Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss My ponds worth $0 according to my bank.

Yesterday, Bank of America spent a couple of hours appraising our place, gave me a lot of complements about my pond and deck. After they finished up at my building, I ask…what dollar value do you put on my pond? Answer…$0.…that really surprised me. It may be worth $0 to them, but it’s priceless to me!

How big is your pond? I've been told that these little goldfish ponds in suburban backyards often have a negative value.

You got someone who doesn't know how to value rural property. Here, in Texas, impounded water is assessed a tax value of 10X land per acre.

If it were me,Id figure how much I spent on it,and mutiply that figure by 5.

Jim's place is featured in Pondapalooza 2. It's a 14.2 mb download, so be patient. The pondal parade is alphabetical.
When the show begins, right click on the slideshow screen and zoom to full screen and turn up the volume.

Interesting Jim. Years ago there was a debate on the forums as to whether or not a pond added value to a property. IIRC the general consensus was that it did but the value varied significantly based upon geographic location.

When I purchased my pond property the pond was not even mentioned in the paperwork.

ponds have little to no value in this area generally when land is sold, and possibly even negative value if there is too much obstructing the agricultural land.

I paid $50,000 more to live on a 10 acre subdivsion lake than my neighbors who do not live on the lake. Obviously, we pay more property tax -however, when the lake went bad in 2004 (algae scum pond) I'm sure my property would have been worth less than if the water was good. Now that we are on the upswing, maybe it will at least hold its value in this crazy market.

If Bank of America puts a 0 value on the pond, you had better make for sure the tax assessor puts that same 0 value!

When I built my new 3.5 acre pond this year. The tax man raised the value of my property by 30K!!

Bank of America, pppsssssssssssssstttttttttteeeeeeee

What did you spell incorrectly Randy, Bank of America or the pppsssssssssssssstttttttttteeeeeeee?

I wasn't sure if pppsssssssssssssstttttttttteeeeeeee had 7 "e"s or 8

People in my area like ponds, and would pay extra for a fair sized one on the property. I figure one could get around double his money back.

I can only hope that a bank considers a pond to have no value. Maybe I can find a foreclosed property with one on it and get it for just a note and not even the whole song ?

Like many other things, it all depends. Some areas of the South are loaded with ponds. In other more arid areas, they are kinda scarce. Anytime you are dealing with scarce resources, the price/value goes up.

Isn't a pond required in lots of places out in the country in case of fire, they use the water from the pond? How does insurance fit into the value of a pond when buying a property out in the boondocks?

Well, we were just re-doing our insurance to include the new house and come to find out, the pond, even with a dry hydrant, does not decrease our rates here in Alabama. The only thing they cared about was how far the house was from the nearest fire hydrant. And, our luck being what it is, the house is approximately 1056 feet from the darn thing and our rates are higher unless we re-do our access road and get the distance down to 1000 feet. Go figure but the difference is $500 a year!

The local FD told me a dry hydrant would make my rates, and those of my neighbors go down. I gave them the go ahead to install one.

Out here in the wild west even with the fire problem we have, there are no requirements to have a pond. If you have impounded water however your pond can and will be used during fire fighting events. My pond has been used on at least two occasions (before I owned it) and the ranch pond next to DIED's has been used on multiple occasions (somewhere there is a thread about it with photos). I can tell you that I feel better having a pond on the property knowing that I have millions of gallons of water available.

At our previous house, we were 4.2 miles from the fire station, and our pond cut our insurance by some amount. Without it, however, we would have had to get special insurance. At this house we are 2.1 miles from the fire station, and it doesn't make any difference. The pond also doesn't show up on our valuation, nor did it come up when this place was appraised. Heck, the 2000 square foot "barn" with heat and electric, which was used as the living quarters by the previous owner when they were building the house, didn't even count. It was just an "outbuilding" with zero value.

Jeez, that just shows you how much this stuff varies around the country. I put in an "Agriculture" building on our property, no electricity, no plumbing, and they added a $10,000 value to our real estate assessed value, which adds slightly over $100 per year to the tax bill.

One odd thing here at our lake, we own the bottom land, but on GF's side which was developed last, they do not. Our lot plat shows our lot going way out into the middle of the lake. Harvey thinks he owns the bottom land, but he doesn't. Why burst his bubble?