Boston’s seen a boom in high-rise luxury apartments, with more than 1,500 units arriving on the market in the past year alone, many boasting amenities like yoga studios, bocce courts and outdoor pools. But what’s truly luxurious? Being the first person to play with all those toys. Just ask Tony Winters, who moved into Waterside Place with his wife and four kids, ages 6 to 11. They had the 20-story building in the Seaport to themselves for two weeks.

“We were the first tenants in on Feb. 1. It was pretty cool,” Winters recalls. “Obviously what gives the building life is having people in it, but at the same time it was nice when my kids could run up and down the halls playing tag because they knew nobody was going to bother them—and I certainly wasn’t going to stop them.”

For Adrian Lagrama, one of the first residents at the Arlington in Bay Village, his early arrival meant having staff members seemingly at his beck and call, like a small army of personal assistants. “The staff is really attentive. There was a dog walker I was interviewing, and I had a bad feeling about her when I first met her. Then I talked to the staff and said, ‘Hey, when this person walked the dog, what did you think?’ And they gave me honest feedback, and actually recommended me to some other dog walker,” Lagrama says. “I almost felt like, since I didn’t have any family in Boston, they were always looking out for me.”

Being the first person in also means you get first pick of the units. Manny Chan, who was one of the first residents to move into the Radian on Aug. 1, chose a quiet spot close to the ground level in the downtown building. But getting first pick in the garage was almost as important: “I walked in, and they said any spot other than the handicap spots, I could have my pick from,” he says. “I have a bigger car, so having first dibs was critical for me.”

Chan found just one downside to being first: You can’t pull the old “the previous tenant did this” line. When he noticed some scuffs on the floor that weren’t from him, he quickly emailed the property manager to make sure he wouldn’t get penalized. Of course, the manager sent someone up to fix it within 30 minutes.

As Winters dryly notes of the Waterside staff, “If we needed something, there was always someone there, since they weren’t doing much else.”

The staff is still there for Winters whenever he needs them, an upside of having first fostered relationships when his family was the only one living in the 342,000-square-foot building. He’s got only one gripe. While his dog’s been treated like royalty, and she had the run of the place for weeks, she’s still missing one particular perk.

“She’s never been pet of the month,” Winters muses. Even when there was no competition, she still came up short.