Remember when a swimming pool was thought of as the ultimate luxury item? There was always that one house on the block with a pool in the backyard and everyone knew which house it was. On a July afternoon you would drive by on your way to the overcrowded neighborhood diving hole and sneer at them in envy as you passed. But that envy would usually disappear at the start of September and would stay buried until May. It is for this reason and the impracticality of it all that there is a new hot ticket in town, a residential elevator.

In the United States the number of home elevator sales has doubled within the last five years, and it is projected that growth will increase even more rapidly in the next five years. Aside from comfort and convenience, homebuyers are becoming more interested in homes that they could potentially retire in. And for those not looking to retire, they are interested in increasing the home’s value and prestige, so that when it comes time to put the house on the market it will be easy to sell and worth a lot more than what it originally cost.

With the advancements in technology, residential elevators are now less expensive than a luxury automobile. But unlike a car, an elevator will appreciate in value, require less maintenance, add to the resale value of a home and last ten times longer.

More than three years ago there was a lot of criticism on residential elevators, claiming that they were energy inefficient. However, with the development of the ThyssenKrupp Access Volant elevator, energy efficiency can no longer be of concern or a cause for second thoughts. So with that being said, get out of the pool and into an elevator. Your neighbor and his pool are old news; give the people on the block something new to talk about.