I'll start: We have a very nice Olympic pool in our neighborhood that is barely used.

Do you complain about the costs of your homeowners insurance without a pool?

I feel like this perception that a pool skyrockets your rates and is an "attractive nuisance" that makes your home uninsurable is an old wives tale. Just something that people like to parrot every time the topic comes up. At least this has not been my experience over the years.

A pool is just like anything else that requires attention and work. Dogs and cats require attention and work and a certain subset of the population should and cannot take care of an animal. A pool is the same thing. You get out what you put in. If you enjoy sitting inside most of the time and can't stand the idea of taking on a new chore or paying someone to take care of it, a pool is not for you. If you have a hot wife that likes to sit next to a pool in a bikini drinking wine, a pool might be for you.

If you have a pool, you will pay more for homeowners insurance. There's no way around it. My aunt and uncle filled theirs in after their kids were grown because of the expense, and saw their insurance costs decrease. They were in Harris County at the time. My brother out in a pool and had his increase in Montgomery County.

Have lived in houses with pools. Have lived in houses without pools. I'll never do that again if I can help it. I love having a pool and can't wait for the next one to finish being built. We've been a couple years without.

aTm2004 said:

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If you have a pool, you will pay more for homeowners insurance. There's no way around it. My aunt and uncle filled theirs in after their kids were grown because of the expense, and saw their insurance costs decrease. They were in Harris County at the time. My brother out in a pool and had his increase in Montgomery County.

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Very curious that you provide absolutely no indication of how much the rates changed... Was it hundreds of dollars? Thousands of dollars?

The fact that homeowners insurance is higher with a pool is not really useful information in and of itself.

TMoney2007 said:

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aTm2004 said:

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If you have a pool, you will pay more for homeowners insurance. There's no way around it. My aunt and uncle filled theirs in after their kids were grown because of the expense, and saw their insurance costs decrease. They were in Harris County at the time. My brother out in a pool and had his increase in Montgomery County.

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Very curious that you provide absolutely no indication of how much the rates changed... Was it hundreds of dollars? Thousands of dollars?

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I provided no indication because I do not talk with people about how much they spend on things as it's none of my business, just like it's none of theirs how much I spend on stuff. I don't ask someone moving into a new house how much they bought it for. I don't ask someone who buys a new car what their drive out is or how much their monthly payment is. And I don't ask someone what their monthly bills are. If they choose to freely offer that up, that's fine. I treat financial stuff like that just like I do salary...those that need to know, know. Those that don't, don't.

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The fact that homeowners insurance is higher with a pool is not really useful information in and of itself.

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I disagree. The OP asked to be talked out of it, and throughout this thread, there are several people indicating the additional costs associated with a pool for the OP to consider. How is higher homeowners any different? Are you saying that homeowners wouldn't be higher with a pool vs. not?

it's been 9 years since we've put one in and don't regret it one bit.

I don't recall how much homeowners jumped but it wasn't much.

Where they did get me was it allowed them to count it as an 'addition' to the house so they adjusted property taxes to market value which was well above what it would have been with the year over year % cap.

Have a pool and zero homeowners insurance increase. Located in Montgomery county. Quadruple checked even when we changed insurance companies last year and no difference with or without. YMMV though so call and ask your insurer.

Also, we have a robot, use the TFP method, and it's cheap ($<100/mo). Pretty sure I did the math on a previous post so look that up if interested.

We really enjoy ours and use it quite often. Take nice/frequent enough vacations too, but realize for some it may be one or the other.

End of the day, get one if you want one. Simple as that.

We were in the process of planning a pool just before the Big Freeze hit DFW a coupla years ago.

After the Freeze, the local pool companies said they were busy making repairs to existing pools and I'd have to wait.

Now, the cost of the same pool had gone up almost 50%. From 65k fir a fairly basic pool to 85k for the same pool.

Southlake said:

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We were in the process of planning a pool just before the Big Freeze hit DFW a coupla years ago.

After the Freeze, the local pool companies said they were busy making repairs to existing pools and I'd have to wait.

Now, the cost of the same pool had gone up almost 50%. From 65k fir a fairly basic pool to 85k for the same pool.

