$5.8m of amenity hard cost, and I keep asking my architect what it rents for

Working through pricing on a 180-unit active adult plan, three-story walkups plus fourteen cottages. Amenity package as drawn is a 12,000 square foot clubhouse with a fitness room, a demonstration kitchen, a pool with a covered deck, a dog park, and about half a mile of trail. Hard cost on that package prices at $5.8 million, roughly $32,000 a unit before soft costs.

The alternative the equity keeps floating is cutting the clubhouse to 6,000 feet, dropping the covered deck, and moving about $3 million into unit interiors and infrastructure. That buys taller ceilings on the top floor, a real kitchen island in every plan, walk-in showers instead of tubs throughout, and fiber to every unit with in-unit wireless access points instead of a single MDF closet and hope.

My construction instinct says spend inside the unit, because that's where somebody sits every day and it's the thing a resident tours with a tape measure in their head. The counter is that the whole reason active adult exists as a product is the amenities and the community, and residents in this segment are the youngest and healthiest of the senior housing continuum. Many still work, and boomers arrive expecting the internet to actually function. The trails and the dog park cost almost nothing and get used constantly.

What I can't get anyone to tell me is what each dollar returns in rent. I've asked three operators and got three shrugs. If the pool adds $70 a month and the kitchen island adds $70, the clubhouse loses on cost. If the clubhouse is what gets someone to move at all, then the unit finishes are trim on a decision already made.

Where does the money go?