Paying for a pool

Financing a pool on a house you do not live in year round.

A good share of the property around this lake is a second home, and lending against one follows its own conventions. We are not a lender and we quote no rates. This page exists so the money conversation is not the first unfamiliar thing you meet.

Owners here tend to be experienced with property and still get caught by this, because the assumption carried over from a primary residence does not always hold. It is not an obstacle. It is a different conversation, and the people who have it early have a much duller time of it than the people who have it once a contract is already drawn up.

Which property is securing it

The first thing worth establishing is not how much, but against what. Borrowing secured on a primary residence, on a second property, or on something that spends part of the year as a rental are three separate categories to most institutions, and they are not interchangeable.

We are deliberately not going to tell you what terms any of those attract, because it varies by lender and we have no way to verify it for your situation. What we will say is that walking in and describing the property accurately at the start saves a great deal of unwinding later. If the place is let for part of the season, say so on day one.

Remodelling and building are different sums

Most pools on this lake are decades old, so the live question here is usually not whether to build one but what to do about the one already in the ground. That matters financially as well as practically.

A remodel is generally a smaller and better-defined figure than a new installation, which puts it within reach of arrangements that would not stretch to a full build. It can also be broken across seasons, because the pool exists and stays usable in between, where a new build has to finish before anybody swims. If the number you had in mind will not cover a replacement, it is worth finding out what it will cover before deciding anything. Our pool remodeling page covers what the work actually involves.

A property that stands empty still costs money

Budget past the build, and here that means budgeting for a pool nobody is watching for stretches of the year. Opening and closing, servicing, water and power, chemicals through the season, and in practice somebody local keeping an eye on it while you are not here.

That last item is the one that gets left out of the plan, and it is precisely the one a second-home owner cannot skip. Leave room for it alongside whatever repayment you settle on.

The number that ends the guesswork

None of the above can be settled against an estimate from the internet. A free design consultation gives you an itemised figure for your actual property, which is the thing a lender can work from and the thing that tells you whether you are discussing a remodel or a replacement. It also helps to know which parts of that figure come from the site and which come from your own choices, because only one of the two is negotiable.