In New York City, having access to a private or semiprivate swimming pool in summer is a lot like having a covered parking space in the dead of winter — that is, the ultimate luxury.

Now, a burst of new residential development featuring swimming pools — indoor, outdoor, or both — is making that luxury a reality for New Yorkers scooping up condominium units in buildings such as 20 Pine St. in the financial district, One York in TriBeCa, and the Sheffield57 on West 57th Street.

A recent Sheffield57 buyer, Joel Ehrlich, said the open-air pool with a 16-foot retractable glass door to facilitate winter use was a major factor in his decision to spend more than $1.5 million on a two-bedroom apartment in that building. “Moving from Scarsdale, I was concerned about what I’d be giving up,” Mr. Ehrlich, a married father of three grown children, said. “When I saw the rendering of the pool, I realized that it would be like having a beach and a country club — and all I would have to do is take an elevator.”

Mr. Ehrlich said he was willing to pay a 10% premium for an apartment in a building with a pool, and surmised that the amenity, located on the building’s 58th floor, would boost the unit’s resale value, though he has no plans to sell it.

Sheffield’s director of sales, Sophia Cicilioni, said the pool area, which is under construction, has been a strong determining factor” for those who have bought one of the building’s 500-plus apartments.

Including swimming pools in New York buildings was popular during the last housing boom, about 20 years ago, and they are making a comeback as a must-have amenity for luxury buildings, according to the president of Miller Samuel Real Estate Appraisers & Executives, Jonathan Miller. “I think the trend in the current market is toward communal activities, such as common rooms, meeting rooms, and pools are a logical extension of that,” he said.

Because they are so often part of a larger amenities package — in some new developments, those packages comprise fitness centers, screening rooms, golf simulators, and on-site pet spas — it’s difficult to say precisely how much value a pool in itself adds to a building or its individual units long-term, Mr. Miller said. He noted that a pool could help a developer market a building, and could boost the price of a unit’s initial sale.

Mr. Miller noted that condominium units have supplanted many rooftop pools put in during the 1980s. “At one point, every building pretty much had a health club and pool on the rooftop,” he said. “Then the developers realized that it was the most valuable square footage in the building, and they were replaced by penthouses.”

The founder and chief executive of the Shvo Group, Michael Shvo, said the value of a pool depends entirely on the profile of the target buyer. He said his firm is now marketing a property at 225 Rector Place in Battery Park City that features a 75-foot-long indoor, sky-lit pool with a lounge area — “geared toward the buyer who lives an active lifestyle.”

“In a large-scale, luxury building, a pool is a necessity,” a Shvo sales representative Ariel Cohen, said. “When kids want to go swimming, and they’re in they’re two-bedroom cookie cutter apartment, the nanny can take them for a dip — and that makes a world of difference.”
A senior vice president and managing director of Brown Harris Stevens, Paula Del Nunzio, said swimming pools tend to draw would-be buyers with young children.

Ms. Del Nunzio is the listing agent for double-wide Upper East Side townhouse that boasts 27 rooms, eight fireplaces, and thousands of feet of outdoor space. The most significant selling point of the East 67th Street residence — once home to Metropolitan Life Insurance executive Jeremiah Milbanks, and now owned by a former Penthouse publisher, Bob Guccione — is it Palladian-style indoor pool in a room with vaulted ceilings and adorned with large-scale chandeliers.

The pool area of the so-called Milbanks Mansion would make for “a popular place for kids’ play-dates,” Ms. Del Nunzio said.

These play-dates won’t come cheap. The mansion is on the market for $59 million.