As a property developer, you’ve done extensive research before launching your new project. You’ve taken into account rental demand, resale value, real estate value, and market demographics. Perhaps you've even hired a property consultant to help you manage your building.

Why then hire an amenity consultant to tell you how to plan, program and manage the facilities within your building? There are many reasons to engage professional amenity consultants. The benefits you can reap range from increased real estate value, to enhanced reputation, to greater utilization of facilities, which may be the most important benefit, as it is linked to cost efficiency.

Read on for the top 5 reasons to hire an amenity consultant:

1. Experience

As a developer, you have several property developments under your belt.

Amenity consultants, however, have worked on a vast range of different types of properties. They have a great understanding of the many things that could go wrong, and can spot potential issues much faster. 

An amenity consultant can also keep you from making the wrong decisions when deciding how to construct and outfit your building. Recently, we had a client who was developing a new residential building in New York City. They were planning to build a traditional business centre in the property, equipped with rows of desktop computers.

We advised them against it, as the neighborhood is defined by its start-up community, rather than a traditional business community. Instead, we helped them redesign their business lounge to a co-working space.

Rather than equipping the space with computers, we ensured there were plenty of power points for freelancers to plug in their own laptops and phones to. They used the money they would have spent on computers to buy 3D printers, drafting tables, and virtual reality goggles instead. Rather than building a typical business center that would likely go unused, we designed the space for discussions or even to be a creative studio where people could embrace their maker instincts unfettered. (I’m eagerly waiting for new sneakers to be made, size 14 double E please!)

This example may seem simple. But when you’ve spent a long time figuring out how to add value to your building, consultants can come in with a fresh perspective. The changes they suggest may not make a big difference budget-wise, but can significantly affect the appeal of a building.

2. An Independent Perspective

It can be difficult to be objective when you’ve spent months looking at a project from all angles.

As you work on a building project, you might find that some of your initial plans and ideas might not be so ideal when it comes to the implementation. Amenity consultants can give you a fresh point of view, help you understand the operational impact of those decisions, and help you see what else you could be doing.

For example, at some point, everyone wanted to be part of a fully-equipped fitness center. Building developer were investing heavily into expensive equipment and large fitness centers.

Today, the trend has started moving towards group fitness. Everyone wants a routine designed for their lifestyle and personality, and they want to do it with others who share the same interest. This has seen people rushing to build yoga, cycling, cross fit studios, and so on.

Amenity consultants have a wider range of experience and have seen trends come and go. They’ve seen massive fitness centers that are only utilized by a handful of people. They've seen small fitness studios that opened with sold out classes, but a year later, are struggling to pay their rent and drive utilization.

They can provide that objectivity to help you evaluate if you really need that large a fitness center... or if perhaps a small gym with special features will suffice. They will help you decide if you need to build a new yoga studio... or if that money will be better channeled to hire a yoga instructor to run classes in the park next to the building or on your rooftop.

They will help you decide what is right for your community, and what will be sustainable in the long term - not what is trending.

3. Cost savings

Amenity consultants help you negotiate vendor contracts, conduct feasibility studies, and recruit the right service staff for your property development’s amenities. This can help you not only save money, but also avoid costly mistakes. You only get one chance to open successfully and make an impression with your launch, so it’s crucial to plan well in advance, as one of our clients learnt the hard way.

This client decided to engage us closer to the time they were about to launch their new property, which they had already built with saunas and steam rooms. They were not aware of the permits required from the city’s Health Department. The permit application should have been submitted two years ago, with the building engineering plans.

The client had hired both an interior designer and architect to advise them on how the saunas and steam rooms should be built. Yet neither one of them had raised a red flag about the lack of a permit and public engineering certification with the city.

After months of marketing the sauna, steam, and spa facilities and spending money on building them, the developer had to launch the property without operational saunas and steam rooms, even though they were already built. Had they engaged us at an earlier stage, this costly mistake would have been avoided through our previous experience with successful permit applications.

Amenity consultants also help you save money through negotiating for better equipment pricing. They work with multiple clients at a time, and often buy similar equipment for different clients in bulk, passing on the cost savings. Keep in mind that an amenity consultant may be building 5, 10, or even 15 fitness centers per year, while you may be developing or opening one or two projects per year.

4. Higher Returns

Amenity consultants will help to design lifestyle programs that increase your community's appeal. Their aim is to transform basic facilities into special experiences and memories for residents and guests. This gives you the ability to command higher rates, while occupancy levels and year-over-year retention improve as well. 

Some of the programs and events we have planned for our clients include beer parties and film festivals. These events have helped clients appeal to and retain an important new market, the up-and-coming generation of Millennials. 

5. An Enhanced Reputation

An amenity consultant can help you improve a building's appeal by designing programs tailored to the needs of the community. It could be day care services for working parents, or yoga classes for stressed-out professionals.

The happier your residents are with their environment, the more differentiated your building becomes. The more unique the experiences you create, the better word-of-mouth marketing becomes.

For one of the projects we worked on, we realized that there was a sizable community of musicians in the neighborhood. We suggested building a recording studio in the building, where musicians could jam and record music.

Most residential buildings stick to the usual gym, sauna, lounge, and business center amenities. This unconventional move, however, generated lots of buzz for the developer. Out of 350 units, more than 15 tenants reported moving in specifically because they heard about the recording studio.  

In short, yes, you can do a lot of the work a consultant does on your own. But having an amenity consultant on your team makes the job simpler, saves time and cost, and increases the value of your property.