I was recently asked this question by a client who was trying to decide whether to install a pool at their existing home, or find another home with a pool already built. So I went to the data and performed a pretty basic analysis, which I'm sharing here because I think it was a fun exercise and I learned something that might helps folks here in similar situations.
What my client found on the install side was that a pool is running around $80,000 to $100,000 or so with no crazy features or add-ons, and he actually found a company that could start on it reasonably quickly, unlike what I have heard for the last two years, which was that pool install companies are estimating around a year long wait for new customers.
When we looked into the data, we found that the median home price of a home in our data set with a pool was right at $16 PSF higher than a home without a pool, or say roughly half of the price of a new pool. So the lesson would be: "You're probably better (monetarily) buying a home with a pool that someone else built than building one yourself." Nothing groundbreaking here, but I thought it was fun to mathematically show what we all likely knew.
Below is the neighborhood boundary lines of comps from the last year:
Summary of data for homes with pools:
Summary of data for homes without pools:
Factors (that I did not run regressions on) that would obviously alter the exact price delta between the two data sets:
Other findings that I found interesting:
Disclaimers:
I'd be happy to share the raw excel data with anyone who would like to dig in further. Just send me a PM, text, or email (in my profile) with your contact info and I can make that happen.
What do you think?
What my client found on the install side was that a pool is running around $80,000 to $100,000 or so with no crazy features or add-ons, and he actually found a company that could start on it reasonably quickly, unlike what I have heard for the last two years, which was that pool install companies are estimating around a year long wait for new customers.
When we looked into the data, we found that the median home price of a home in our data set with a pool was right at $16 PSF higher than a home without a pool, or say roughly half of the price of a new pool. So the lesson would be: "You're probably better (monetarily) buying a home with a pool that someone else built than building one yourself." Nothing groundbreaking here, but I thought it was fun to mathematically show what we all likely knew.
Below is the neighborhood boundary lines of comps from the last year:
Summary of data for homes with pools:
Summary of data for homes without pools:
Factors (that I did not run regressions on) that would obviously alter the exact price delta between the two data sets:
- Houses with pools generally sit on larger lots (roughly 500 SF larger) than those without pools
- Houses without pools were generally smaller, and smaller homes typically sell for an increased price PSF compared to larger similar homes
- Houses without pools were generally older by ~2 years
- It's possible that someone with the expendable income to install a pool would buy a nicer home or maintain their home better. So some sort of inherent bias that isn't evident in the data.
Other findings that I found interesting:
- Houses with pools generally sold for around $3 PSF more than their asking price, while homes without sold for right at asking price
- Days on market for homes without pools was 2-3x longer than for pools with homes
- These two prove that folks really want homes with pools right now
Disclaimers:
- This is one neighborhood and a rough estimation of value deltas. Other neighborhoods would most likely have different results, and to be exact we would probably need a lot more data points.
I'd be happy to share the raw excel data with anyone who would like to dig in further. Just send me a PM, text, or email (in my profile) with your contact info and I can make that happen.
What do you think?
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