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Kids? Ages?

We bought our first house with a pool and then the kids were born. I didn't mind the maintenance, used it quite a bit and then we hit the kid friendly time. About 7-9 years later, kids were more involved in other things, liked going to the neighborhood pool with friends and maintenance started to become a chore. Less use for the same cost, we then had to replaster, paint, and some O&M repairs. Was happy when we moved to no pool because kids were in high school and leaving.

I wouldn't change the experiences, but I don't miss it now at all. Some families are more geared to center around the pool, some not so much. We also had little skeleton kids so they got cold quicker and the season was a bit shorter. I've seen others that don't give a **** about colder water.

Never had a pool growing up. My wife and I moved into our first home which had a pool and we loved it. We are in home number two now and just finished building a new pool last year. We still love it, live in College Station. No increase to homeowner's insurance either. Also, there are costs associated with maintaining a pool but I have managed to learn how to take care of it myself and it comes nowhere near the 200-500 per month costs some have quoted here. I would say you could probably easily budget less than $100 per month for chemicals and you'd be safe as long as it wasn't a massive pool (mine is around 16k gallons). I'm sure there's an additional cost on our electricity bill but I don't' think it's a deal breaker and I'm sure the AC is way worse.

Sorry, I know you wanted to be talked out of it but I suspect that given the request you made, you are somewhat open to getting one. Look, the cost is big up front but we as a family love our pool. My son (9) spends a ton of time on his technology, he rarely does anything physical unless I drag him outside, but when the pool comes up, he is always up for it. It's a great way for our family to spend time together outside, being active and getting vitamin D from the sun. We knew going into it that it was not a monetary investment, but an investment in something we love doing. It will generate great memories. I say go for it and have a blast.

The expense and lack of return have been discussed enough....

But a couple more points that vary family to family and property to property.

First, it depends on the kids and their ages. We have a 2 year old and will probably have another soon. Our son loves playing outside. It's absolutely more stressful when you have a pool. At our house, we can just let him run around while we're inside cooking, etc. When we're visiting my sister, in laws, etc. that have pools., that obviously isn't the case. We have to watch him and be out there with him every time he wants to go outside. Yes, this can be partly fixed with a fence, catch a kid, age, etc.

Also, how big is the yard? For kids and playing, the cocktail pools are pretty worthless. We've toured a few houses and they have small yards and the entirety is taken up by a cocktail pool. It's an instant pass from us. If we ever did a pool, we'd have to have a yard big enough for a decent sized pool plus still have backyard space. As I said above, my son loves playing outside.

All that being said, my sister has a pool and awesome outdoor patio area. They love it, we spend more time out there than inside. My in laws also have one. They loved it when the kids were little. Then there was a period of probably 20+ years where it got used like twice a year. Now that they have grandkids they love it again. But it's also of the age where it needs a lot of work and is really expensive.

The only really close call we had was when our daughter was about 18 months and toddling around while we were doing the lawn out back, we look over to see our son reaching down into the pool. He was pulling our daughter by the hair and dragging her over to the steps. We rush over to finish getting her out and he said she was just walking along the edge, fell in, so he figured to drag her over to the steps like we taught the dog to do. He was five years old at the time

Many years later during retelling of the story at family events, she swears he pushed her in. In reality she has always been a pretty big klutz.

One consideration is whether the pool is going to be underneath tree canopy and what kind of trees. I had a pool for a while that was under a canopy of live oaks. We really couldn't take the cover off the pool until the oak pollen season was over and all of the pollen pod things had fallen off the trees. In the early fall it was acorns raining down into the pool. I would never have a pool under live oak trees again.

The other thing I would say is if you are going to put in a pool, put in a hot tub too. It will significantly extend your pool season.

We use ours 12 months a year with a heater and it added value to our home big time

87IE said:

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It will make it easy for your wife to fake your death by conking you on the head and letting you
drown in the pool.. Then she'll collect the life insurance and let the pool boy move in.

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also, tree shade will dictate how warm the water is.
May not be a problem depending on what temperature you want your pool.

Texas Summer + No shade + dark plaster(pebble tec) = summer hot tub