Beyond Irritating

I had started writing a completely different blog a few days back when a headline burst in to rattle my sense of calm: “6 Reasons to Demolish Your Swimming Pool Before Summer.”

Written by Wendy Helfenbaum and published on the realtor.com site on April 1 (which gave me slight hope it was all just a bad joke), the article begins: “Having an in-ground pool in your backyard can make your home the toast of the neighborhood. Which is why you’ll get quizzical looks should you ever decide to get rid of yours. Yet plenty of brave homeowners are defying conventional wisdom and demolishing their swimming pool – to maximize outdoor space.”

After this self-contradictory, uniquely confusing start, she continues by mentioning a real-estate agent she knows who has removed a pool from her own backyard. Says that agent, “I don’t know how to swim, and we have more use of our backyard now that the pool is gone.” Then she adds, “Here in California, I see more clients taking pools out than putting them in, because although you might use the pool for a few hours a day, you can use your entire yard much more often.”

Don’t get me started on how important it is for everyone to have adequate swimming skills. As I’ve written countless times in the past, non-swimmers are far less likely to want any sort of water around them, not just pools – and are much more likely to see the wisdom in removing what might be a source of anxiety. I get that part of her statement, but the rest of it just doesn’t track for me, particularly not as a Californian.

Before I could push through to meditate on how pools are about so much more than occasional immersion, Ms. Helfenbaum resumed the narrative with her own, broader agenda, offering the promised half-dozen reasons why pools should just go away: One, “nobody’s using it anymore.” Two, “maintenance costs add up.” Three, “your pool hogs the yard.” Four, “safety and liability concerns.” Five, “your pool needs major work.” And six, “you may be throwing money down the (pool) drain.”

I could go through the items on this list one by one, offering trenchant comments on her article’s often-snarky statements, but I’ll resist because in general terms hers is a refrain a certain portion of the realty world just can’t let go. I remember when I was running a pool-industry news magazine 30 years ago that we spotted stories like these annually each spring – and I would write an annual column or two of my own about the depravity of the real-estate industry.

I mean, just look at the exaggerations! In one passage, Helfenbaum quotes a pool-removal guy as saying, “An average repair used to be about $4,000 to $5,000, but today that’s a $30,000 reno.” And then, “It used to cost $18,000 to put in a new pool. Now it’s about $80,000.” All this while plugging his demolition services at a modest $12,000 to $15,000.

Again, I get it. No house needs a pool to the degree it needs a kitchen or a bathroom. But just the same, I’ve always ascribed the realty world’s often-published dread of pools to a lack of imagination and sales skill.

Yes, the presence of a pool might sidetrack a certain number of prospects when a house goes up for sale, but I know from personal experience that it’s a positive motivator for another portion of the population. The key? Where the former group will generally register its disappointment with words like, “If only there weren’t a pool back there,” the latter set of house hunters will take things in stride and say, “We’re good to go.”

The turn-away is remembered and leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the real-estate agent. By contrast, a client who accepts the presence of the pool doesn’t stay in mind in the same way because there’s no disappointment, no need to produce a counter-argument, no nuance required, no effort to expend. Indeed, there’s no need to do anything more than kick back and bank the commission check.

Absolutely, I know real-estate agents who’ve figured out how to sell homes with pools in ways that make sense even for prospects who have dismissive initial reactions. I just wish that the crowd Ms. Helfenbaum is catering to would open its eyes to the fact that, as she mentioned to start the article, people like being “the toast of the neighborhood,” never lose sight of a pools’ bounty as a recreational resource as well as a captivating visual presence and would never, ever consider demolition as an option.

I hated her article, in other words, but I have to admire the art director who included images of five of the homeliest pools I’ve ever seen all in one place. I’m guessing realtor.com keeps them on hand for just such occasions.

But seriously: It’s a shame the higher-ups at realtor.com aren’t as zealous when it’s time to inform their professional readers, as Ms. Helfenbaum suggests, about the “conventional wisdom” that makes so many homeowners proud and happy enough with their pools that it takes real “bravery,” as she puts it, to buck social norms and fill a pool.

Her world’s not a logical place, and I wish she’d kept these odd, dark convolutions to herself.

To see the article, click here.