How much value does a swimming pool add to the value of a house in Leavenworth?
Jessyca emailed me the other day and asked a great question.
“How much value does a swimming pool add to the value of my Leavenworth home? Are buyers willing to pay extra for a house in Leavenworth WA with a pool?”
A pool doesn’t make sense for every home.
Before adding a pool, I would make sure your home meets the most common needs of a Leavenworth home buyer.
Does the house have at least 3 bedrooms and 2 baths, including a primary bedroom with an en-suite bath? Do you have a garage? Has the kitchen been updated recently? Have the bathrooms been updated?
A two bedroom home from the 1970s without a garage, probably isn’t the best candidate for a pool. A home from 2015 on Ski Hill on a 1 acre lot, might be.
The Leavenworth real estate market doesn’t see a lot of homes with swimming pools. In 2022, only two homes with pools sold and it doesn’t appear that any have sold in 2023.
We don’t really have enough data to confirm that adding a swimming pool increases the value of a home in Leavenworth.
However, anecdotal evidence and our personal experience says that Leavenworth homebuyers are searching for swimming pools or yards to build pools more often than in years past.
There are two good theories why this might be the case. For starters, many people are using their Leavenworth vacation homes differently than they did before 2020. Instead of just weekend visits, it’s more common for people to stay weeks or months at their second home in Leavenworth and a pool makes more sense the more you use the house.
Secondly, we have had record summer temperatures in recent years and hotter summers are likely to stay with us in future years. Much like the preference for air conditioning, we expect swimming pools wll be a popular feature when the mercury tips above 100 degrees.
While we don’t have enough data to let us know exactly how much value a swimming pool adds, a swimming pool probably does add to the value of a house in Leavenworth.