The tour is not about the countertops
Every building shows well at 11am on a Tuesday. What you are buying is the building at 6pm on a Thursday in July, and five questions get you there.
Ask them out loud and write down the answers. Getting to the tour at all is a separate problem — how apartment locators work in Dallas covers who schedules it and who pays.
1. Elevators, at peak
How many elevators serve how many units, and what is the wait at 6pm?
This is a daily cost you cannot renegotiate. A tower with too few cars for its unit count means a queue every evening, and it gets worse when one is out of service or in service mode for a move-in.
Ask specifically: how many are in the bank, are any dedicated to service or freight, and what is the current wait at peak. Then ask what happens during a move-in — some buildings reserve an elevator for moves, which is good for you on move day and inconvenient every other day.
2. The package room
Where is it, what is the capacity, and what happens when it fills?
Two systems exist. A locker system assigns you a slot and texts you a code. A front-desk parcel room requires office hours. Both work; they behave completely differently in December, and the difference is whether your parcels sit on a floor for three days.
Ask what the policy is when the room is full, and whether there is a size limit that pushes large deliveries somewhere else.
3. Guest parking
Does it exist, what does it cost, and is it enforced?
“There is street parking” is not an answer in Uptown or Deep Ellum. Ask how many guest spaces the garage has, what the visitor rate is, whether there is a validation system, and what happens to a car parked in a resident space.
While you are there: what does a second resident space cost, and is reserved parking priced above unreserved? Parking is one of the heaviest items in the fee stack.
4. EV charging
Available or not, how many stalls, and how is it billed — flat monthly, metered, or bundled?
If the building has four chargers and 300 units, availability at 7pm is the real question. Ask whether stalls are assigned or first-come.
Write the answers down
Five buildings blur together by the end of a Saturday. The building with the good kitchen and the terrible elevators is very hard to identify from memory two days later.
5. Valet trash
Does it run, on what schedule, and is it optional?
At most newer Dallas towers it is not optional and it is on the fee schedule as a recurring monthly charge. Ask the schedule — some buildings run five nights a week, some three — and what the rule is on setting bins out early.
The rest of the list
While you are in the unit:
- Ask to see the actual unit, not the model. The model is usually the best floorplan in the building.
- Check the window line and which direction it faces.
- Ask what the summer electric bill runs for that floorplan.
- Ask whether water, sewer, and trash are billed through RUBS and what it averaged last year.
- Ask whether internet is bulk and mandatory, and what speed it delivers.
- Ask what the unit renewed at last year, and whether the concession repeats.
That last one is the question almost nobody asks and the one that decides whether year two is affordable.
We run this checklist on every building in luxury and high-rise locating, and we send the answers with the numbers attached.