If given a choice, most tenants prefer to live somewhere with on-site laundry. There are several reasons for this preference. First, it’s much more convenient to walk to your building’s laundry room than it is to put all your laundry in a car and drive to the nearest laundromat. Most people also feel like doing laundry on-site is safer than going to a public place.
If you give your tenants an excellent community laundry room, it can become one of the main reasons driving them to remain living on your property. Laundry is both menial, and people tend to live where they enjoy (or at least don’t hate) doing this repetitive chore. Today, we’re going to teach you how to design the ideal community laundry facility for your tenants.
Getting the Essentials Right
Before we talk about bells and whistles, there are some things that your laundry room has to get right, or else nothing else on this list will matter. Basically, if your tenants can’t do laundry, it doesn’t matter how secure or pretty the facility is. So let’s talk some basics.
Plenty of Working Machines
The more machines you have in a laundry facility, the more people can do laundry at once. So if you want your tenants to be happy, give them lots of machines and stay on top of maintenance. If your tenants do have problems with a machine, have an on-site maintenance person available to call. Make sure to post their phone number in an easy-to-see location inside the room.
Folding Tables and Seating
If you don’t have any seating in your laundry room, your tenants are less likely to stick around and monitor their laundry. When tenants leave, it opens up opportunities for theft. It also means you’ll have more machines with abandoned loads, which leads to people swapping each other’s stuff around. Seating encourages everyone to stay put and wait for their laundry to finish. And by placing folding tables, you can make it easier to do lots of loads at once.
Posted Policies
Every laundry room should have rules posted that explain how to operate the machines and what kinds of behavior are OK. For example, you might need to specify whether you allow people to bleach and dye clothes in your machines. You should also have a rule discouraging people from leaving their clothes unattended for more than 10–20 minutes. Furthermore, if you want people to clean up after themselves, put it in the rules.
Creating a Safe Laundry Facility
Once you’ve got the basics down, it’s time to think about security. Laundry rooms are often isolated places. They’re actually safest when they’re really busy. So when someone needs to do laundry late at night, the remoteness of on-site laundry rooms can make them feel risky. Occasionally, these concerns become realities. If you want tenants to be and feel safe, follow the tips below.
Security Cameras
Obvious security cameras are a powerful crime deterrent because they make people aware that their actions are being observed and recorded. You’re less likely to try and steal someone’s wallet or rifle through their clothes if you know that someone could be watching you. For law-abiding tenants, security cameras help them feel safe, especially late at night when they may be alone in the laundry facility.
Limited Room Access
As we mentioned at the beginning of this post, one of the major draws to using on-site laundry is that you don’t have to go to a public space. You know that the only people using the laundry room are your neighbors, and that makes you feel safer. However, on-site laundry is only safer if you secure access to the laundry room using keys, cards, or a touchless entry system. Otherwise, anyone who discovers the room could wander in.
Lighting and Windows
Bright lighting is an easy security device to install because it just requires bright LED bulbs. When the lights are on, people can see what’s happening around them, and it makes criminals avoid the room. Windows are another good thing to have because they offer people outside the laundry room a chance to witness what’s going on inside.
Providing Convenience and Amenities
Now it’s time to go over the things that make people actually want to use your laundry facilities. Everything on this list is optional but can make people excited to use your laundry room.
Lots of Power Outlets
If you’re going to stick around and watch your laundry, it’s nice to have some kind of entertainment with you. However, watching videos on your phone or laptop can drain the battery very quickly. That’s why you want to have lots of outlets and USB charge points, so people can keep their devices powered.
Free Wi-Fi
Watching videos also uses up a lot of data for people who don’t have unlimited data plans. To help your tenants, make sure the building’s Wi-Fi has a strong signal in the laundry facility.
Vending Machines
Doing laundry can take hours, and people are less likely to leave the room to go get a snack if they can buy one right in the room. Putting vending machines inside a locked laundry room also helps control who has access to your vending machines. Plus, vending machines help you make a little extra passive income on your property!
Modern Payment Solutions
There are a lot of different ways to handle paying for laundry on your rental property. If you really want to design the ideal community laundry facility, you should use a modern solution, such as ShinePay’s laundry room payment system. ShinePay uses an app and Bluetooth technology, so all your tenants must do is scan their machines and start doing laundry.
Out of all the different laundry payment forms, app-based payments are the easiest for both tenants and property managers. People tend to lose their refillable laundry cards. Coins are another classic alternative, but they attract thieves. Plus, many people don’t even carry cash anymore, so you’d have to install a change machine that would take up valuable space.
Getting Everything in One Place
App-based payments are so much easier to use than the other payment forms on the market, and if you want to keep accepting coins, you can. ShinePay makes it easy to accept both coins and app-based payments from the same machines. You can even track both kinds of sales in our intuitive dashboard, so you always know what’s going on. Contact us today to start making your ideal laundry facility a reality.
