The family pool is rarely just a pool
Summer is nearly here, and it’s hard not to love the idea of a backyard pool.
Birthday parties at home. Somewhere for the kids to spend a hot afternoon. A swim without packing half the house for a trip to the beach.
But when homeowners decide to put in a pool, what else are they building around it?
We looked at development activity in Northbridge to see where the family pool fits into the renovation picture.
For new houses, the pool is often part of the package
Between 2021 and 2025, three in four Northbridge new-dwelling developments included a proposed new pool.
For major renovations, that fell to around one in five. For minor renovations, fewer than one in ten.
How often does a new pool form part of the project?
Share of Northbridge development events including a proposed new pool, 2021–2025
Based on 60 new-dwelling, 92 major-renovation and 39 minor-renovation development events.
The investment often extends beyond the pool
Looking more broadly at pool-related development, the records suggest the pool is often just one element of a larger investment in the property.
More than half of pool-related developments explicitly included landscaping.
Garages and carports appeared in around a third, while retaining walls, decks, pergolas and outdoor structures also regularly formed part of the works.
What else appears alongside the pool?
Companion works identified in Northbridge pool-related development events
Categories overlap: a single development can include several types of companion works, so percentages do not sum to 100%.
The idea of a simple “pool project” can therefore be misleading.
What looks like a new pool from over the fence may actually sit within a broader reshaping of the backyard — or a much larger redevelopment of the home itself.
The pool can be a marker of much bigger reinvestment
83% of pool-related development events formed part of a broader renovation, new home or dual-occupancy project — not just a pool.
So when a pool may be the most visible part of the work from over the fence, it is often only one piece of a much larger investment in the property.
What’s happening in your suburb?
Development data gives us another way to understand how a neighbourhood is changing: not just through property prices, but through what homeowners are choosing to build. Are homeowners putting in pools? Renovating? Knocking down and rebuilding? And is your neighbourhood quietly changing more than you realise?
That’s what we’ll be exploring through Jicora’s What Is Being Built? series.
Want us to take a look at your suburb? Tell us what you want to better understand.