Offhand I can’t think of anyone I know with an attached garage who actually parks their car(s) there.
I know in my own case I have a very convenient attached 2 car garage and I never park there. Back when we first built the house and when the kids were all little we would sometimes pull in when it was raining, rather than try to unload everyone and everything in the rain. But it’s years since then and the kids can all run for it themselves, and meanwhile the garage has gotten overloaded with shelves and tool benches and stacks of spare chairs and stuff from Costco etc. etc. and the closest the cars get into the garage is sometimes I’ll put part of the front end in when I’m changing the oil.
My daughter told me of a development she knows of where the garages were built in such a way that the cars couldn’t even access them to begin with. They were pretty much built explicitly for storage (or future finishing) but just with garage-type doors.
Obviously there are some people who do use them to park. I would suggest two correlations:
[ol]
[li]It’s likely that people who live in big cities or other areas which have parking shortages are more likely to park in garages if they have them, while those who live in areas where parking is plentiful, e.g. suburbs, are more likely to just park in their driveways or on the street.[/li][li]It’s likely that richer people are more likely to park in their garages than middle-class or poor people. For one thing, the rich tend to have big houses with other areas dedicated for storage, while poorer people need to use their garages for this purpose. For another, the rich are more likely to drive very expensive cars, which they preserve from theft or damage from the elements by storing in their garage, while people with less expensive cars are not as concerned and have other priorities.[/li][/ol]
I think there’s probably a correlation between people with automatic garage door openers and people who keep their cars in their garages. But I think there are probably a lot of people who bought houses where the builder or previous owner installed the opener but they don’t park their anyway, or who themselves didn’t end up using the garage as they had thought. I myself once thought about installing an opener, but as the usage pattern developed I dropped the thought. Perhaps when the kids all move out …
Regarding #1, you would think so but it doesn’t work out that way in San Francisco. Living space is at such a premium that many folks would rather fight in the parking wars than give up that extra 300 sq ft (or whatever it is) of space or give up the accumulation of junk that seems to fill a lot of them.
I do park in my garage, but that’s because there are only two people living in this house, and we practice de-cluttering from time to time.
When we were house shopping 15+ years ago, I told my husband I wanted an attached 2-car garage, and my vehicle was going to be parked in it. Period. No discussion. And 15 years later, except for a few brief periods when we were staging remodeling supplies in the garage, it has housed both of our vehicles plus his motorcycle. And there are several sets of shelves and some other things stored in there, too. It is an exceptionally large garage - well over 600 sq ft. I love it muchly!
Our last place in FL had a small garage at the end of a sloped driveway. Even if we’d wanted to park in it, I don’t know if my Aerostar would have fit. Badly designed all around, tho not as bad as the neighbor across the street - their garage was at the top end of a fairly steep driveway. Because of the slope, they’d scrape the bottom of their van if they tried to get it in the garage. I was so glad to leave that neighborhood…
I live in the suburbs and I park in my car in my garage. I don’t use the garage for storage because as a single guy with a three bedroom house, I have a spare bedroom that I can use for storage.
My neighbors who own full sized pickups don’t, because they don’t fit in their garages. My neighborhood was built in the 1970s, but apparently this is a problem with newer garages as well.
We park our cars in the garage. It helps it is a bit oversize and has room for the lawn tractor, snowblower, huge garbage pail, recycling, and barely 2 bikes. It also helps I have a shed out back and a large unfinished basement for storage.
I love the fact we don’t have to worry about frost, ice & snow removal and it is nice to unpack the car when you get home from shopping out of the weather.
What makes this best is the garage door openers.
The garage doors end up being our primary doors in and out of the house.
Our first house, we had a 1 car garage but no basement. So the garage became a workshop & attached shed instead. We parked outside and didn’t know the difference. Now I would really miss having the garage to park in.
Here in Florida, almost no one uses their garage for parking their cars–it’s a second living room/family room :eek:. That said, we park our mini-van and SUV in the garage; it makes a world of difference how much less hot the interior gets compared to parking outside.
