Dennis Boyd, CPO, is owner of Pro Pool Inspectors, Nashville, Tenn.
For the last couple years, the real estate market in much of the United States has been stagnant due to high mortgage interest rates, which have impaired the selling of homes. Homeowners have been reluctant to leave their old 3% rates for 6 or possibly 7%.
It is predicted by economists that when the logjam home sales breaks, it will produce a surge in transactions. A fair number of those homes will have pools behind them, and they’ll need to be inspected by someone who knows the difference between a skimmer basket and a clothes hamper.
All those potential pool buyers love the water — they wouldn’t be buying a house with a pool if they didn’t — but they don’t know what they’re getting themselves into without someone with experience taking a look. They are apprehensive because the one fact they do know is pool renovation can be expensive: leaks, new equipment, replastering, out-of-code electrical, even simple liner replacement isn’t what you’d call cheap.
With a potential surge in profitable pool inspections somewhere on the horizon, AQUA spoke with a veteran of the inspection business, Dennis Boyd, a 25-year industry veteran and owner of Pro Pool Inspectors, Nashville, Tenn.
Boyd started in pool service and then branched out into pool inspections in 2015, growing from 75 inspections his first year to 550 inspections a year today. After this success in the pool inspection business, Boyd began developing tools and education to smooth the path for other service pros to do the same — add inspections to service work. Pro Pool Inspectors is now an accredited pool inspection company and provides software and live training (Boyd developed the curriculum for and teaches a Watershape University course on pool inspections, WU B2121: Pool Inspections for Real Estate Transactions).
AQUA: WHO ARE THE PEOPLE GETTING INTO POOL INSPECTIONS?
DENNIS BOYD: If you’re a big or small company, or a sole entrepreneur, it opens up a new market. Maybe you’ve got a person, a builder or a service person who has some experience in the industry, knows pools, they may decide they want to start down this road, either for added revenue or to start a new business.
We’re also seeing an influx of pool builders who are coming to us and saying things like, “Hey man, my knees are shot, my back is shot. I’ve had this tenure in the pool industry and I want to just share my knowledge now.” And I’m like, “Well, you’re a perfect candidate for doing this.”
AQUA: WHAT’S THE NEXT STEP?
DB: Well, you can take the Watershape University course on pool inspections which lays out the path.
You already know a lot about pools. The class and certification and inspection software kind of helps organize you for pool inspections with a template and so forth, but you’ll need customers — that’s how you end up with a paycheck. You’ll need targeted marketing because you’re trying to reach a special group. Our app helps with that.
AQUA: GO ON.
DB: As with any new service, the key is marketing. No way anyone is going to find you without it. As a pool service company, you’re used to marketing to people who already own a pool. In this case, you’re marketing to people who want to buy a house with a pool. They want to know if there are problems and what it will cost to fix them.
(That’s usually the case, but we even had a guy in Florida who came to us and said, “Hey, I got your app, but I’m doing my pool inspections completely different from you. I’m going to the sellers who are trying to head off problems that might derail the sale of the home. They want to be proactive before the sale. He said, “I’m jumping online and finding people that are selling houses with pools, and asking them if they’d like a pool inspection report. And if it’s a bad report, they generally turn to me and ask me about repair.”)
AQUA: IS THAT A CONFLICT OF INTEREST - PROVIDING BOTH A REPORT AND THE NECESSARY REPAIRS?
DB: When we started doing inspections in 2015, we realized that was probably a gray area. Not the buyer, but the seller’s agent could say, “Oh, all you’re doing is just trying to find all these repairs so you can fix them,” that kind of thing.
But that almost never happened. When we did a pool inspection, we were getting bombarded by the agents and the buyers saying, “Hey, how much is this going to be in repair? And who can do it?” They just wanted the work done.
Anyway, we separated our pool service company and our pool inspection company. After you get the report, you can bid out the repairs to whoever you want. When they inevitably ask who can fix the problems, we say we don’t do pool repair but our sister company does.
In talking with Watershape University, we had to develop an ethos for pool inspection training which explains ethically how it should work with your company, but only one state has a law. California has a statute that basically says if you do the pool inspection, you can’t touch it for 365 days.
AQUA: WHAT IF THE POOL IS A WRECK AND NEEDS LARGE SCALE REPAIRS?
DB: We have had one or two instances where the pool’s falling down the hill, that kind of thing, and it needed complete destruction and reconstruction.
And they’re like, “Well, how much does that cost?” And then you start getting the builders involved. I hook elbows with at least one builder that I trust so that when I need a quote right away for something like that, I can say, “Hey, can you make a special trip to this property real quick and give us a quick ballpark estimate?” Doesn’t have to be right on. But it gives them some understanding of what they’re getting into. And that’s all it is. It’s helping a buyer make a decision on a property.
This article first appeared in the March 2025 issue of AQUA Magazine — the top resource for retailers, builders and service pros in the pool and spa industry. Subscriptions to the print magazine are free to all industry professionals. Click here to subscribe.
