This elite Sacramento community has the most backyard pools. But do they add value to homes?
Sacramento’s Arden area is known for its aquatic history, having served as training ground for Olympic gold-medal sensations Mark Spitz and Debbie Meyer.
No surprise, then, that the east county area’s exclusive enclaves have among the highest percentage of homes with swimming pools sold in the region the last two years, according to a new study.
Thirty percent of the sales in the 95864 area code involved homes with a pool (including two pools in a Sierra Oaks Vista home featured in The Bee video that accompanies this story). When you count million-dollar sales, the percentage jumps to 70 percent.
But it turns out Arden is laps behind the region’s two leaders.
In Granite Bay, where rural ranchettes overlook Folsom Lake, 52 percent of homes sold in the last two years included swimming pools. That was the highest overall percentage among a sampling of 19 communities recently reviewed by real estate appraiser and data analyst Ryan Lundquist.
That was followed by El Dorado Hills, perched on the other side of Folsom Lake, where 43 percent of sales included pools.
The other top-ranked communities: Rocklin with 32 percent, Folsom and the Pocket/Greenhaven areas with 28 percent, and Roseville and Carmichael with 27 percent. That’s a mix of upcoming and historic suburbs.
Lowest on the list were downtown Sacramento and Oak Park, where less than 1 percent of homes sold have pools.
Overall in the four-county region, pools are involved in a notable minority of home sales, 19 percent. The data suggest the Sacramento region remains a pool-centric region despite recent droughts that briefly cooled home-builder interest in the amenity.
With the spring and summer real estate sales season starting, it prompts an old real estate question: How much value does a swimming pool add to a home? The question may be important in 2020, when the Sacramento regional real estate market is expected to have a slow year, requiring sellers to be smart about setting a price.
Lundquist, an appraiser, said the market almost always pays far less than the actual cost of the pool. A $30,000 pool, for instance, may add just $10,000 to the value of a house.
A new infinity-edge pool in El Dorado Hills overlooking the valley, though, will be worth considerably more than an old-school rectangular pool wedged into a tight backyard in central Sacramento.
A backyard pool may not bring as much added value in new master-planned new communities, such as areas of North Natomas, that have community pools and clubhouses. Some buyers see pools as a maintenance hassle or liability issue and don’t want them, especially rental real estate investors.
Lundquist said pools nevertheless remain popular in the area.
In suburban or rural areas, $2 million-plus estates are expected to have a pool, he said. “As local stats show, in some areas like Granite Bay, buyers hands-down expect a pool to be present,” he wrote in his blog. Either that, he said, “or at least they want space for it.”
Ultimately, he said, it’s a matter of real estate basics. That means checking to see if homes with pools sold recently in a given neighborhood, and how much those home prices differ from similar, nearby home sales without a pool.
This story was originally published February 20, 2020 at 5:00 AM.