About Lavine Team

Welcome to the Phoenix blog! In addition to searching for properties, this is a place for discussion, articles and videos about the buying process. Read about local news, info and homes for Canadians in the Phoenix Real Estate Area.

Building a Pool in Phoenix

Many home-buyers would like to have a pool in their yard when shopping for a home to buy in the Greater Phoenix Real Estate area.

About Pool Homes In Greater Phoenix

How many homes already have a pool? Click to read about it.
About 70% of all homes in the valley do not have pools. Out of the 30% +/- that do, how many are for sale at any given time? Not enough is the answer! There will be some pool homes that are within most price parameters we are constantly searching. But what are the chances of finding the right floor plan, with the right location and with a pool? And will you like where the owners installed the pool and how they equipped it? The odds get slimmer. And then to find one that is heated as us Canadians like our home to be our resort down here….chances are even slimmer.

For those that we are fortunate enough to find the right combination of floor plan, location, price and with a pool already, it is easy enough to have a heater installed. But if we don’t find it and after continuing to look, if we still have trouble finding it, there is a great alternative…install a pool after you buy. That is how almost all pools are built anyways because builders don’t generally install a pool while the house is being built unless you use their pool provider and pay the added 15-20% markup they add to the price. For just that one reason alone, almost all pools are added after the fact.

There will be many more homes to choose from if we don’t have to specify in the search to already have a pool. You can then concentrate on finding the right layout with the best location. So…why not consider that option as we did when we bought our current house here back in 2009? We couldn’t find the right combination of floorplan, location and with a pool when we were shopping for a home, and out of all the pool homes that we did come across when we were looking, we didn’t love the pool that they installed.

What about the cost of a new pool versus resale homes with a pool? Click to read about it
Yes, it will cost you more to add a pool to a house than what you would pay for one that already has one. That is because upon resale, the pool isn’t worth replacement cost…it is usually valued at less than half. But at least you can get the right house, right location and the exact pool that you want……where in the yard you want it, with choices of equipment and features such as in ground pop-in cleaners instead of the long hose with vacuum attachment, or a waterfall feature, or a built-in table, or an attached spa….possibilities are numerous. And compared to the cost of that same home in Canada, it is still a bargain to buy a home and add a pool. And so…many of our clients and countless others have a pool built.

About Pool Construction

Here is a video of pool construction from start to finish with some final landscaping and additional patio concrete work done very economically at the same time as the pool. Cost for having the attached spa, heated pool and/or spa, built-in table, large pool, energy efficient variable speed pump, in-ground pop-up cleaning system, pebble sheen finish and 3 feet of concrete decking around the pool at 2019 pricing is about $45000 +/-. You can have a pool built without some of these upgrades for around $30000-35000. Most pools in homes that I show around the valley are a little more standard than this one. But this will give you an insight to the process. It takes about 2 months to build from permit application through completion.

Finishing the Landscaping

The rest of the concrete was contracted out to our own concrete connections at a better price than what the pool company would charge…..the same with the landscaping. All of our plants were purchased at Lowe’s because they warranty their plants for a full year. The gardener picked them up at Lowe’s and planted them all for a couple of hundred dollars and not thousands like a landscaping company would charge. Some examples… a Pygmy Palm can be purchased for $49-69, flowering Lantana shrubs for $10-15 and so on.

View homes for sale in the Greater Phoenix Real Estate Area
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