Sep 19, 2024
If you love to play pickleball, you may want to avoid purchasing a property near your favorite court. The convenience may be great for your game but may put you in a pickle when it comes to your home’s resale value.
Judy Comeau and her husband put their Sagamore Beach, Massachusetts home up for sale in January. The three-bedroom house is just two minutes from the beach, but it still hasn’t sold, even after the 65-year-old retiree reduced the home price from $1.3 million to $995,000. Comeau said she thinks it won’t sell because of the constant pop-pop-pop noise coming from the pickleball court behind her house.
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“It’s a very harsh, hard sound,” Comeau’s neighbor Kim Hannon told the Boston Globe. “It eventually does start to bother you. I didn’t think it would in the beginning, but it really does.”
Comeau hired a lawyer in an attempt to get the club that operates the pickleball courts to stop allowing people to play there. No decision has been made yet, but she hopes it will help sell her house.
“We were packed,” she told the Boston Globe. “All our stuff is getting mildewy down in the boxes because we thought we’d be gone.”
Comeau isn’t the only one who’s had problems selling her home thanks to the popularity of pickleball. But there are things you can do to help to avoid any saltiness.
Pickleball can interfere with the price of your home
Though Comeau said she has no proof the pickleball noise is why her home can’t sell, she may not be wrong. Pickleball has been a particularly prickly problem for home sellers, according to Josh Judge of Verani Realty, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices in New Hampshire.
“I had a client who was in love with a home from the listing,” Judge told Realtor.com. “But when we got there and they saw the court, they instantly ruled it out and didn’t even want to go inside and check out the house.”
Judge added that some people are even moving after a pickleball court pops up by their home.
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However, pickleball courts aren’t the first amenity to prevent people from buying, according to Realtor.com senior economist Hannah Jones.
“Noisy nearby attractions, such as a pickleball court or a bar or restaurant, may drive away some noise-sensitive homebuyers,” she admitted in the same Realtor.com article.
But if you live by a pickleball court, you don’t need to worry. Jones added that a nearby court may be a boon to your home value: “Other home shoppers may be excited to be close to these lively hubs of activity.”
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You don’t have to lose at the game (of life)
If you’re worried about a possible pickleball court disturbing your future home value, there are other ways to invest in real estate.
Real estate investment trusts (REITs) are one way to do so — and there are zero noise concerns. REITs function like any other company on the stock market: you can buy and sell them according to your needs, whether you want to invest in residential or commercial real estate.
REITs are a great way to get involved with real estate without having to worry about the physical part of home ownership, whether it be new pickleball courts or noisy neighbors.
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Sabina Wex is a writer and podcast producer in Toronto. Her work has appeared in Business Insider, Fast Company, CBC and more.
