We have met with 2 PBs. We have lived in our house for almost a year. The pool that we are interested in building will cost us between $60k - $70k. The house across the street recently went on the market and it happens to have a gunite pool. We're going to walk through it next week with our realtor, but from pictures the pool seems like a pretty basic gunite pool (so not my dream pool). I have a feeling that our house is probably nicer than the one on the market. I'm guessing that we could buy that house for about $10k more than what we paid for ours. So.... would you consider the move? Moving seems like the less expensive route to go, and probably less headache (atleast for the short term). With the money saved we could probably fix the house up to how we like it, probably do an outside kitchen area, etc. I would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!

Selling without reason is a waste. Realtor fees. Moving.

A pool never increases the value of the property by as much as it costs, so there are cases where moving can be a good economic choice. However, moving brings in so many other factors that it is impossible to make a purely economic decision. Personally, I would never consider moving for something as small as a pool just because I hate moving.

Building your own pool will give you exactly what you want, all brand new with many years before you need to worry about any of the big maintenance items.

Your going to spend at least 10% of the home value on realtor fees and mortgage costs. It is also a huge PITA!

Building a pool will raise the value of your home, but not as much as it cost to build. Maybe 1/2.

$70k is an expensive pool. Maye you can trim there?

We probably can trim, but the very basic gunite pool is in the $40k here. I don't think that we are doing anything fancy, but we want some decking (which will be pea gravel) and I don't like white plaster pools. I guess we could always do a basic vinyl and cut the cost by 1/3. So many decisions .....

Consider a vinyl pool. They are great pools and are a lot cheaper than gunite. Gunite pools are nice, but IMO, are really over rated considering the cost vs vinyl.

Hi there~~

Just curious--what are the ages of the two houses? How old is that pool across the street?

It certainly cannot hurt to have a walk through across the street. The realtor(s) will deal with the house but not the pool. You want to see the pool with its circulation system running (so you know it works rather well), and then--you want it turned off. Have a good look at the whole pool while the water is perfectly still so you can see every darned flaw, problem, and submerged surprise.

I wish I had known to do this when I bought my pool that came with a house on the property.

Lana

We we're looking into installing a pool in the house we had (liked the layout) but with our market downturn it was more cost effective to use the money we were going to use on the pool for a down payment on anther house with a pool and nicer neighborhood. We were able to rent out our first house. It took a few months to rent out the house, but well worth it. Each situation is different. You'll need to weight the pro and cons for your situation.

Both houses were built in 2000. I will definitely take your advice and look into the pool more extensively.

Don't consider building a pool as an investment. Build it only because you want it. We applied for a re-finance prior to building our pool and our house was appraised last year in August 2010 at $310,000 and that's after the significant down-market. After building our pool, it's already cost me over $110,000 to build and I did all the walls and pool house myself. The pool was built by a PB for $55,000. After it was all done, this year we had to do a home equity loan to recover some overruns and had the house appraised this Summer at $305,000, SO that means our house went down after investing $110,000, so building the pool in actuality cost us $115,000 and we couldn't sell the house for any more than what we could have prior to building the pool. The most ironic thing, the first appraisal came in at $286,000 this summer which really irritated me. I'm just trying to tell you, if you're building a pool in these times, don't assume you'll get any payoff from building the pool in the next few years. There are a lot more houses on the market and they aren't moving. We have no desire to move or sell, so it wasn't part of the thought process on our end.

Building a pool is the worst investment you can make. I don't even like thinking about it... but I have exactly the pool that I wanted. It's pretty hard to find a new home with the back yard you've been dreaming about.

If you worry too much about bad investments, you'll never have fun. I love my pool. Just got to do it within your means. We sacrifice a lot of other things to get the backyard satisfaction.

I have a type of psychosis that allows me to enjoy something and not like it at the same time. Honestly though, I don't enjoy swimming all the much but I really like the technical aspects of the pool.

... back to configuring my controller.

You know I can relate to that. Sometimes I often wonder if it would be much easier to have nothing at home and go travel to get those needs satisfied. Oops, it's too late. Just invested in this pool. Guess I'm stuck.