Same with us. I don’t know if we even have a front door key. And the garage door opener we have works with my daughter’s and SIL’s phones, so we didn’t have to buy additional clickers. That’s some good technology!
Where I live, it’s a mix. All of the houses have garages, but as others have said, some people use them for storage of stuff, rather than cars.
The other issue is households with multiple vehicles. If there are four cars in the house, e.g. two parents and two teens each with their own, it’s hard to fit four cars in the relatively short driveway. Especially with so many people driving SUVs.
Our town used to have an ordinance prohibiting parking over the sidewalk, but it wasn’t being enforced, and the town council repealed it.
We have a two-car attached garage. I knew from the start that one bay of the garage would be filled with “stuff.” It has a 16-foot canoe and a myriad of other things, including the trash barrels and a snow blower.
My wife originally insisted that the other bay be reserved for her car. The problem is that the garage bays are smallish, and we use the normally empty garage bay to access the house. With a car in the space, you have to squeeze by the car to get into the house, which is inconvenient.
So it turns out that the real reason that my wife wants her car in the garage is for when it snows. The rest of the year she is fine with parking in the driveway. So every December, I clear out all of the stuff that has accumulated in her garage bay over the summer, so that she can park her car in the garage before every predicted snowfall.
I set up my driveway (which is along the side of the house) such that three cars can park side-by-side at the end of the driveway, and still not block the garage entrance. If a fourth car shows up (like one of my son’s friends), we usually have them park on the street.
Wait, your garage doesn’t have an opener? Surprise, that’s probably why you don’t use it. Also, your house is new enough that you still have kids living at home and it was even an option to build it WITHOUT a garage door opener?
I’m building a large garage/shop in front of our existing garage. Because my wife insisted that she be able to use the current garage, my shop space is limited, and I have to park outside.
The new garage will give me enough space for both vehicles, and all my shop equipment.
My wife’s one demand was that she wanted to be able to open both driver and passenger doors all the way without hitting anything! So, I’ve designed the space with that in mind.
It’s a huge waste of space IMHO, but that’s what she wanted before she would sign off on the project.
For the 10 houses (+ myself) on both sides of my street:
11 garages- all only would hold one car.
2 cars parked in a garage - one is a collectible MG convertible which gets driven maybe 4x per year and the other is mine!
There are a total of 24! cars for the 11 houses. And we are the only ones who park both of ours off the street.
We also have 7 bicycles (we bike 80% of the time- our cars are both 15 years old with a combined 210,000 miles), 2 work benches, a deep freeze, and 12 cabinets (purchased off craigslist for a rental property that we are remodeling), and then the car in a 1 car garage (admittedly it is longer than a normal one).
But I have to ask, how much crap do people have in their garages that it is preferred to park outside!?! And it doesn’t get that hot or cold here…
I built a detached garage specifically for the car and associated tools, a lot of tools. No waiting for fogged up windows to clear, no scraping ice, no bird shit.
The house belongs to my wife but the garage belongs to the car, and me. No Christmas ornaments or stuff we might need someday in there yet. But constant vigilance is required. I have allowed seasonal yard stuff, like the cushions from the lawn chairs to be stored there.
Middle class suburban garage parker. Two cars fit in there, and two cars go in there: mine and The Missus’. The kids park outside because they beat their cars up anyway and a little hail & UV isn’t going to cause much more damage. I’ve moved a lot as an adult and so got used to not accumulating a bunch of crap that needs to be stored. If I don’t use it for a year or two, it has to be an especially precious item for me to not give it to the trash guys or thrift shop. All that said, most of my neighbors can only fit one or zero cars in their garages. I judge them and their packrat ways, and I chortle at them as they scrape snow and ice off their cars so they can get to work.
When I lived in a townhouse, I had an attached two car garage with a door that led directly into the house. It also had an automatic opener. I definitely made use of it. I never had to go out into the weather or back inside. I could stay dry.