If you get cancelations so will they.
Keep in mind that you want quality not quantity.
90% occupancy at low rates and high cost, is worse that 80% at decent rates and low cost.
I too see a lot of request from guests that want a pool. I will never get one, for me the liability is too big. If someone gets injured or dies, I have to prove that it was not my fault. To much risk, because pools are a very high risk amenity.
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Yes. Pools are maybe the most sought out amenities, but $65k seems like steep price to pay, maybe first go with smaller one or something. If you have done your research and math - Go ahead then.
I have a 25-year-old pool that we put in when we built the house. It is very popular, however, the pool has a spa and it is actually the main attraction.
I set the spa to come on in the evening and heat it with solar during the late afternoon, so very cost effective.
You should be able to put in a spa for a much more reasonable price than $65k, and your guests would enjoy that. I would think you could get one for $5k and that would be tax deductible.
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we had an airbnb for many years, and the pool added a lot of clients to the booking listâŚalthough, we are in Austin Texas. Since the pool was also a permanent valued added feature, it then became depreciable, so we got more bookings at higher prices, and depreciated the pool cost and the pool services costs every year.
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Continuing the discussion from Adding a pool to increase occupancy rates?:
We have a pool in Worcester MA. Itâs open after Memorial Day to about Labor Day. Would it be the same in Nashville, TN? Thatâs a consideration. Iâm guessing that you will not get year-round use in Nashville. Is that correct? [Ours is solar heated, but the heat of the pool depends on the ambient temperature and amount of sunlight hitting the roof. Itâs not the same as a heated pool.]
We have commercial insurance through Proper. I donât know how much having a pool added but I donât think it was exorbitant. However we donât rent to guests with children under 12 and our maximum occupancy is six. We donât permit parties. I donât know whether these were factors in our insurance pricing but, in my opinion, they should be.
Another consideration is the effect on re-sale. I have a brother who is a realtor in Dallas, a better locale for a pool. Yet heâs told me that often when a property goes on sale that the pool is a negative factor. Many people donât want the potential liability, the maintenance responsibility and the potential for accidents. So, you might want to assume a $0 value on resale, better to assume a negative value, like -$X0,000 ( to landscape over it on resale).
Yes, you can expense the investment and the maintenance, which means that your cost is instead of 100% of the expense itâs (100%-Your marginal tax rate %) x the (investment + maintenance costs/year).
I think the real question is whether the rate of return in terms of the pool vs. alternative uses of your money. For example, here the ROI on solar (with state credits) was projected to be over 15%. I donât know what the return on solar might be where you live. An investment in the stock market in my opinion might well generate a 15% ROI over say the next 15 years, and with far less effort.
So someone considering a pool would really need to do a projection with and without a pool on the STR business, calculate an ROI and then consider the ROI of alternative investments (which neednât be in the STR). That ROI would need to calculate the human cost of pool maintenance because while the pool is pretty easily maintained it is that one more thing that requires maintenance and which can go wrong.
My intuition is that the idea of a spa requires a far far smaller investment and is more easily maintained at lower cost, and that youâd likely have a higher ROI investing the money somewhere else rather than in a pool. But running the numbers is the way to go, even though there will be uncertainty in the numbers.
In most areas pools are considered an Attractive Nuisance and will require complete fencing of a certain height too, in case @turnercress decides to put one in at some point anyway.
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Yes, youâre right.
There are a number of things youâll likely need to do: signage showing various depths, probably no diving board, pool rules posted, compliance with the Pool and Spa Safety Act (including a special kind of drain that avoids suction of hair from a person that can cause drowning) and other local requirements, like a fence and a door with automatic closer. Appropriate rules and compensation for violations, like no glass around pool; breakage in pool will require pool to be drained, big expense. This is not an exhaustive list.
These are not daunting requirements, though they add up. You need to get a really good installer for many reasons, and one is that your maintenance costs will likely be lower in the long run.
But in the end you need to run the numbers of whether this makes economic sense in your situation.
This is all a theoretical exercise since the OP has said the decision has been made not to install the pool.
Our pool was here before we started renting out the back part of our house. The solar panels started leaking and the installer came out three times to repair the panels, charged $200 per repair. We are in north-central Florida. Last weeks we had several nights when the temperatures dropped to 23 degrees F. All three repairs failed, of course over the weekend. When the company came to look at it they said it could not be repaired. They suggested replacing the panels, for $6,000. Had them disconnect the panels.
That was a rough weekend, the temperature was below freezing, so the pool had to be kept running at night. With the solar panels leaking the we had to get up each hour to refill the water that was being taken out of the pool by the leaks.
Having a pool/solar can be a real pain!
Iâm sorry to hear about your difficulties.
Iâm confused on the type of heating system that you have. You mention solar panels leaking. Are you talking about photovoltaic cells? I am thinking ânoâ since they wouldnât leak water.
We have a solar-heated pool using this system. https://enersol.com
I donât recall what we paid for it. It works very well and I would think that you could repair such a system for much less than $6K. A 1â x 10â panel is $135. I donât know how many panels you need. Enersol Solar Heaters | Solarthermal.com
I am thinking the problem here was that the system (if itâs like ours) must be winterized before freezing temperatures.
Good luck!
Water from our pool is/was piped to the roof, where there are six large solar panels. The solar equipment is about 15 years old. There company that put the system in is about 50 miles away, none closer. They charge $100 for the trip down here, then $25 or $ 30 to repair a leaking panel.
Before the cold weather came and patched three panels. More than three were leaking after the freeze and the entire system had to be shut down.
The system has a Hayward control box that is set to turn on the solar if the pool temperature drops below 75 degrees. We also have a Hayward electric pool heater for when solar is unavailable.
Is this the kind of system that needed to be drained before the freeze? Isnât that the problem â that it wasnât?
The system was leaking and repaired three times months before the freeze. They put plugs at the weak points where they popped out during the freeze.
So they didnât really repair the system, they only put a temporary patch on it.
If the leaks are in pipes, you might be able to get a plumber to repair it, although they might charge a premium for work on the roof
I approached several licensed plumbers, they said to call a pool service company.
I think you could get a handyman ( we got one to install such a system; itâs not hard and is a DIY project if youâre comfortable walking on the roof) to replace the damaged panels and replace them with the kind similar to Enersolâs. Adding a pool to increase occupancy rates? - #31 by HostAirbnbVRBO
But going forward a system like that cannot be allowed to freeze.
My sense is that the damage was caused by the freezing. These systems must be drained before a freeze.