The excitement that comes with building and owning a home should be something that everyone gets to experience in their life – it’s the Australian dream!  Having a house is one thing but improving it and adding value is another.  This article seeks to answer the question: does a swimming pool add value to your home?

From a non-financial perspective, having a concrete swimming pool can improve your home’s value from a social, financial and visual perspective. During the spring and summer months, you and your family will start to really reap the benefits. From a financial point of view, swimming pools come in a wide range of sizes and shapes and truthfully, are worth more to some buyers than others.  A family with kids will value a pool much more than a fly-in fly-out worker who is rarely home — which makes it difficult to quantify what a pool is worth to a prospective buyer.

“You really have to look at it on a lot by lot basis,” said PRD Nationwide research analyst Angus McLean. “It’s hard to put a number on the value, but a good pool is likely to heighten the level of inquiry for a property, which should push the value up.”

Installing a new pool should be approached in a similar way to building an extension.

If a pool is part of a well designed outdoor living area and complements the house by creating a better aspect to the property, then it is more likely that it will add value to the home. A pool can be a desired luxury for some buyers who are willing to pay more for this feature.

In the end, Australia has more than 1.2 million pools installed and 90% of the population believe that a pool will increase the value of their home.  The population represents the market so what do you think…?