If you have been in the Vacation rental industry during the summer months, you understand how slow our summer months can get. Not many people think of the Valley of the sun as the best summer getaway, I mean most of the residents are leaving to hit the beach or to just get out of the heat. This isn’t to say your vacation rental should sit empty all summer, we just see a different crowd of renters rolling through the valley. Some make this a pit stop in their road trip to California beaches and others are looking for a permanent home here and utilize vacation rentals until they find the home of their dreams. So how do you accommodate these guests that aren’t used to our Summer months? POOLS!
Investing in your investment Property
Investing in an investment property is a huge step in becoming a rental owner and there are a lot of questions that may follow. If you are seriously thinking about running your own vacation rental property you might want to consider whether you plan to buy a house or a condo/apartment to rent out to your future guests. If you are buying a home with a backyard pool consider all the costs that might come along with that versus buying a condo with access to a pool as well as a home with a community pool. All options have their perks as well as their downfalls, so you might want to consider the type of atmosphere you are wanting to provide for your future guests.
Investing In a property with A Pool
Here at Moxie, we see that the homes with pools in the backyard or homes that have access to pools tend to get more bookings in those summer months than the ones that don’t. I have heard so many Arizona Residents say “you can’t survive in the Valley if you don’t have a pool.” One of the first things out of town renters look for when booking a vacation rental in the valley during the summer is if they will have access to a pool. If your listing doesn’t have pool access they are most likely to skip right over your listing without even taking a second glance.
Yes, I know a pool can be a major investment from the installation if you don’t have one yet to the upkeep of the pool, but the benefits are most likely going to outweigh the risks. Not only can you charge guests a little more because you are able to offer this pool amenity, but you are more likely to get more renters during those hot summer months.
Pools in the Winter
What about the cost of my pool during the summer months, you might ask? Well, an even smarter investment is making sure your pool can be used during the cooler months by making it a heated pool. This may cost a bit more but most vacation rental owners cover the pool heat charge by charging guests who plan on using the pool and are wanting the heat turned on.
Check out the Blog with Chad Nikkel, Owner of Aquaman pools. He gives some great information on having a pool in the winter months and how to best utilize it for your vacation rental guests.
Maintaining Your Pool
It is possible to take care of your own pool from maintenance to cleaning, but that can also come with many risks if you are not familiar with pool maintenance and cleaning techniques. Doing it yourself may save you the cost of hiring a professional, but you also might be spending more money and time than it is worth to upkeep your pool. We highly recommend hiring a professional and there are many professional pool cleaning/maintenance services you can utilize here in the valley, Moxie Girl Recommends reaching out to Aqua Man pools for all your pool service needs!
Phoenix is known for its year-round warm temperatures, but even if it’s 85 degrees on a “winter” day, chances are the pool water is at least 30 degrees less – Brrrr! If your vacation rental home pool isn’t heated, you may be losing fall and winter bookings to properties with warmer waters. Amanda Thomas of Moxie Girl recently had the opportunity to chat with Chad Nikkel, owner of Aquaman Pools, about the costs and benefits associated with installing a pool heater at your vacation rental home. Read on to see if a pool heater makes sense for your vacation rental!
Amanda Thomas: Hi there, I’m Amanda Thomas with Moxie Girl, your vacation rental specialists. We are here again with Chad Nikkel, the owner of Aquaman Pools, and today we are talking pool heaters. As guests come to the Valley and stay in vacation rentals, pool heat is a very popular option for them to add on. Since Chad has expertise in this we thought we’d ask him a few questions about what he sees with the vacation rentals he works with. So thanks for joining us.
Chad Nikkel: You bet, pleased to be here, Amanda. So we’re talking about pool heaters, right? As a vacation rental owner, having your pool heated probably means that people are going to choose your property over the next one. People come to the Valley and they want to enjoy the pool, whether it’s January or whether it’s May.
Even in the later spring, people enjoy swimming in warm water, not in… Minnesota water, let’s call it. So, a pool heater is a great way to make more money on your property. A lot of vacation rental owners charge extra per night if you want to use the pool heater. And that can be an amount of money that is highly profitable, ultimately. We can install the pool heater and put an automation system on it so you can manage it remotely. You can turn it on or off, you can set the temperature remotely, you wouldn’t have to be anywhere near that house to do that. And that could be controlled very easily through a website or an app on your phone. It’s a great idea.
AT: With some of the managers and owners that we work with, we’ve heard anything from $40 or $50 a night, and you were saying some of your clients charge upwards of $75 a night. They may charge a weekly minimum, so even if somebody’s there for three days, they still charge a week of pool heat because it does take that extra energy to get the pool heat up. It can be really profitable especially in those winter months when people come to Arizona and it’s 80° outside, they think the pool is going to be great to get into – until they discover it is 50° in the water! Can you talk a little bit about what is the upfront investment of getting a pool heater installed?
