I live in the southern United States. I have a home with a garage. I park in the garage. Several times I have had people assume no one is home - once the exterminator was coming, and has talked to me on the phone to get directions (can’t see house from road), and then will call back asking if he was at the right place, as no one seemed to be home (he couldn’t see any cars). Another time I heard a noise outside so walked out through the garage to see what it was (came from that direction) and startled the telephone worker when the electric door started opening. No cars, so he assumed no one was home. This has happened other times.
People who know me and are likely to visit know I park in the garage, but anyone working for a service or whatnot just assumes no one is home. So I was just curious as to if others have had this experience (and if it’s regional).
We live in Florida. We park both our cars in the garage, but yes, the few people who come around do think no one’s home. Want to know why? A staggeringly huge number of folks with garages use them as storage or living space, as in second living room complete with couch, TV, pool table, etc… How these items withstand the heat and mold/mildew baffles me. So the cars are outside in the driveway or on the grass. Family of six? Seven cars in front.
People often make invalid assumptions based on sketchy data. Most local cellphone numbers start with 493 or 495, so when I give my number out, and it doesn’t start with 493 or 495, they question it. They have made an assumption based on the few numbers they have seen without analyzing if it is a reasonable assumption in a broader sense.
Not long ago, I listed a property not far from my house. Another broker wanted me to show it to her, so we made an appointment. I waited for her, but she never showed up.
When I finally contacted her, she said she drove by, but didn’t see any car in the driveway, so she thought I hadn’t arrived, and drove by without stopping.
I pointed out that there were several reasonable ways that I might have arrived at the property. I could have walked, taken my bicycle, my motorcycle, or even my boat, since my house and the subject property were both on the same lake.
But she made the assumption that the only way she was going to meet another agent was if the agent drove and parked where expected. She was so sure about that that she didn’t even ask or stop to check.
If you live in an urban environment with street parking, I don’t think that would be an issue. I live in San Francisco where both living space and parking are at a premium. Because of how tightly packed the lots are, may or most driveways are too short to legally park a car (i.e. it would stick into or block the sidewalk). And I venture to say an even higher percentage of single family homes use their single-car garage for extra living or storage space. Most streets are full of parked cars most of the time, so there would be no way for a stranger to tell if any of those were your car or not.
I live in an urban environment, so there’s no assumptions to be made as you wouldn’t be able to tell which car is mine, anyway, and where people often/mostly park in their garages when they can to keep the car shielded from the environment and away from prying hands. My parents live in the suburbs, where the houses all have driveways and garages, and the vast majority of people park their cars in the garage there, too, so it would not be wise to assume that just because you don’t see a car in the driveway, nobody’s home. Car in driveway often/usually means somebody is visiting, in fact.
Perhaps this is more prevalent in areas without harsh winters. Both Tzigone and burpo_the_wonder_mutt live in the south. In areas where you can expect snow or frost, people usually park in a garage if they can. Don’t have to in the summer, of course, but there’s usually no reason not to.
This could well be. I’ve spent pretty much my entire life in the Midwest, and I’ve never noticed this phenomenon.
While there are certainly some people in this area (such as in my neighborhood) who have to park their cars in the driveway, or on the street, because their garage is either storage space and/or an adjunct living room, most do use their garages for parking their cars.
And, in my neighborhood, similar to what @pulykamell notes, houses are close enough together, and on-street parking popular enough, that the car parked in front of a house may well not belong to that homeowner.
You’d think so, but very often no. In my town I have only ever seen one or two open garages that revealed a clear space big enough to park a car, and we get five plus feet of snow a winter.
I’d be one of the people who assumed the OP was not home. I guess the solution is, if you’re expecting a service call or a guest you otherwise don’t know well enough for them to grasp your habits, park in the driveway temporarily to avoid this sort of confusion?
Huh, i also live where it’s cold, and most of my neighbors park in the garage. I leave my garage doors open when the weather is nice, so you’d see my car. But when it’s very hot or very cold i close the doors. And most of my neighbors always close their garage doors.
You’d be crazy to assume no one is home just because the driveway is empty around here.
My car is way hotter when I get into it if it’s been parked outside than if it’s in the garage. I think I may appreciate being able to park in the garage at least as much in the summer as in the winter.
Absolutely! Aside from the obvious comfort benefit of not setting off in a sun baked vehicle, a regularly garaged vehicle’s finish is protected from the sun, and other weather elements, not to mention pollen, and droppings from dirty trees and such.
Of course I’ve you’ve been out and about and then pull into the garage, the heat of the engine will make the garage an inferno. When time allows, I’ll leave the door open for a while and run the oscillating fan on my work bench to try to move the hot air out of the garage. If I get really crazy, I’ll raise the hood and direct the fan to blow across the engine compartment for about 15-20 minutes to lower the residual heat, then close the hood and direct the fan to blow the air outdoors again.
On the subject of people thinking nobody is home because there’s no car in the driveway: I bought my duplex in 2008; it has a driveway but no garage. I don’t drive, so obviously the only time there’s a car in the driveway is when I have a friend visiting. A few weeks after I moved in my doorbell rang. It was a woman from the HOA Welcome Wagon, with a copy of the HOA rules and some neighborhood information (including some coupons for local businesses). We chatted for a bit, and she mentioned that she had come by a few times before but never tried to ring the doorbell because she assumed nobody was home, since there was no car in the driveway.
I lived for 47 years in a house in Montreal. I parked in the driveway from about April through October, but I can’t remember anyone else using their garage (they didn’t all have one) even during the winter. The new owners seemed to have turned the garage into another room and have widened the driveway to allow two cars side by side (we never had two cars; in fact we used one car relatively rarely).
Even if the garage is much too cluttered to park a car in, it could well be that there are n cars and n+m drivers in the family so up to m people are home even if there are no cars visible.
It’s sort of a one-two combination here. People assume no one is home if there is no car in the driveway and/or the front door is closed. Most people around here have screen doors, and leave the inner door open do you can see into the house.
My most common pasttime is reading, so my entire life has been spent with people assuming no one’s home (I caught two supers entering my apartment for no apparent reason when I lived in Chicago). Multiple times I seen relatives turning around halfway up the walk because the front door is closed and they don’t hear a tv as they approach.
You couldn’t possibly make any assumptions in my urban neighborhood. Most houses don’t have either garages or driveways, so most cars are parked on the street - and the chances that the car parked in front of my house belongs to someone who lives here are pretty low. Of the houses that have garages, most aren’t conducive to parking in the driveway - either there isn’t enough driveway to park without blocking the sidewalk or the garage/driveway was created by digging up the front yard and sloping a driveway down to the garage in the basement which means that the retaining walls make it a tight fit to get in or out of the car while it’s in the driveway. People sometimes park across the driveway in those situations, but then another factor comes in - lots of people in the neighborhood don’t have cars, so people often make “arrangements” with carless neighbors who have driveways to park across the driveway and of course, some of the people with wider, longer driveways and backyard garages rent their driveways for parking ( especially if the property owner doesn’t have a car).
I do know people who live in areas where everyone has a car, nobody parks in the garage and everyone has plenty of space to park either in their driveway or in front of their house. It’s possible that if I unexpectedly drove past a friend or relative’s house in one of these areas and didn’t see a car that I would assume they weren’t home and maybe wouldn’t call them to see if they could hang out. But I wouldn’t assume that someone wasn’t home because there was no car in the driveway to the point where I though I arrived at the wrong place for an appointment or got startled by the door opening- maybe there’s a car in the shop or the four people who live there have two cars or …