This week I was in a condo selling for over a million dollars. It was a beautiful condominium home with excellent views, a state of the art kitchen and all the upgrades one might expect ... except the unit didn't have a washer and dryer.
Because my office is in
River Towers, and we also serve
Belle View, I often confront the question of a washer and dryer in the unit. (Neither River Towers nor Belle View has laundry in the unit.) I've talked to the older residents of River Towers about this and surprisingly many of them resist the idea of putting laundry in the unit. They like their laundry-rooms right where they are---thank you very much.
This might seem baffling to some of the younger generation, but laundry rooms have a number of distinct advantages:
- community --- You get to know your neighbors in the laundry room. This creates a sense of community and you know who belongs in the secured areas and who is a stranger.
- maintenance --- You don't have to worry about buying a new washer when the old one breaks down. More importantly you don't have to worry about your personal laundry flooding a neighbor's condo.
- square footage --- Laundry takes up space. You have more space in your unit if you have a community laundry room
- more washers --- Many folks like to wait and do an entire week of laundry at one time. If you have a laundry room you're not limited to one small washer. You have many washers available.
In a luxury community, most people don't do their own laundry anyway, so they don't care if the laundry is outside the unit. My tip to folks who are shopping for homes in Northern Virginia: don't box yourself in. If you won't consider a unit with a laundry room, you're walking past some of the best neighborhoods in Northern VA.
