Pickleball courts have been popping up at Houston apartment complexes for a few years now, but at least one developer is starting to wonder if the $40,000 price tag is worth it. Kate Good, who has overseen pickleball courts at two Hunington properties and was weighing the addition at three more, questioned whether the investment made sense when the same budget could simply pay for extra lighting around the property without the court attached to it.
Good raised the question with her leasing team, who told her that people want to live near pickleball courts because of the lighting the courts bring at night, not necessarily the sport itself, according to Bisnow. Pickleball has been the fastest-growing sport in the United States for four consecutive years, per the same report, which helps explain why developers kept building courts even as some now second-guess the return. The dilemma captures a broader shift playing out across the Houston multifamily market as owners move away from a pure amenity arms race toward features that pay for themselves in resident satisfaction, retention or operational efficiency.
Maintenance Speed Beats Flashy Perks
Richard Whatcott, who spoke at the Bisnow Multifamily Annual Conference at the Hilton Houston Post Oak, said quick fulfillment of maintenance requests has become an essential amenity in its own right. He told the conference that residents who submit the most service requests are actually the most likely to renew their leases, and that those interactions create natural openings to talk about renewal before a lease is even up.
That lines up with national data. AppFolio's 2026 Renter Preferences Report found maintenance is the single strongest driver of resident satisfaction, with 91% of residents satisfied when maintenance is handled well compared with just 63% when it is not, according to AppFolio. The same report found 56% of residents satisfied with maintenance plan to renew their leases, versus only 31% of those who are dissatisfied. Whatcott added that functional, responsive teams can help recruit new tenants just as much as any clubhouse perk.
Renters Are Asking AI, Not Just Browsing Listings
Whatcott also said renters are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to identify apartments with the fewest maintenance issues and the strongest on-site management, rather than relying only on traditional listing photos and amenity lists. That mirrors a wider industry trend: more than 45 billion AI-driven search sessions occurred worldwide in 2025, with 34% of those in the United States, per Apartments.com, though the same research found only 5% of renters reported actually using AI tools during their own rental search as of the fourth quarter of 2025.
Camden Skips Pickleball, Bets on Smart Access
Camden Property Trust, the fourth-largest apartment REIT in the country with roughly 50 communities across Texas, has built highly secure mid-rise and wrap-style buildings but has no pickleball courts at all, Whatcott said. Instead, the company has invested in smart technology that lets residents grant building access to guests, rideshare drivers and food-delivery couriers directly at their apartment doors, a response to the growing role the gig economy and delivery apps play in how people expect to move through a building.
Camden signed an agreement to deploy RealPage's CommunityConnect smart-access controls in 50,000 units, according to RealPage, with the system designed to let an authorized guest or delivery person be directed from the community gate straight to a resident's unit door using smartphone-based navigation. RealPage says the retrofit was designed to cost under $300 per door. Whatcott said the technology benefits both residents and operations, since it also eliminates the need for maintenance staff to carry key rings holding around 600 keys. He said Camden focuses on amenities used by all residents rather than chasing passing fads, a philosophy that stood in contrast to some of the more specialized spaces other operators described at the conference.
Wellness Directors and Repurposed Clubhouses
Not every operator is backing away from big-ticket investments. Southern Land Co. is pouring money into large fitness centers stocked with infrared saunas, steam rooms and Pilates equipment, with the goal of letting residents skip an outside gym membership altogether, according to Kevin Wilson. The company has also hired a national director of wellness, whose job includes planning resident events and acting as a sounding board for tenants, Wilson said.
Asset Living, which describes itself as the largest pure third-party property management firm in the country, spanning nearly half a million residences according to its own leadership page, has taken a different route by retrofitting old clubhouse rooms into work-from-home offices and, in some cases, soundproof podcast studios. Tyler Johnson said podcast studios are relatively cheap and easy to add compared with other amenities, while the occasional media room still lingering in some buildings now feels outdated. Whatcott suggested operators should also think about amenities that carry no physical footprint at all, and said residents often just need to be able to picture themselves using a space to value it.
The Broader Market Pressure
The rethink is happening against a backdrop of intense competition for renters. At the start of August, 1.2 million apartment units were in lease-up nationwide, roughly twice the average pace of the prior decade, according to Yardi data cited by Multifamily Dive. Concessions reached 21.1% of stabilized units across the South in July, compared with a 15.8% national rate, the outlet reported, and operators elsewhere are drawing the same conclusions as those at the Houston conference. One firm, Woodfield, is questioning whether highly specialized spaces that eat up square footage but see little daily use are worth the investment, while flexible spaces built to serve multiple purposes throughout the day are proving more valuable than niche rooms used by only a small share of residents.
Other operators cited by the same outlet are leaning into wellness and concierge-style service instead. Korman Communities converted business centers at two of its properties into lounges with dedicated meeting rooms and virtual-meeting pods, and also offers concierge assistance with tasks like local recommendations, valet dry cleaning and 24/7 emergency maintenance. Pegasus Residential has found that wellness-focused amenities such as cold plunges, saunas, steam rooms and private yoga studios resonate with its residents. Gyms remain a fixture almost everywhere, even though some sit underutilized, because they still function as a kind of billboard for the property, Bisnow reported. Apartment amenities can help secure renewals or attract new tenants, but conference panelists agreed that deciding which ones to build and which to skip remains an open question with no single right answer, as Hunington's pickleball dilemma makes clear.
