Laundry in 4 unit: coin vs free?
I want to put a laundry in the basement of my 4U as an amenity. I've done it "free" in a 3U with success for the most part. In the "free model you build the cost into the rent. The upside of free is cheap machines, you can buy a basic low maintenance Whirlpool top loader for $100 on CL. Can make it cheaper to buy another than repair. Beside the maintenance of the machines the downside I'm worried about is in a 4U with 8-12 people in it folks might be casual about hogging the laundry with partial loads or the one unit of legacy "low functioning" tenants letting in their friends.
The upside to coin-op is explicitly covering expenses and no wasting of resources. The downside is a considerably larger buy-in, like $1600 to $2400 for machines vs maybe $200 for non coin-op.That could take years to recover. I'd consider the leasing companies since I'm not really looking at this as a moneymaker, the rent roll in the 4U is $5100, and someone else being responsible for maintenance is appealing. But I've heard some of them aren't interested 4U places. Any thoughts?