Swimming Pool Financing

There’s no doubt that the recent economic collapse has had a detrimental effect not only on swimming pool financing but on just about every other type of home improvement loans as well. Nevertheless, there are some things that you can do to help improve your odds of getting one.

For a typical swimming pool financing, you’ll need reasonably good credit. A pool loan, with the exception of portable pools, is normally a long term loan. You apply for the loan through one of your bank’s long term home improvement loan programs. Before you talk to your banker, however, it’s a good idea to talk to contractors and get some estimates in writing so that when you’ll have some hard figures to show when you sit down to fill out the application.

It’s not necessary for you to borrow money from the institution that holds your mortgage. Shop around to see who will give you the best loan interest rates. Even if you decide to take out the loan from your current mortgage holder, shopping around will give you some room to negotiate with them and hopefully bring down your rate.

Another way of acquiring the necessary swimming pool financing is to get a home equity loan. An excellent case can be made that installing a swimming pool is legitimately home improvement. In fact, in some of the more affluent areas of the country, a home without a swimming pool will stay on the market longer and sell for significantly less than a home with a pool. With a home equity loan, however, you don’t have to answer to the bank about how you will use the money.

But what if you don’t have perfect credit? Well, even a reasonably good credit rating is good in this financial market. As long as you can show that you have the means to repay, you’ll still probably qualify for a home improvement loan, although you will undoubtedly have to pay a slightly higher interest rate. You shouldn’t let this scare you off, however, as after a few years, you may be able to renegotiate a more favorable rate for yourself if your credit has improved in the interim and if you have made regular payments on the loan.

If you’re having a new home built, you can normally tack on a secondary loan to your new construction loan. The advantages of this are that this will usually be the cheapest type of loan you can get and you will normally get a longer payback period as well, which means less out of pocket money for you each month.

Swimming pool financing is not for everyone. For those who can afford to pay for the swimming pool outright and don’t want to pay swimming pool finance charges, it could very well be the way to go.