CN: So, a couple things… If you don’t have a pool heater already and if the house does not have natural gas, then a gas pool heater might be a more costly option because then you have to plumb in the gas line and things like that. Quite often the best solution is to install what we call a heat pump. It’s an electric pool heater – it works very similarly to an air-conditioner, only in reverse. It’s very cost-effective to run. In actual operation, it may only be a few hundred dollars a month to run it, if it is run correctly. The installation is going to be maybe $5,000-$7000, whereas a gas heater might be in the $3,000-$4000 range. The disadvantage to a gas heater is that it’s costlier to run, over time. The advantage to a gas heater is that it is more instant heat. If it’s March and you want the pool to be 85° tomorrow, you turn on the gas and it’s 85° tomorrow. With the heat pump, it will take a few days to get up to that temperature but it’s more cost-effective in the long run. I would say 80 to 90% of all the vacation rentals we take care of have heat pumps rather than gas heaters.
AT: All right, make sense. So, if you don’t have a heater in your pool and you are thinking about doing it, run the numbers. You want to look at the initial up-front cost of $5,000-$7,000 for an electric heater, or for gas, you’re saying $3,000 to $5,000. And then how quickly can you make that back? It may be a really good investment and you can get it paid for, and it’s profit on top of that as you go forward!
CN: Good stuff!
AT: Awesome! If you have any questions, please reach out to Aquaman Pools. They are locally owned, this is Chad the owner. Absolutely fantastic company. Highly recommend them for residential, vacation rental, all your pool needs!
CN: Sounds great, thanks!
For all your pool service needs, contact Aquaman Pools at 480-243 POOL (480-243-7665) or email info@supercleanpools.com!
With our vast experience, Moxie Girl can help with all your vacation rental home needs – and we’ve found some of the best local products and services in The Valley. Watch for more Moxie Girl fireside chats coming soon!
With the Phoenix summer upon us, a sparkling clean swimming pool is at the top of “must-have” list for many vacation home rental guests. As a vacation rental home owner, you’ll want to be sure your pool is maintained with excellence. You’ll also want protect yourself against potential liabilities!
A residential pool you might have, you know, two or three people in the pool during the week. At a vacation rental pool, people are paying for use of the property for a vacation, so quite often there may be 10 people in the house. Since they are paying for the use of the pool, they are using that pool much more. In this situation there might be 5, 6, 8, 10 people – maybe more – in the pool every day. Pools run and consume chemicals based on how many people are in them and how much organic matter is in the pool. So you might have 10 or 15 times the amount of people in that pool than you would normally have in a residential pool. And that’s why we treat it like a commercial pool, much like an HOA for condo complex or a hotel.
The pool would need a chemical feeder on the pool, like a tab feeder that’s back at the equipment, essentially so that it is continually feeding chlorine to that pool. So it is staying in front of those issues so that it doesn’t get murky, etc.
But then also maybe some other chemicals like enzymes and that type of thing that we wouldn’t always use in a residential setting. So for instance, with sunscreen and things like that on the body, chlorine is fighting to get rid of that and it’s consuming a lot of chlorine to do that, so if there’s more and more people in the pool, things like enzymes and other types of algaecides can help get rid of those things so that the chlorine can actually do its job correctly and keep the water clear.
One of the things is to make sure it’s not just a chlorine floater in the pool. In a residential situation there’s a little pop-up feeder that has chlorine in it that’s floating around the pool. In a vacation rental pool, it’s better to have that back at the equipment because somebody’s kid could take that chlorine tablet out of that floater and it could hurt them. That’s a potential liability and something that could be easily solved with a simple tablet feeder that’s located back at the pool equipment, so that it is away from the environment that the guests are swimming in.
All commercial pools have that as a requirement – it’s code. So, even though it’s not an “inspected” pool, that’s the best way to do it. And from a liability perspective, that eliminates some concerns so it may be a situation where you could reduce some insurance costs if you can do some of these things, like putting “No Diving” signs around, and doing your part as a vacation rental home owner in saying, hey, the signs were there, you know if somebody – god forbid – hurts themselves diving in your pool.
To protect yourself from the silly decisions your guests could make. It’s important to have signs posted and also make sure that your pool guy knows that this is a vacation rental so he can have the chemicals set up correctly for that.
With our vast experience, Moxie Girl can help with all your vacation rental home needs – and we’ve found some of the best local products and services in The Valley.
