4 Reasons Apartments Should Offer Apartment Laundry Service

1. Offering an All-Inclusive Experience

Landlords generally use amenities to attract tenants and keep long-term renters happy. It can often be a competition to offer more amenities than other buildings nearby.

Community amenities are shared amenities that landlords offer to all residents of the building or property. These can be gym access, pool access, or shared lounge space. However, some buildings partner with nearby businesses, like gyms, to offer discounted or free memberships or services off-site.

In-unit laundry is a popular in-unit amenity. It will save apartment tenants time, effort, and headache. Having your washing machine and dryer are only a few steps away is unbeatable by any apartment laundry service.

Making the trek through your building and carrying a heavy laundry basket to the community laundry room only to find out all of the machines are in use is never fun. Offering these off-site or service-based amenities creates an all-inclusive experience.

Apartment laundry service complements in-unit laundry the way that delivery pizza complements in-unit kitchens. An apartment laundry service will never replace your washing machine. However, the apartment laundry service will help out when you really need some professional help.

2. Maximize Security & Efficiency

Your tenants will fall behind on laundry and search for a local apartment laundry service. They’ll have a wedding coming up and they’ll search for a dry cleaning delivery service. It will happen…

Leaving it up to your tenants without a preferred provider will create security and efficiency issues at the complex.

From a security point of view, more third-party service providers in the building mean more security risk. The front desk staff is already stretched thin. Adding 5x the visitors and service providers to the building is an unnecessary risk.

From an efficiency point of view, one preferred apartment laundry service provider who knows the building will be more efficient than multiple new providers who do not know the building and building staff.

At The Folde, our full-time W2 laundry delivery drivers stick to their routes – like the mailman. The efficiencies that your local mail courier has thanks to his knowledge of the building help make daily operations smooth. When compared to an Uber Driver, who likely is accessing the building for the first time, the mail courier is much more efficient for your staff and your delivery than the Uber Driver.

3. Retaining High-Quality Tenants

Like having a doorman or other high-class amenities, offering laundry service will attract and retain a better quality of tenants. Your tenants are busy and don’t want to have to spend the night at the laundromat or stuck in a basement. With laundry service, they’ll have this tedious task taken care of so they can focus on what really matters.

In addition, this simple service can improve your tenant retention. If they have to drag their laundry to a laundromat or elsewhere a few times a week, that will get tiresome quickly. With laundry service, your tenants are satisfied and likely to stick around.

4. New Revenue Streams

If you want to offer laundry services for tenants who choose to have it, instead of building it into the price, that’s an option as well. Tenants can choose to use laundry services only for certain clothing, for dry cleaning, or only when they’re busy and overwhelmed. If they prefer, they can stick with the laundromat.

For some, paying for laundry service may feel like an extravagance. For others, it may be a vital service. Leaving it up to the tenant offers more flexibility and allows tenants to pay for the convenience or opt-out as they choose, leading to better satisfaction among tenants.

When considering new revenue streams, laundry service can act as a new revenue street in two ways:

1. Charging a Monthly Fee: Instead of taking a percentage of revenue, you can charge your preferred apartment laundry service provider a flat-rate monthly.
2. Affiliate Commissions: Now that laundry services can be booked online, it is easy to track affiliate revenues. It is most common for us to offer affiliate revenue share with apartment complexes in exchange for being the preferred apartment laundry service provider. Commissions range from 5%-12% depending on the community and the marketing provided by the community. Simply put, more marketing by the apartment complex results in higher revenue share percentages.