Cabo houses with a pool you don't have to share

Three answers, really. In Los Cabos you can rent a private villa whose pool belongs to you and nobody else, a resort residence inside a gated community where you get a private pool plus the run of the resort's pools, restaurants and golf, or a condo in a resort tower where the pool is downstairs and shared. All three are outdoor, all three are warm enough to swim in for most of the year, and the difference between them decides more about your week than the bedroom count will.

Our homes sit almost entirely on two stretches of coast: Quivira, the gated golf community on the Pacific side above Cabo San Lucas, and Pedregal, the cliffside neighbourhood on the headland where downtown and the marina are a five-minute walk from the gate. That geography is worth understanding before you look at a single floor plan, because the Pacific side is quiet and dramatic and the Pedregal side puts you inside the town.

Private pool, resort pool, or both

The phrase "outdoor pool" covers three very different holidays.

• A private pool at a standalone villa. Nobody else uses it. You swim at seven in the morning or eleven at night, and the only negotiation is with your own group. Peaceful Ocean View Retreat in Quivira is this shape: four bedrooms, sleeping nine, a private pool, Pacific out front, and a box of toys in the house for small children.
• A private pool inside a resort. You get both. Novaispania Governor Beachfront Villa has a large heated infinity pool looking at the Pacific, with two jacuzzis, two outdoor fireplaces and a terrace kitchen and bar, and the stay includes daily service and transportation around the resort, Jack Nicklaus golf course included.
• A shared pool, downstairs. At Montecristo Estates the clubhouse pool, sports bar, fitness centre and spa serve the whole community, with complimentary shuttles to the Pueblo Bonito hotels and Quivira Golf Club. 3BD Pueblo Bonito Montecristo pairs that with its own plunge pool, which is the most useful combination in the portfolio for a family: shallow water at the house, a proper swimming pool five minutes away.

One thing the listings will not tell you and I will: a jacuzzi is not a pool. Plenty of beautiful Cabo properties advertise an infinity jacuzzi on the terrace, which is wonderful at sunset and useless for a child who wants to swim lengths before lunch. If swimming is the point of the trip, read the pool line carefully, and ask us if it is ambiguous.

What the Pacific side gets you

Most of our pool villas are in Quivira, and the reason comes down to how the land sits. The community is laid out along the Pacific cliffs, so the villas look west at open ocean rather than across at each other, and the golf course threads between them. 5BD Ritzy Villa 5 at Coronado looks out at both the ocean and the 17th fairway, which is either a feature or a distraction depending on who you married.

Quivira is gated and quiet, and that cuts both ways. You are not walking to dinner. Coronado Luxury at Quivira solves the daily version of this by including a six-passenger golf cart with the stay, which in a community of this scale is the difference between a holiday and a logistics exercise.

The Pacific here is not the swimming ocean. That is partly why the pools matter so much on this side of the cape, and why the research-worthy swimmable beaches, Palmilla and Médano, sit east and north of the headland. Palmilla, out past San José del Cabo, is gated and beachfront and one of the few genuinely swimmable beaches in Los Cabos. Médano, in Cabo San Lucas itself, is the other.

Pedregal, if you want to walk to dinner

6BD Oceanview Playboy Mansion sits in Pedregal, the gated hillside neighbourhood on the Cabo San Lucas headland, and it is the counter-argument to the Pacific villas. Ten thousand square feet, six bedrooms, fourteen guests, views across the Sea of Cortez, and downtown ten minutes on foot. The house has an expansive pool and a jacuzzi, a putting green, and a funicular to get between levels, which tells you something about how steeply Pedregal climbs. Solmar Beach is a minute's walk from the door.

Pedregal is the only part of Los Cabos where a large villa with a pool and the marina are within walking distance of each other. If your group's idea of a good night out involves taxis for twelve people, that walk is worth more than another bedroom.

For fourteen, sixteen, twenty-two

Large groups are where Los Cabos villas get interesting, because the usual compromise, two houses a street apart, is not necessary here.

Triple Ocean 11 BR Empire is three condos at Alvar Quivira fused into one property: eleven bedrooms, twenty-two guests, private pools, and private terraces above the Pacific. It is the largest thing we have and the only one that solves a multi-family reunion without splitting anyone up.

Below that, Exquisite 6 Bedroom Residence at Quivira takes fourteen across six bedrooms and five and a half baths, with views over the Sea of Cortez and full wheelchair accessibility, which is rare in Cabo's hillside housing stock and worth knowing if anyone in your party would otherwise be stranded at the front steps. And Casa Pueblo in San José del Cabo sleeps sixteen across four bedrooms, which means bunks and sofas rather than a bed each. For a group of friends splitting a bill that arithmetic works beautifully. For four couples it does not.

Families: the details that actually decide it

Two things matter more than anything on the brochure. First, whether the pool is yours, because a toddler nap schedule does not survive a ten-minute walk to the clubhouse. Second, whether the kitchen is real, because feeding children in restaurants three times a day in Cabo is expensive and slow.

On the first count, Unique Renovated Montecristo 3 BR Villa is one of the few fully renovated villas at Montecristo Estates, privately owned rather than timeshare inventory, with a private pool and hot tub and ocean views. Three bedrooms sleeping ten, so there is room for cousins.

On the second, every villa here has a proper kitchen and laundry, and the Montecristo and Quivira houses come with resort dining within reach for the nights nobody wants to cook. 4BD Pueblo Bonito Montecristo adds chef catering, concierge service and babysitting through the resort, plus shuttles to the Pueblo Bonito hotels. Parents of small children tend to book that one twice.

Getting there, and getting around

Everything flies into San José del Cabo. From the airport to Cabo San Lucas is roughly half an hour to an hour depending on traffic and which road your driver takes, and Pedregal sits at the far end of that run, out on the headland past the marina. Palmilla is the first of the resort areas you pass, about halfway. San José del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas are about half an hour apart along the corridor, which makes a dinner in one from a villa in the other entirely reasonable.

Once you are in Quivira, the resort runs its own transportation, and a golf cart is genuinely useful. In Pedregal you walk.

Booking one

Pool language in Los Cabos listings is loose everywhere, ours included where it comes from a resort's own description, so the most useful thing you can do is tell us how you intend to use the water. "We want to swim before breakfast without seeing anyone" points at a different house from "we want the kids in a shallow pool while we read". Tell Optima Vacation Rentals which one you are, with your dates and your head count, and we will come back with the two or three houses that actually fit, plus whatever you need around them: airport transfers, a chef, a boat, a table somewhere good. Booking direct, with no third-party fees.