Selling or Buying a House With a Filled-In Pool in Pima County

A lot of Tucson area homes have a pool that was filled in years ago. Some of those removals were permitted, inspected and put on file with a site plan. Most were not. When one of those houses goes on the market, the old pool turns into a disclosure question, an inspection question and sometimes a lender question, usually in the middle of escrow when nobody has time for it.

This page is for sellers, buyers, realtors and home inspectors who have found a filled-in pool with no permit record in Pima County. It covers what the Arizona disclosure form asks, what the other side of the deal will want to see, and the three ways Omni Pool Builders closes the gap.

Why most filled-in pools in Pima County have no permit

Every jurisdiction in the Tucson area requires a permit to demolish or fill in a pool. The City of Tucson issues a Swimming Pool Demolition permit. Pima County issues a Demo permit for unincorporated areas. Oro Valley, Marana and Sahuarita each issue a demolition permit.

In our experience, most pool removals in Pima County were still done without one. The usual reasons:

  • The owner took the lowest phone quote, and the permit was one of the things it left out
  • A hauler or landscaper filled the pool as a side job and never pulled a permit
  • The owner did the work themselves
  • The pool was filled long before the current owner bought the house, and nobody knows how it was done

None of that matters much until the house sells. Then the disclosure form asks about it directly.

What the Arizona SPDS asks about a removed pool

The Arizona Residential Seller’s Property Disclosure Statement, the SPDS, is the form a seller fills out for the buyer. Line 135 asks whether a swimming pool on the property was removed, capped or filled. A separate question asks whether permits were obtained for work done on the property.

Those two answers have to line up. A seller who marks yes on the pool question and has no permit to point to has disclosed a buried structure with no record of how it was filled. That is an honest answer and the right one to give. It also gives the buyer a reason to ask for more.

A seller who bought the house with the pool already filled can only disclose what they know. If the yard has a sunken rectangle, an old equipment pad or capped pool plumbing, the buyer’s inspector will likely find it anyway, so it is better on the form than in the inspection report.

We are pool contractors, not attorneys. Your agent or attorney should guide how the disclosure is worded. What we can give you is a record to attach to it.

What a buyer’s inspector and lender look for

A home inspector who sees signs of a filled pool will usually write it up and recommend further evaluation. The signs are easy to spot once you know them:

  • A rectangle of ground that sits lower than the rest of the yard
  • Cracked pavers or a patio slab that has dropped over the old shell
  • Water that ponds in the same area after rain or irrigation
  • An old equipment pad, capped pool plumbing, or a gas stub with nothing attached
  • A pool still listed on the Pima County Assessor record for a yard that no longer has one

What the buyer wants to know comes down to three things: whether drainage holes were broken through the floor so water does not collect in the old shell, whether the fill was compacted, and whether the ground can carry what the buyer plans to put on it.

Lender requirements differ by loan program and by lender, so we will not tell you what a particular underwriter will accept. What any of them can work with is paper: a closed permit, an inspection record, and a written assessment of the ground from a qualified professional. What slows a file down is a filled pool with nothing on paper.

Three ways Omni makes an unpermitted removal right

We start by finding out what exists and what the jurisdiction will want. The fix is one of these three, or a combination of them.

1. After-the-fact permit coordination

In the City of Tucson and unincorporated Pima County, an after-the-fact permit is typically available for a pool that was filled without one. The jurisdiction decides what inspection or engineering evidence it needs before it will close that permit. We file the application, meet the inspector and do the work the jurisdiction asks for, so the property ends up with a permit on record. In Oro Valley, Marana and Sahuarita we start with a call to the town, since each one handles past work on its own terms.

2. Compaction and settlement assessment

When the question is whether the ground is stable, we bring in an independent geotechnical firm. They evaluate the fill where the pool was and put their findings in a written report. If the fill is sound, the report says so. If it is not, the fix can range from reworking the upper fill to taking out the old shell and replacing it with engineered fill placed and tested in lifts. The report tells us which one the site needs.

3. A written pool removal certification package

When the work is done, we put one package together for the file: the permit record, the inspection results, the geotechnical report if there is one, and dated photos of everything we opened, tested or rebuilt. The seller attaches it to the disclosure. The buyer’s agent sends it to the inspector and the lender. One document answers the questions instead of a long email chain.

What it costs to fix a filled-in pool with no permit

It is quoted after a site visit. The price depends on what the jurisdiction asks for, what the geotechnical firm finds, and whether any fill has to be reworked or the shell taken out. Some houses need a permit and a clean inspection. Others need real work.

Time matters on a sale. Call us as soon as the pool comes up in a disclosure or an inspection report, not in the last days of the inspection period. After the first visit we tell you which of the three fixes we recommend, what each one involves, and what the jurisdiction’s part of it looks like.

For realtors and home inspectors: send us the address

If a listing or an inspection turns up a filled-in pool, send us the property address. We will help you find out what the county and the city or town have on file for that parcel, including any permit history and the Assessor record, and tell you what is there and what is missing before anyone schedules a site visit. Every parcel is different, so what can be found varies, and we will say so.

If there is a closed permit, you have your answer. If there is not, we lay out the fix and a timeline you can share with your client and the other side of the deal. Call (520) 222-8503 or reach us through our contact page with the address and, if you have it, the page of the inspection report that mentions the pool.

We have been doing this in Tucson for 13 years under ROC KA-5 282151, and we pull a permit on every pool removal we do.

Planning a removal before you sell

If you still have a pool and expect to sell in the next few years, the simplest disclosure is a permitted removal. The permit, the inspections and our photos of the drainage holes before fill answer the SPDS question before anyone has to ask it. Our pool removal page covers the methods, the pricing and the permit in each jurisdiction.

Call us with the address

Call (520) 222-8503 with the property address and we will tell you what the county has on file. For a pool that is still in the ground, the TerraSpec, the pool removal cost calculator shows what the pool costs you each year and what removal pays back.

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