Most brochures for luxury apartments in Chennai list amenities the same way: pool, gym, clubhouse, landscaped gardens and a children's play area. After three or four site visits they start to blur together, and it gets hard to tell which of these you will use on an ordinary Wednesday and which you will walk past for years.

One simple way to find out is to take your current week and run it through every project on your shortlist.

Start with your mornings

Think about the first hour of your day. If you run or walk, a proper track inside the campus is worth more than a large gym you won't get to. If you swim, check the pool's opening hours, whether it is shaded from the afternoon sun and how many towers share it. A pool that is crowded by 6.30 am rarely becomes part of anyone's routine.

Parents should look at the school run too. Is there a covered drop-off point where the bus can wait without blocking the gate? On a wet November morning, you will be glad of it.

Working from home two or three days a week

Hybrid work has turned the spare bedroom into an office for many people shortlisting apartments in Chennai. When that same room is where guests sleep or children study, a small co-working space in the clubhouse becomes very handy. Look for good Wi-Fi, a couple of closed cabins for calls and power backup. Ask what happens during an outage. A luxury flat in Chennai with dependable backup for common areas saves a lot of lost afternoons.

Evenings and weekends

This is when the clubhouse and shared amenities get most of their use. In most communities that means the badminton court after work, the party hall on a Saturday afternoon and the lawn or terrace for a walk after dinner. Check that the court has proper lighting and find out how far ahead the hall needs to be booked.

If you have young children, spend ten minutes in the play area during a site visit. You want shade for most of the day, seating close enough for parents to keep an eye on things and flooring soft enough for a toddler who falls often. Projects that get these small things right tend to be the family-friendly apartments in Chennai that parents recommend to each other.

If your parents live with you, look for different things. Lifts that reach every floor including the terrace, ramps beside steps, benches along the walking path and a pharmacy or clinic close by.

The amenities you only notice when they are missing

Buyers rarely ask about visitor parking or a separate service lift until a relative has to circle the block or a sofa delivery ties up the main lift for an hour. Drainage that keeps the basement dry through the northeast monsoon belongs on the same list, along with proper water treatment, since water quality varies so much across the city. So does a maintenance office that picks up the phone.

Residents of a developer's completed projects can tell you more about these than any sample flat.

Location counts as an amenity

Old Mahabalipuram Road real estate grew because it put homes close to the IT offices along the corridor, and schools, hospitals and malls followed. For a lot of professionals, a 15-minute commute does more for their week than a second swimming pool would.

That is why demand for premium apartments on OMR has held up, and why buyers looking at luxury apartments in Thoraipakkam or a luxury flat in OMR often decide on the strength of the drive to work. Thoraipakkam also offers a spread of options, from larger homes to compact flats in Thoraipakkam, so buyers can weigh budget against location.

Matching the project to your household

A young couple who both work long hours, a family with two school-going children and a retired couple will each read the same amenities list differently. Gated community apartments in Chennai can offer something to all three. The right fit depends on which facilities sit close to your block, which ones are well looked after and which ones you will use.

When you compare new residential projects in Chennai, write down five amenities you would use every week. Rank each project against that short list instead of the full brochure.

How Baashyaam plans amenities

Baashyaam plans amenities around how residents actually spend their week. That means deciding which facilities sit close to the towers, which are kept apart because of noise and how common areas will be maintained over the years.

Apartments with amenities in Chennai are easy to come by. A better measure is whether residents are still using the gym, the courts and the walking path a few years after moving in. In projects where they are, neighbours tend to know each other by name, and that is a big part of community living in Chennai.

A checklist for your next site visit

• Visit at the time of day you would normally use the amenities.
• Check pool and gym timings, and how many homes share them.
• Look for shade over the play area, walking path and seating.
• Ask about power backup, water treatment and maintenance charges.
• Time the drive to your office and your children's school.
• Speak to residents of the developer's completed projects.

If you are comparing luxury flats in Chennai, take this list on your next visit and score each project as you go. It adds half an hour to the visit and tells you far more about luxury living in Chennai than the brochure does.