Buying A Home
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
how important is the driveway/garage to you?
the house we're looking at has a one car garage that barely (and might not even) fits our van and the driveway is about half a driveway and doesn't actually fit a car. but we love the house and neighborhood and there is street parking across from the house and on the road next to the driveway. not living there -- i feel like i could get over this, but you never know. is that a dealbreaker for you?
Re: how important is the driveway/garage to you?
I assume when you say not living there means you plan to rent it. If the garage is too small for a car to fit, you'll have to adjust the amount of rent you can charge. Personally, I'm a picky renter so if I was going to pay for a garage I would want it large enough for my car or at least a driveway large enough for my car.
Is the garage and driveway size typical for the area? If so, then its probably not as big of a deal.
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no, i meant not living there as in we're looking at buying it for ourselves but i haven't actually gotten to test my car inside it because it has the owner's stuff. we've only measured.
it's on a street with houses with the same situation (they just have smaller cars and not swagger wagons haha).
The house I grew up in had a two car garage that never had a car in it - it was always just storage. Is there a basement or attic that you can store things in?
Also, are you in an area where it snows? I really didn't care about the garage either way, but H and FIL were adamant that we should try to find a house that had one so that you don't have to clean the cars off in winter.
This! My dad always had tons of stuff in our 2 car garage -- so it didn't even occur to me when we were looking that one might actually put a car in the garage, I looked to it as storage! Our new house has a 2 car garage, and I plan to use one side as my workshop for restoring furniture....and DH has been talking about the snow situation, too. We don't get a ton of it, but he's very into being able to put the car in the garage if that does occur. So for us, yes, not having a garage was a dealbreaker, because at the very least, we wanted to place to put our outdoor things and tools.
I could do a mini driveway if it was in the city and I had one car. I wouldn't prefer it and don't ever plan to live where there is only on street parking.
I would consider the garage to be storage in your case.
I really think this is a "where you live" specific question. I have always lived in the suburbs. 2 car garages with driveways are pretty standard here so it was on our list of "of courses." We actually use our garage to park our cars and love that I never have to walk in/out in the rain, scrape ice off my windshield, etc.
However, I have friends who are city-dwellers who got excited that their building had street parking.
So, it is really all relative
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yes, i'm trying to decide if it's worth missing out on this house because of it. i feel very conflicted about it. but i also don't know if i could even use the garage with an infant seat and toddler because it's so small...i'd be forced to park it on the street anyways. we're in NC so it didn't even come close to snowing this year, but i know that sometimes it does (this is my first year here). i've attached a picture of it so you can see just how close the street is to the door...pretty dang close! we're seeing it again on monday and then i'll have to decide if i'm heartbroken or dealing with it
ugh. the fact that the garage/parking is what is making me decide if it's a dealbreaker sucks. we've seen so many foreclosures that needed so much work and this one is move in ready and cute. frankly, i just want to say I DON'T CARE! and move right in.
For us at this point, that would be a deal breaker. Right now we have no garage but can park 4 cars in our driveway. Our next house has a 2 car garage (and the driveway can fit 2 cars, plus street parking).
Is there any way to expand the garage? And you are saying that you cannot even park a car on the driveway piece? Yeah, not sure that would be acceptable for us...
Same here.
Not having a garage would be ok although DH wouldn't say the same. He likes to fix things, build things, etc, so we'd need a place for all of that. However, having a teeny tiny driveway is a HUGE dealbreaker for me. I love having people over, and the idea of having no where for anyone to park drives me batty.
We lived in a house with a teeny tiny driveway before, and I swore I'd never do it again. It was a pain.
All of this. Renting was a pain with the parking situatio, so when we bought our first house this was a big issue for me.Personally I would keep looking you are going to find something out there that is better.
We wouldn't look at houses that didn't have at least a one car garage capable of fitting my car in it. DH does most of our car maintenance himself and needs that space (who wants to change the oil in the driveway during winter? Plus being indoors means he can work at night if necessary.). And we have kids...getting them to/from the car in bad weather is much easier this way, never mind if I'm also hauling groceries or their gear.
We preferred a two car garage, but couldn't find one in our preferred area at a price we could afford. So instead, we bought a house with a one car garage and later spent over six months and a lot of money/effort petitioning the county government for a zoning variance. Right now we're interviewing contractors to do a bunch of work, including add that second car garage. And it's absolutely big enough to fit both of our cars and provide some storage space.
For me and the general area I live in and hope to live in, the driveway is important to me but not so much having a garage. Size and slope of it is important as well as how wide it is. I don't care how long it is (only for snow) or how far my car will be.
When we were house hunting a garage was top of the list. Then we found a house that didn't have one that we fell in love with because, like you, it was completely move in ready. We jumped.
There are times we miss the garage. Having a full attic and basement for storage has been helpful. We are also in the planning process for building one next spring. For us, having a completely move in home well below our budget made it worthwhile.
October 13, 2012
A garage might not be a deal breaker, but off-street parking would be. I currently live in an urban area and having 2 parking spots was a non-negotiable when we moved in to this place. Even though its tandem, I couldn't do without it.
In the future we might live somewhere with snow, and then we'd probably want at least a 1 car garage. However, if we had a decent driveway where we could park 2 cars and outdoor storage with room to build a garage, we might be okay with that. But the reasons to have off street parking are:
1) kids
2) security
3) location (how close you can actually park)
4) snow/weather (this also relates to when it snows and you have to park on the street - are their snow parking restrictions in your city, like you can't park on one side of the street during snow clearing?)
Would you be able to make the driveway/concrete pad WIDER so you can park a car lengthwise? Having length-wise car parking is pretty common in my area.
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For us, it is a complete deal breaker. However, we are not the norm. We have toys (motorcycle, boat, snowmobile) + 3 cars. We have a two car attached (my garage) and a 2 car detached (his garage).
It really is completely relative though. Growing up in Chicago, neither one of us ever had functional garages or even driveways all the time. Now that we have the space, we used it. I dread the day we move and a 4 car garage is on our deal breaker list.
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This totally depends on the norm in your area, and the norm for your family.
I didn't have a garage for the first 11 years of my adult life, and I made it work just fine. I lived near the city center where garages aren't as common, especially for rentals. I was used to cleaning snow off the car in the winter and getting into a burning hot car in the summer. That seemed normal. Until I got a garage. I live in the 'burbs now, with an attached 3-car garage. Now, I can't imagine living without a garage. It's so nice to get into a warm car in the winter than doesn't need to have windows scraped or snow brushed off. I don't worry about hail/storm damage in the summer, I love not having to walk outside to get into my car, I have extra storage space, etc.
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