Increasingly they're elaborate affairs, crammed with colour photographs and computer-enhanced imagery of the type of idyllic dwellings you'd risk life and limb to call your own. Read through the toogood-to-be- true text, though, and you become aware of a serious collision between fact and fiction.

Apartments are invariably of "superb design and superior construction".

More often than not they're "on a magnificent site".

As always, though, the truth is in the small print, and tucked away in some inconvenient corner you'll usually find a disclaimer advising anyone naive enough to believe what they read that, well, actually they shouldn't. "The developer reserves the right to make alterations to the design and specification in the overall interest of the development" might be the only factually accurate statement in the entire publication.

The brochure produced for our complex has a prominent list of planned features, the first two of which are a residents' gym and a launderette. The plan, now that the complex is in its final construction phase, is to locate a small gym and launderette under one of the apartment blocks. The developer has proposed furnishing the gym with 33,000 worth of exercise equipment and installing washing machines and dryers to the value of 12,000 in the launderette. But all subsequent costs are to be borne by the management company . . . the apartment owners.

The management agents have advised owners to be aware of potentially expensive consequences.

Among those would be an increase in insurance to cover the new facilities.

Any future accident involving someone using the equipment or machines could result in a a personal injury claim on the policy.

Staffing and security would have to be addressed and would result in additional ongoing expenses, while the cost of standard overheads as well as maintenance and repairs would add to the long list of unforeseen expenses.

One female owner describes the proposal as "a very large white elephant". But not everyone is so negative.

Some owners regard the proposed launderette as a cost-effective alternative to buying a washing machine for the cramped kitchen.

Other mostly younger residents say the gym was a deciding factor when they bought their apartment.

"The developer has promised that if the owners don't want the gym and launderette, he will discharge the money earmarked for the equipment and machines to the management company, " a spokeswoman for the management agency says.

"In other, words, he'll put the money into the sinking fund. If they were standalone buildings, well you could conceivably have an employee in the launderette during the day making sure things ticked over smoothly. And if someone took out a franchise on the gym and ran it as a going concern, and paid money to the owners, you could actually make money out of it."

The owners are undecided about whether to go for the facilities or not.

Interestingly, the new brochure advertising the final three blocks in the complex makes no mention of a gym or a launderette.