Weekly Special | June 3, 2019

What Value Does A Pool Add In A Home Sale?

I t’s Summer. It’s hot. So let’s talk about swimming pools.

There are plenty of homes with pools on the market, and I have found that buyers, sellers, and even some appraisers do not really know how to place a value on the swimming pool in a real estate transaction. In fact, many appraisers use a number of $15K of added value (because that is what they were taught fifteen years ago).

Rather than use some rule of thumb, I have gone to the market to see what sellers and buyers have concluded when selling a home with a pool.

In order to do this, I used all the home sales in the Tallahassee MLS from 2003 through the present to come up with a fair estimate for valuing a swimming pool.

I took a wide swath of the market and reduced the impact of outliers by eliminating new construction homes, homes on a golf course, and homes on a lake. Why? Because those types of homes have higher costs associated with newness or land values that could distort our findings.

Market Value Of A Swimming Pool The graph shows the difference in price of the assembled homes when comparing homes with pools to homes without pools. 15 years ago, pool homes were selling for about $15K more than their dry counterparts, but today we have seen that average soar to nearly $40K.

The original one-page Weekly Special PDF is still available.