What is this and why is it important?
If you own an apartment building with a shared coin-op laundry room, you already know the routine. You’re the one hauling bags of quarters to the bank, emptying coin boxes like clockwork, and fielding those lovely “machine’s jammed” calls from tenants. Years ago, you might’ve charged 75 cents a load. Today? It’s $2.00. That’s triple the coins—and triple the hassle. And when the machines fill up and stop accepting coins, it’s not just a nuisance. It’s lost revenue and frustrated tenants. Not exactly the vibe you’re going for.
For years, I wanted to ditch quarters, but reliable alternatives were hard to find. In the past, we used tokens only to find we were being ripped off by people reselling their own easily purchased tokens. We’ve used reloadable cards – but this really only worked when we had a large central laundry room. Credit card readers on individual machines were prone to damage. These always pushed us back to coins.
What if a tenant could go to their laundry room with an app on their phone that recognizes the machines. They could load money onto their phone and pay for each load of wash and dry. They push a button on their phone and the machine magically starts.
For the past couple years, I’ve been tracking a company called PayRange that does this. They have a little blue device that you install inside the laundry machine. This bluetooth enabled device controlled by a phone will start the washer or dryer. All you need to do is load funds to the app. When a resident is in the laundry room, the app sees all the machines each labeled with a corresponding number. The app lets you know if the machine is available or the time left before the machine is finished with its cycle. It’s easy for residents to load money on the app and pay for laundry. So easy, that residents are doing more laundry. So easy that they are less focused on price and more so on convenience – meaning you can charge a little more. So easy that you now get emailed when machines break down making it easier for owners to get them repaired.
Last year, we installed our first two laundry rooms with PayRange devices. Today, eighteen locations have been upgraded. We have one portfolio of 150 apartments that has seen laundry income drop by 40% since COVID which we believe was driven by the inconvenience of getting quarters. Since installing PayRange this past May (2025), we have already seen income improve by nearly 50%! What’s really cool is that we can actually see how often each machine is being used. We can now analyze the placement of laundry equipment and see what promotes more use. We can now focus more on what is most convenient for residents.
I’m not gonna lie, it was nice being able to go to the bank and convert quarters into $50 bills. I’m going to miss that. Today, fewer banks actually have coin counting machines and the frequency of arriving at the bank only to find the coin machine not working is infuriating.
The convenience to the tenants is undeniable. This is demonstrated by the increased income. While there may be a loss of unrecorded income, the fact that you no longer need to go to the bank, coinboxes are never full, and there is less downtime (as a result of faster feedback when a machine is broken) certainly leads to a happy resident experience.
As a Housing Provider, it’s all about service and the resident experience. Upgrading your laundry rooms with PayRange dramatically improves your resident experience. It’s well proven that happy residents stay longer, pay their rent faster, take better care of the homes and refer new residents to your property.
If you need assistance with upgrading your laundry rooms and finding new ways to improve revenue and reduce costs, give Drexel Properties a call. We’re here to help, and our advice is always free.
