When Jennifer Nichols and her husband, Lennon Jones, decided to move back to Chicago last December after a nearly two-year stint in Portland, Ore., a pool didn’t rank high on their priority list for a home. But as they looked at houses in the Old Irving Park neighborhood of the city, a seven-bed, eight-bath home with a 24-foot, aboveground pool was the surprisingly perfect fit.
“It had more appeal to me because of the pandemic,” said Ms. Nichols, a corporate attorney. “If you can’t go anywhere and do anything, at least you can feel like you did something during the summer, like swim in your own backyard.”
