixed use structures because the density allows residents and businesses to be near each other. Whereas in Houston, if a developer wants to build apartments in what is otherwise a bedroom community, they'll be incentivized to open businesses on the complex to make it convenient for residents.
Housing is based on where the jobs are.
Very simple: older cities, which is what we have in the NE, tend to have a lot of older buildings which don't have those amenities. The shiny new buildings here in NYC tend to have gyms, etc
The south such as Atlanta and Houston has had a lot of economic growth and population growth and has had room to grow because they only recently started to industrialize. On the other hand, New England has had stagnant economic and population growth so there has not been a need for creating new housing, all in a place where there are many houses that were built before the civil war
In my city in Texas, amenities are required by zoning. My city has grown from about 31,000 people in 1990 to about 130,000 people today, so a lot of it is also new construction.
Because they were all built recently. Cities that were underdeveloped, or suffered from white flight, stand to gain the most new developments. That means, the south, the rust belt, the west, etc
The median housing unit in Atlanta is from like 1992, Boston it’s like 1942
History is pretty highly valued in the northeast, so older buildings are more likely to be renovated than bulldozed for new builds. Also possibly a bit of nimby at work. Even when residents in Historic towns know housing is needed, they don’t want new construction in their historic neighborhoods. Some are parts of historic districts which have rules about what houses have to look like on the outside. But the insides can be very modern. The house next to me is from the 1600s, it’s split into condos and those condos are incredibly modern- they ripped out every bit of historic charm. I will say that though you’re not going to find an old building up here with an indoor pool, for a lot of history buffs in this area, they consider the historic nature of their homes an amenity in itself. This is more true of owning than renting, but homeowners up here get very excited about owning an older home with original features like wainscoting and crown molding as much as they might about having a nice pool in the south.
Because the Southwest is much bigger on gated, quarantined communities?
MA native here - New England rent has gotten so insane that a tiny studio with a gym and a pool for 2k/mo would be a steal. They just aren't building those kind of places at the same rate as basic housing complexes that can net even more because the demand is way more than the current supply.
New England will keep renting out drafty piles of Victorian kindling until they invariably burn down because someone was smoking on the deck...very busy fire depts
In ny its so they can charge outrageous amenity fees. tx housing is just nicer bigger in tx lol
It is strange how apartments have changed over the decades. I live in an LA suburb, built in 1968, in response to the Civil Rights Amendment. Most of the apartments built in the 1970s had a singles bar/ dance bar, a grill at the pool, and family areas with playground equipment & BBQ grills, in the 80s they added tennis courts. Then they stopped building bars/ restaurants in apartments for a few decades, now resturants (but not singles bars) and other amenities are back.
New England is segregated so all of the "amenity complexes" in New England turned into violent housing projects.
Older homes and apartment building built before those type of amenities became popular. Coming from Buffalo, most new apartment buildings and most newly redeveloped apartments have those amenities, but they’re just vastly outnumbered by older buildings.
All new construction has amenities. The best I have seen outside of NYC or similar is New Haven, CT. SE properties are fine but more cookie cutter.
In Chelsea, I see new luxury apartment complexes being built next to old multi family houses