Boston apartment amenities: Most sought-after is air-conditioning, analysis says

Air-conditioning is the most sought-after amenity among Boston apartment tenants, according to real estate listings site Zumper. The site analyzed search terms from users nationwide and broke them down by city.

Boston tenants also searched a lot for on-site laundry, in-unit laundry, whether an apartment has a dishwasher, and whether an apartment comes with assigned parking.

The searches certainly make sense. The city can get awfully sticky and hot in the late summer, and central air was not really a facet of a new construction in Boston until fairly recently. So AC can become a holy grail for tenants.

Laundry and a dishwasher are obvious searches. Assigned parking reflects the notorious difficulty of finding reliable, regular parking in Boston.

The Zumper results also make clear that the relative basics are still very much in demand among Boston tenants. It might be an era of amenities overload—with some tenants offered a range of perks, from dog-washing stations to bocce courts to on-premises honeybee hives to yoga studios to free coffee in a tricked-out lounge—but most tenants simply don’t want to have to go outside to wash their clothes.

What’d you look for in a new apartment?