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Is Building A Home Gym A Sensible Investment?

Written by Posted On Tuesday, 26 March 2019 16:36

For many of us, it’s hard to find time to get to the gym consistently.

Between work, spending time with family, and carving out a sliver of time for ourselves each day, getting to the gym for an hour several days each week can sometimes feel like an impossible task.

If you’re in this situation yourself, then one option would be to build a gym in your home. That way, you can fit in a quick workout before or after work, without having to go out of your way to do so.

Sounds pretty ideal, right?


Well, before jumping right into this, and spending a lot of money on exercise equipment, you should first consider a few key factors.

Do You Think You’ll Actually Use It?


Be honest with yourself here.

There are many people that have built expensive home gyms for themselves, only to leave them largely unused and collecting dust.

Building a quality home gym takes both effort and money (which we’ll get to in a second), so you have to consider seriously whether or not you’ll actually use it.

A good way to think about this is deciding whether your biggest workout impediment is strictly an issue of time, or more of an issue of willpower.


If it’s simply an issue of time, then building a home gym might prove to be a sensible investment; however, if it’s actually an issue of willpower, then you’d be better served addressing that in other ways first - like potentially working with a personal trainer online, in order to develop sustainable exercise habits for yourself. If you're going down the online PT route, make sure they have completed a recognized personal trainer certification.

 

Do You Have The Space?

 

While you may want to build a gym for your home, you don’t want to turn your home into a gym.

Your family will be unhappy with you if you do this, and guests will look at you like you’re insane when fitness equipment takes up a substantial portion of your living room.


However, if you have a separate room that you can use for your workout space, then this could work really well.

Another option to consider is building a gym in your basement or garage. This is a great solution if you don’t have a spare room available, since it won’t encroach upon your actual living space, but will still provide a sanctuary for your workouts.

Again, just make sure that you have enough space available in your garage or basement. For instance, if you have 2 cars, then you probably don’t have space for gym equipment in your garage as well!

Do You Have The Budget?

When you’re putting together a home gym, it’s easy for things to get quickly out of hand from a financial perspective.

You initially set out just to get a set of weights, but then decide that your gym won’t be complete without a power rack, treadmill, and an assortment of exercise machines - not to mention appropriate flooring to go along with it.


If you’re not careful, this can easily amount to thousands of dollars, which is a lot of money just to afford yourself the opportunity to exercise at home.

So, our advice here is to start out small.


Set yourself up with a pair of adjustable dumbbells, a bench, and a pull-up bar first. This will cost a few hundred dollars, but will allow you to replicate much of what you’d do in a commercial gym.

Then, if you’re so inclined later on, expand out from there - but avoid the temptation to bite off more than you can chew initially.

How Will It Impact The Value Of Your Home?

This factor applies more if you’re building a more extensive home gym for yourself, but if you are it’s something that you should consider strongly.

If you build a gym that requires modifications to the structure of your house - such as reinforced gym flooring, sound proofing, or fixed equipment installations - then this could potentially impact the marketability of your home when you’re trying to sell.

 

While certain people will see a home gym as a huge plus when buying a home, many people won’t - and will simply regard it as something that they’ll have to deal with.

 

So, make sure to weigh this out, before getting too fancy with your home gym. It might be worth keeping things simple, and avoiding any permanent modifications, in the interest of maintaining the value of your home.

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James Stevenson

Hi, My name is James and I've been involved in the property and real estate industry for 10 years now. I hope people will like to read about my thoughts and experiences in the industry and please contact me if you want to discuss my articles further!

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