Bharath: Drying the Clothes in Multi Storeyed Buildings – A Challenge for Saleability of Apartments :

Drying the Clothes in Multi Storeyed Buildings – A Challenge for Sale-ability of Apartments :

- Does the heading seem to be silly?
- Yes, I too feel that it is silly...
But, I still want to write a blog about it.
Recently when I was moving around some of the Multi-storeyed building residential apartments in and around Chennai, I found an aspect which I would like to share.
All the people in the MSB flats use their balconies on the outer circumference of the building to dry their washed clothes. The reason is that they cannot dry the wet clothes in the inner periphery.
Because the outer periphery of the buildings is only exposed to good sunshine. The inner periphery gets lesser heat than the outer periphery. In most cases, the units are closely built so that, there is no inner space to ventilate heat and air.
One more point we can make is that the process of drying the wet clothes on a daily basis in their own balconies creates a foul smell. This foul smell makes an inconvenience for the people living and the guests.
The prolonged habit of such kind of routine drying activities creates a boredom in the minds of the people who live there. This creates an aversion towards MSB residential units in the customer’s minds.

Hence, they slowly migrate to Independent houses and Villas with good setback distances and open gardens.
Any alternate solutions for the problem...?
a. If we consider the open terrace in case of multi-storeyed buildings, the people have to daily carry to the top and dry it and bring them back. So, it creates another tiring job.
b. Or else a common laundry can be adopted in every MSB so as to cater to all the clothes washing needs of the people who live there. Separate workmen shall be adapted to do a door to door service for all the consumer’s laundry needs. But, in this case, the laundry units will be flooded with a lot of clothes. If Person A’s clothes are delivered to Person B, then there shall be a problem. Hence, the management has to take care of all those problems.
In another way, there shall be done something even at the design stage to give a good laundry drying space. This drying space should be away from the people’s living area so that they are not receiving the foul smell.
However, if we see the sale-ability issues due to the above-discussed problems – Only existing people who have used such a kind of apartment and faced this problem would be aware. So, he will not adopt a similar flat for the next purchase. But, a new customer who is not aware shall buy the apartment straight away. It will take some time for him to realise this as a problem, as this will not hit his mind as a problem for a few initial months.
Hence, necessary alternates can be sought off to do further innovation in the design of Multi-storied buildings and improve their saleability.