subject: An Outdoor Swimming Pool: For The Kids Or For The Real Estate Value? [print this page] An Outdoor Swimming Pool: For The Kids Or For The Real Estate Value?
Summer is coming, the days are getting longer and the kids are on your case again to get them an outdoor swimming pool. They claim that all their friends have a pool and that they feel like poor relations from the provinces.
Why add a swimming pool is the most important question you need to answer honestly before even contemplating adding a swimming pool to your home. For the kids? To make them to stop whining? To impress your cousin Fred who is always boasting about his pool? Or to add the value to your home for that time when you decide to sell it, if ever?
Making emotional decisions is fine if you can afford it. You love your kids, and you too love to dip into the pool when the days get scorching hot and you want to take your skin off. It would surely make parties much more fun. But, whether it will add the value to your house depends on many factors. So, sum up the pros and cons:
Pro: If most houses in your neighborhood have pools, you should have one too in order to compete with the rest of the houses in your potential market.
Con: To be the only one with the pool in the neighborhood can give you boasting rights, but you would not be able to recover the expense for building the pool, as adding the pool expenses to the value of your house would put you completely out of your neighborhood price range.
Pro: If you are planning to stay in your house for a long time, you will have years to enjoy the pool, and years of the pool use would absorb the cost.
Con: If you are planning to sell soon, and the market is on the low side, forget about any return on your investment.
Pro: Pools are great for the kids, yours and your potential future customers'. Families with kids would always choose the house with swimming pools over the one without.
Con: The pool without a pool fence, whether is outdoor, above ground pool, or in-ground one, is a kid-hazard, and would scare parents of small kids. So, unless you are prepared to build a fence, or you are obliged by the law to do it, your pool would keep away the very population segment you were hoping to attract.
Pro: Pools add incredible value to your landscaping. Well incorporated pool makes the house look instantly upscale.
Con: Pool will take a large portion of your yard. There will be no much space left for other activities, during those cold months when the use of the pool is impossible.
Of course, many of these pros and cons depend on the type of the pool you choose. Outdoor above-ground pool is much more affordable, can give you years of good fun and you can easily take it with you when you move, if the new tenants prefer the basketball court.
