Here’s How Much Money You Can Make Renting Out Your Pool
The sharing economy seems to allow you to turn every skill you have and everything you own into a source of income. In addition to driving, delivering, and walking dogs, you can rent out your home, car, motorhome , garage, and/or parking space to strangers for cash. In the last few years, backyard swimming pools have also come on the market through Swimply , which offers hourly rentals to private homeowners.
Listing your pool seems like an easy source of passive income – and if you’ve already paid upfront fees, you can do that too, right? Especially when you read headlines about people making $177,000 in just two years.
But like with Airbnb or any other peer-to-peer sharing network, it’s probably more complicated than posting a few photos, calculating a rental rate, and reviewing incoming bookings. Does listing your pool on Swimply really pay off?
What affects the cost of renting a pool?
Swimply allows you to set your own hourly rate, which can range from $30 to several hundred dollars per hour for five guests, plus an additional per-guest hourly rate for larger groups. The platform recommends lowering prices in your area when you start to attract orders, and then raising rates once you have a few reviews.
There are many factors that go into how you set rental rates:
- Location: Both your city and area will affect what you charge – supply and demand, right? Searching for pools in Los Angeles shows generally higher hourly rates than those listed in Salt Lake City, while hosts in New York charge much more than both, apparently much less . Also, if there are a lot of pools in your area, you may need to cut prices to stay competitive.
- Pool type and size: Large, well maintained pools in large yards with plenty of patio seating, and pools with added features such as a hot tub, running water, waterslide, or diving board, can attract swimmers willing to pay more and let you accept large groups with payment per person.
- Amenities: As with Airbnb, you can grab attention with amenities like heating, grills, fire pits, floating pools, outdoor showers, Bluetooth speakers, towels, and bathrooms. You can also charge extra for access to these amenities while keeping your hourly rate low to attract attention. Some hosts even offer drink coolers, party decorations, and event planning services.
- Reviews: Collecting a lot of five-star reviews may allow you to raise your prices.
- Discounts: On weekdays, you can charge less than on weekends or increase your rate on holidays.
- Pool rules: do you allow kids? Pets? Parties? Alcohol? Return?
What is the cost of renting your pool?
First, your Swimply listing is not pure income. The company takes a 15% discount on all bookings and from time to time offers discounts or promo codes for guests, which is beyond the control of the hosts. (Please note that guests also pay a commission on each booking.)
You may or may not end up paying additional premiums to open your pool. Swimply is offering $1,000,000 in liability coverage at no extra charge to all hosts, and up to $10,000 in damages to your pool or property if guests refuse to pay. But you should also check your insurance at home to make sure there are no gaps in your liability.
If your pool is not set up to host groups, there may be some upfront costs. For example, if you don’t have an outdoor or garage toilet and don’t want people to enter your house (or pee in the pool), you may need to rent a portable toilet or install some kind of outdoor toilet. Patio furniture and pool floats are another must-have item that you may need to buy. So you’re looking for a few hundred to maybe a few thousand dollars to improve your ad.
Then there are the costs of maintaining your pool. According to HomeAdvisor , this can range from $3,000 to $5,000 a year, and you’ll probably pay no matter what. But consider the possible money and labor required to clean, maintain or repair your pool with more frequent use by large groups. The Oregon guy who made $177,000 from Swimply considers himself a “pool supplier” and checks pool chemicals 5-10 times a day – hardly an example of passive income – and you’ll have to do some marketing when you’re first starting out. But if you take into account exactly two years of hosting, that’s $242 a day.
For another real-life example, Reddit user u/SDgirlburner describes her experience of making $2,500 in 50 days after listing her pool on Swimply in June 2020:
- Rental rate: $30 per hour plus $5 per person after the first 5 people.
- Amenities: bathroom, Bluetooth speaker, grill
- Maintenance fee: $100 per month
- Average income per day: $50
The user notes that there are only a couple of other pools within a 30 mile radius, so they probably get more bookings than if the area was heavily saturated. And they claim they don’t pay more for the maintenance and cleaning associated with hosting guests.
Lastly, your local laws may require a business license or safety equipment, and Swimply also requires your pool to comply with safety regulations , all of which will cost something.
How to calculate the cost of renting your pool
Let’s say you have a house with a swimming pool in the suburbs of Atlanta. Through Swimply, you charge $60 per hour for weekend bookings up to 5 guests and $5 per guest for larger parties. Here is a breakdown of a basic two-hour booking for 8 guests on a Saturday:
- two hours x $60 an hour = $120.
- two hours x three additional guests x $5 per hour = $30
- Swimply Host Commission: $150 x 15% = $22.50
- Total payout: $127.50
Then suppose that same group wants to use your gas grill ($10 per rental period), hot tub ($35 per rental period) and sound system ($3 per hour). So your initial amount will be $201 and your payout will be $170.85.
In theory, you can place multiple bookings per day, especially on busy weekends or holidays. To break even with low annual maintenance/repair costs – assuming no additional setup or insurance costs – you will need to book a basic two-hour rental 24 days a year or almost twice a week in summer. Actually not bad if you’re not attached to using the pool during popular times. Ultimately, it all comes down to how much you are willing to invest in order to get a return on your investment.