Quote:
Originally Posted by bmcgowan13
Keep in mind once you have the pool installed there is no going back.
You will have limited your pool (no pun intended) of interested buyers to those who *want* a pool. We did not want a pool in our new home so any home with one already installed was out of the running and we had no interest in seeing the house. More than just a few consider a pool an expense and liability they want to avoid.
OTOH--if you have *room* for a pool then your field of interested buyers is everybody.
Best advise would be to assume you are putting it in for *your* enjoyment during the years you are here and then see what happens.
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While you are right, there’s a complication. True, a lot of people aren’t interested in buying a home with a pool or in-ground hot tub, so if you have one, they won’t be interested in your house. But there are also a lot of people who WANT a pool and won’t consider your house if you don’t have one. I’ve been told by agents that there are a lot more people who want pools than there are pools to be had, so they keep the price up. I understand that these days a pool (with heat pump, heating tubes on the roof, concrete work, bigger bird cage) can easily top $100,000. I’ve been in a couple here that had to be much more than that. The fancier your house is, the fancier your pool should be.
You should also have enough patio inside the birdcage for lots of patio furniture. A wall to wall pool doesn’t cut it. I had a pool in my first home in The Villages. The sellers probably made a profit because pools were much cheaper when they had it put in. It was 15’x30’. That was long enough to swim laps, but it’s nicer to swim laps in a bigger pool. I had a heat pump installed. That cost $6,000, and it was loud. There was already a tube heater on the roof, but that isn’t enough in the winter. Combined with one of those bubble wrap pool covers, the heat pump could keep the pool at 90° in January. I soon realized, though, that I only rarely used the pool, as I live alone. I only used it with guests, and I rarely had guests. I soon took to heating the pool only when I knew guests were coming who would enjoy the pool. That was cheaper. When guests were there, though, we never swam. We just sat on the concrete benches in the pool or walked back and forth and chatted. I saw an in-ground hot tub here a few years ago what was about 8’x15’. It had benches along both sides. It seems to me that that would be a lot of fun at a party, and it would need a much smaller heater. Ideal. (In my experience, people who don’t have heat pumps don’t use their pools six months a year, and if you rent a home with a pool for a couple months in the winter, if you don’t have a heat pump, you won’t be using that pool.
I found that my pool was costing me $2,000 a year for cleaning and water testing (it was a salt water pool, which I highly recommend), and about $2,000 more for maintenance. Given how rarely I used it, it was costing me about $1,000 per use.