Two family with pool. Fill it in or keep it?

[Nick Rivers]

Im under contract on a 2 family in Boston area. As an agent ive noticed backyard space and pools get more valuable since Covid. This property has a nice backyard and pool Im just torn on whether to keep it or not with a multi. Single fam I definitely would but I just foresee headaches but other than other hand possibly more income because it’s kind of rare around here. I know there’s been some older threads on this but curious what peoples opinions are during covid times? Fill it in or make it a selling point and set rules with the tenants?

[Greg Scott]

I'd check three things before making a decision.  I've bought two properties with pools and decided to keep them based on the responses to these questions.  But, these properties were in Texas where a pool is more valuable.

1) How does the value of a property change with / without a pool (ask an appraiser). In our case, taking out the pool would have reduced the ARV by $10K

2) How does the insurance cost change with / without a pool?   This may or may not be important in your area.  As long as we didn't have a diving board or slide, the costs were not much higher than without a pool.

3) What can you charge for rent with/ without a pool?   Based on the advice of mentors, we included pool maintenance as part of the rent but only kept the pool because we know we could also cover the cost of the maintenance through additional rent.