Selling Your Home? Stage Your Pool

If you’re looking to sell your home and have a pool, you may wonder if that swimming pool adds value to your property. The answer isn’t cut and dried. It depends on many factors, such as market trends, what each buyer is looking for, and the appearance of the pool area itself. This last one is important. How your pool looks to buyers can make or break its value.
If you have a pool that’s run down and murky with cracked decking, broken fencing, and neglected landscaping, you will have a harder time selling your home, or at least getting what you want for it. Nobody wants to take on a project of that magnitude. It’s costly to fix and it’s an eyesore. Especially if that buyer has kids, they will want to see something well-maintained, or a property with no pool at all.

Ultimately, you want to show buyers the potential of your pool area and how much it adds to the value of your entire property.

Staging Tips
That’s where staging comes in. Just like you would stage the interior of your home to entice buyers, do the same to the exterior. Here are some tips:

• Landscape the entire area. Hire someone or do it yourself. This should include mulching, planting, mowing, edging and more. Your landscaper can suggest ways to utilize trees, bushes and shrubs to create the most inviting look around the pool area. Make sure the filter area is hidden strategically by shrubs.
• Shock the pool so it’s crystal clear.
• Remove leaves and debris from the pool.
• Scrub down the walls and clean all accessories, such as ladders, railings and diving boards.
• Add a few fun features, such as a floating basketball hoop, to show families how much fun they could have in the pool. However, don’t litter the area with pool toys and floats. Keep those hidden away.
• Power wash the decking and repair all cracks. Remove weeds from cracks and patch them up.
• Make sure the fencing is upright, with no holes.
• If you have a hot tub, give it a good cleaning so it doesn’t smell like mildew.
• Replace the hot tub cover if it is old, brittle, heavy or cracked.
• If you’re showing your pool in winter, Invest in a safety cover instead of that old tarp you’ve been using. In summer, no cover is needed. Just make sure the water is clean and clear.
• Store any equipment or accessories in a shed or garage. Nothing turns off a buyer more than a lawn strewn with riding toys, tools and just plain junk.
• Clean off your patio furniture. If it’s too old and moldy, junk it and buy a new set or hire a staging company to bring in a new one for the open houses.
• Likewise, clean your grill or get the stagers to bring in a nice new one. Remember, you’re trying to appeal to the buyer’s visions of a summer day grilling out by the pool. An old rusted grill with drips of barbecue down the side will turn them off.
• Make sure all locks and gates leading to the pool are in working order.

Now that you know how to properly stage your pool, we hope you have an easy time of selling it. If you need help with pool preparation, call Central Jersey Pools today at 732-462-5005.