Bill Meyer, Team Lead of The Tulip Team at RE/MAX Tackles your questions about homes with pools in Ottawa.

Hi, I’m Bill Meyer with the Tulip Team at Remax.

And I just want to answer a question that I often get in the spring and the summer, and that is about swimming pools.

Does a pool add value to the sale of a home?

And also, what’s the cost of operating a pool?

Now, as far as adding value, you can put a pool in for a few thousand dollars for an above ground pool. You can spend well over a hundred thousand dollars for an inground pool. When you start looking at the fencing and the landscaping and the patio that you need, you can easily be over $100,000.

Now, in the last couple of years, because of COVID pools have really become a sought-after feature for people looking for a home because the local facilities were closed and people were spending more time at home.

So they were really paying a premium, if you will, for a home with a pool.

Now, when you look at maybe ten buyers or so, there’s going to be three or four that absolutely want to buy a home with a pool. They’re the ones that will pay the premium. You’re going to have two or three people that said, well, we never really thought of a pool, but it’s kind of nice. And they may not pay a premium for the pool, but they’ll buy your home even though it has a pool. But of course, you’ve got your two or three buyers that are going to say, no, we have no desire to have a pool. We don’t want a pool. For whatever reason. It doesn’t add any value to them and it will actually detract them from purchasing your home.

So I would say, generally speaking, yes, a pool adds value.

It doesn’t mean if you spend 50, 60, $70,000 for a pool that you’re going to get 50, 60, $70,000 more the next day if you go to sell it. But certainly it is a feature that people are looking for in a home today.

Now, the other question people ask is what’s the cost of maintaining and having a pool once you’ve put it in?

Well, really, it’s really only maybe a few hundred to $1,000 a year.

You’ve got to open your pool and close your pool. I strongly suggest that you have a professional pool company do that. They’ll charge you about $300 to open and about $300 in the fall to close your pool.

Then, of course, you’ve got your chemicals to maintain the water quality, which again, you can take a water sample to any of the local pool companies. They’ll test your water for free and recommend what chemicals, how much you need in order to get a good balance. And that, again, can run you a few hundred dollars.

The maintenance of the pool is really about an hour a week. You want to test your pool, make sure the water quality is there, vacuum the pool you can spend little time vacuuming because you can buy actually robo vacuums if you don’t want to do it yourself, which will take care of keeping your pool clean. The major components of the pool are really your filter, your heater and your pump, which again, depending on your size of your pool and the size of the equipment that you need, they should last you for from 10, 12, 15 years that would need replacement.

And again, the costs vary depending on the quality and the size of the equipment that you do need to maintain your pool.

If you’d like any information about pools, neighborhoods with pool, houses with pools, don’t hesitate to give me a call.

You can reach me at 613-788-2113 or find me or my team of real estate specialists at http://www.tulipteam.com.