PHOTO: FILE
SOURCE: Jemima White | Ray White Group Analyst
Would you prefer a spa or a pool in your home? In New Zealand, the preference is clear. The number of homes listed in the past two years with spas reached 6,162 while the number of homes with pools was 757. This is perhaps due to New Zealand’s cold climate, averaging 10-16 degrees celsius annually. Sitting in a warm spa is clearly much more comfortable than swimming in a cold pool. However, spas are also a much more affordable option and don’t require a building permit in comparison to swimming pools.
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Interestingly, out of the top 10 suburbs for homes listed with spas in the past two years, eight are in Auckland. This may mean if you live in Auckland and your home does not have a spa it may be at a disadvantage when it comes time to sell.
Spas generally increase the value of a home at a minimum by the amount they cost to build. So, if you install a spa for $10,000 you can expect your house price to increase by a minimum of $10,000. House price growth beyond that is hard to quantify.
Attempting to deduce the reasons for differing sale prices in homes on the same street or repeat sales of the same home proves too difficult to explain solely by the addition of a spa. There are many factors that impact values such as sales in different economic environments, changing demographics of interested buyers, climate, location, renovations to other areas of the house and so on. Therefore, analysis is unable to show whether adding a spa will boost your house’s value more than its cost of construction or more than an alternative investment such as a granny flat.
However the popularity of spas continues to grow in New Zealand. Since 2020 there have been 9,214 house listings with spas whereas there were only 314 in a pre-COVID 2016-2020 period. While these numbers may be attributable to re-sells of the same home, such a drastic increase suggests a strong upward shift in demand for spas. And so, adding a spa in your backyard may be the key to making it attractive to a larger number of buyers. Ray White auction data shows that when a property appeals to more buyers it creates stronger competition at auction pushing up selling prices and clearance rates.
Therefore, while it may be unknown exactly how much a spa will increase your house value by, it seems worthwhile to add a spa into your backyard especially if you live in Auckland. Not having a spa in these top 10 suburbs will put your home in a weaker position when competing with other homes when it comes time to sell.