Does a pool add value?

Yet, an analysis of the number of properties per suburb listed in the past two years with swimming pools found the opposite.

Out of the top 10 suburbs with the most swimming pools, eight of these are coastal suburbs, 20 minutes from the coast, and two are located inland. It begs the question: Why are homeowners spending an average of $35,000 to $100,000 to install a swimming pool when they could travel 20 minutes to the coast and access free amenities? Wouldn’t their money be better spent on adding other features to their property, such as a granny flat?

Swimming pools generally increase the value of a home at a minimum by the amount they cost to build. So, if you install a swimming pool for $50,000 you can expect your house price to increase by a minimum $50,000. House price growth beyond that is hard to quantify.

Attempting to deduce the reasons for differing sale prices in homes on the same street or repeat sales of the same home proves too difficult to explain solely by the addition of a swimming pool. There are many factors that impact values such as sales in different economic environments, changing demographics of interested buyers, climate, location, renovations to other areas of the house and so on. Therefore, analysis is unable to show whether adding a swimming pool will boost your house's value more than its cost of construction or more than an alternative improvement such as a granny flat.

However, the popularity of swimming pools continues to grow with nearly 300,000 additional Australians living with a swimming pool since 2018 according to Roy Morgan. ‘Swimming pool’ has been the highest ranked search term in many property listing websites for the past four years, reinforcing their high demand from many prospective buyers.

So while some may live 20 minutes from the coast, adding a swimming pool to your backyard may be the key to making your property more attractive to a larger number of buyers. Ray White auction data unsurprisingly shows that when property appeals to more buyers it creates stronger competition at auction pushing up selling prices and clearance rates.

While it may be unknown exactly how much a swimming pool will increase your house value by, it seems worthwhile to add a swimming pool into your backyard if you live in one of these suburbs or states with the most swimming pools. Not having a swimming pool in these suburbs will put your home in a weaker position when competing with other homes when it comes time to sell.

The Northern Territory had 45 per cent of all its listings over the past two years feature a swimming pool, whereas Tasmania, being the coldest state, had only three per cent of all its listings feature a swimming pool over the same time period.