I am told regularly by clients that they ‘fully understand that a pool will only devalue my house and I will not get any money back out of it.’ I find this fascinating because usually the customer will go on to say that they are currently ‘looking at a couple of houses with pools’ OR that they bought their current home because they wanted a pool and couldn’t find any houses that had pools they felt comfortable with. Despite making those statements they fail to see the connection.

First let’s acknowledge a fact: If you ask most realtors what a pool does to the value of a home they will typically say it devalues it and ‘you’ll never get your money back.’ Let’s acknowledge another fact, though they are usually right, they are not right for the right reasons. Approximately half of the Leisure Pools we build are for customers that are currently building their home, buying their home and want us to start right away, OR have been in their home less than 2 years. What does that mean? It means people want pools. Most of the time when we interview our clients they tell us they would have settled on a house that they didn’t like to have a pool they loved and were comfortable with.

The first reason that realtors are often right about pools devaluing property (even though they don’t understand) is because of the type of pool. Concrete (or gunite) pools as well as vinyl pools are huge financial liabilities. They require constant maintenance and upkeep. Both types of pools will require $800 to $1000 minimum in upkeep each year. They will both also require a major renovation (liner replacement or concrete resurfacing) to the tune of $5,000 to $10,000 every 5-7 years. That makes the ownership of a concrete or vinyl pool a liability to the property thereby making it worth less, no different than if it were to need a new roof immediately upon you purchasing it.

The second reason that pools can be liabilities to real estate is that when a vinyl or concrete pool is built in the back yard, it’s exactly that….built in the back yard. The final pool product is the sum of the materials used, the mood and experience of the crew installing it, and the site conditions in the back yard at the time. Very little means for quality control exist in the back yard. All of these factors are unknown when you are looking at buying a home with an existing vinyl or concrete pool and there is almost no way to evaluate the quality of construction once a pool is done.

A FIBERGLASS pool on the other hand is a manufactured product. It is built in a factory, in a controlled environment with quality control procedures in place and just like the appliances and cabinets in the house, a fiberglass pool comes with a warranty backed by the manufacture. Leisure Pools offers a full 35 year structural warranty that is even TRANSFERABLE to the next owner of the home! Fiberglass pools, unlike a vinyl and concrete pool require no renovation work. No liner will ever need swapped, no resurfacing and painting will ever be needed. Once a fiberglass pool is in…It’s done. Meaning no future work and much lower cost of ownership and financial liability.