HELP! We're buying a house in MD and we're not sure if we should buy a place with a pool or build one.

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J

jhc32

Member
Aug 7, 2020
5
Silver Spring, MD
Hello all!

We're taking a look at houses and we realized we definitely want a pool. Question is: Should we buy a place with a pool -- we're already looking into some-- or build our own pool?

We have not been able to find reliable information regarding prices. We're interested in building something small, preferably square, along 10x20-23 or so. Any advice would be very much appreciated.

Thank you!
 
If you can find a house that meets your other criteria, and has a pool, you will save money. We love our pool, but if we sold our house we would NOT recoup the building costs. We love our home and our neighborhood, and have lived here 35 years, so we never considered selling and buying a home with a pool. But if we were buying anyway? We'd get someone else's pool in a heartbeat.

Once you find your dream home, with or without a pool, the folks here will help you take care of and/or build your pool.
 
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Your best value would be to buy a house that has a pool. Most realtors will tell you that as a seller you never really recoup the full value of the pool added to the house. With that said, you need to ensure that your inspection covers the pool as well. You may have to have a separate person for just the pool and equipment. Have them turn the equipment on. You need to ensure that the pool is functioning, no leaks, etc. Also, most sellers include a 1 year house warranty with the sale. Ensure that it covers the pool and pool equipment as well. You don't want to move in and have to buy a new pump 2 months later. Furthermore ensure they leave equipment manuals, pool specifications (assuming they put in the pool) and any misc. equipment such as a net or brush, extra chemicals, etc. Good luck and keep us posted. Post pictures once you narrow down to 1 or 2 homes.
 
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Definitely find a house with a pool. That's what I did. It cost me NOTHING to get my pool. Granted, now i'm completely changing the pool so it's costing me money anyway, but it's less than half the price of building a new one AND i've been able to enjoy a pool for the past three years while planning for the reno. We had considered building a custom home and then saving up for a pool afterwards...but the house itself would have cost $50k more and we'd be without a pool for probably about 5 years while we saved. We saved $50k on this house and were able to spend $25k making it our dream home and still come out ahead, and we could have just kept the pool the way it was if we didn't want to spend any more money. But even with the reno we are now doing, the price of this house, plus upgrades, plus the pool reno STILL comes out less than what we would have paid for the custom home, with no pool at all, alone.
 
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Every house and neighborhood and city will be different, but I'd say pools don't add much to the value of a house. Which is great for a buyer! The estimate for the pool, landscaping and concrete in my yard was about $100K. I bought the house for about $2K more than the comp across the street, which didn't have the view, the lot size and was about 200 sq ft smaller. Pretty much however you do the math, that's a free pool.

Do heed Herman's #3 post above. I would add make sure the inspector, or a separate one, specializes in pools. My generic home inspector missed a few key things about the pool that later cost me about $12K, and then I automated the heck out of my pool, so that was another chunk. But I'm still way ahead. It was just luck that the taste of the previous owners matched mine, as I couldn't have designed a pool I like better. That's the catch, you're gonna get what you get. But with money saved, you can make it your own in many ways.

Buy house with pool!

The weirdest thing about that tale is that the previous owners moved only a minute's walk away. Right around the corner, then proceeded to do all that work again: pool, landscape, concrete. They just wanted the back of their house to face the city lights, instead of the view of an amazing oak forest that I now have. Go figure. Must be nice to have that kind of money to throw around...
 
It depends on where you live and what you want in your house/outdoor space. When we bought our home 5 years ago we could not find a house that met our needs with a pool. Every home with a pool was crammed into the lot with 0 entertainment space or room for expansion. So we bought a house with a huge yard, for our area, and decided we would add the pool later. Now we are going to spend 85K for out door entertainment space and pool but its so worth it because of what our overall vision and requirements are.
 
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Jhc, huh ? I yell those initials rather frequently, sorry if it makes your ears ring.

We were just house hunting. When we narrowed it down our choice was the house we liked but needed to build a pool, or the pool we liked at a so-so house. We went with liking the house and build a pool when the finances settle down and after all this current mess is hopefully over. Plus eventhough we liked the pool at the one place, the equipment was 17 years old and the liner needed replacing soon and lord knows what else so it wouldn't have been 'free' by any stretch. Instead I'll start new and exactly how we want and be good for years and years.
 
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Financially it makes much more sense to buy a house with a pool. When I was researching my build, I found that I got $1 back for every $7 I spent. That is not smart business :)

With that said, it is a package deal and I wouldnt pass up on your dream home if it didnt have a pool, nor does it make sense to buy a house for a pool if said pool needs $30k in renovations.
 
Absolutely no denying you will be better off financially buying a house with a pool at this latitude/longitude. And for the next year, things are going to be crazy building pools. Once the juices get flowing, they don’t stop easily regarding folks getting excited about pools, as everyone is right now. I would search high and low for a good house with a pool.
 

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I had no idea, nor did the home inspector, to be concerned that:
- the plaster was completely covered with scale ($9000)
- the edge tile was completely covered with scale ($450)
- the flagstone coping was flaking apart ($3000)
- the windows facing the pool didn't need a good cleaning, but instead would require a day of hard labor to grind off the scale formed by the spray from the tail of that stupid pressure-side vac!!

And you're right, you can't trust the inherited pool guy. In my case, both the scale and the windows were the pool guy's fault! And he had been treating the coping with stone sealer, which didn't (and doesn't) work for that issue!

Ya gotta use a pool specialist inspector, if there is such a thing in your area. My inspector might have turned on the pumps. Maybe the light. That was it. He noted that the pool vac pump wasn't working, because he didn't understand that a pressure-side pool vac booster pump won't come on unless the main pump is also on.

If you're new to pools, you won't even know what you don't know to look for! I sure didn't!
 
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jhc32 said:
Hello all!

We're taking a look at houses and we realized we definitely want a pool. Question is: Should we buy a place with a pool -- we're already looking into some-- or build our own pool?

We have not been able to find reliable information regarding prices. We're interested in building something small, preferably square, along 10x20-23 or so. Any advice would be very much appreciated.

Thank you!
Click to expand...
you will lose about 50% of the value of the pool when you sell. I built one and told myself if I moved I would not build another. Of course I found a property I had to have, and it didnt have a pool. So just 8 year later Im building another pool. My first one cost 65K, and this one will be 75K. We do plan to stay here long term - but we did before too.
 
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We bought our house with a pool. Similarly optioned houses without a pool were going for about 30K less and it would have cost us about 70K to build a similar pool. We came out way ahead buying a house with a pool.
 
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