Are there too many Town Homes in Northern VA?

[snowdenscold]

It's one thing to have townhouses - it's another to pack way too many into one spot and not have adequate parking for them to add insult to injury. I think many communities in the NoVa area would have been better served by about 10% fewer TH's and 25% more parking spaces. Many people's homes are practically unvisitable. (I think I made up that last word...)

[jillybean720]

Originally Posted by snowdenscold

It's one thing to have townhouses - it's another to pack way too many into one spot and not have adequate parking for them to add insult to injury. I think many communities in the NoVa area would have been better served by about 10% fewer TH's and 25% more parking spaces. Many people's homes are practically unvisitable. (I think I made up that last word...)

This I definitely agree with. In my townhouse, we had 2 reserved spots per house. There were visitor spots around, but only maybe 5 visitor spots for 20 homes. That meant all the visitor spots were constantly filled by residents who had more than 2 vehicles. One of the reasons I REALLY wanted to move was that we had such a hard time when anyone came to visit. I was very fortunate that one of my neighbors had only one car and would often let us use his second spot for our guests, but if I had *gasp* both my parents and my sister over at the same time, we were stuck all over again. That's not even a party or dinner or gathering - that's just my immediate family visiting. Forget trying to host ANY kind of actual party.

[scottfs]

Originally Posted by snowdenscold

It's one thing to have townhouses - it's another to pack way too many into one spot and not have adequate parking for them to add insult to injury. I think many communities in the NoVa area would have been better served by about 10% fewer TH's and 25% more parking spaces. Many people's homes are practically unvisitable. (I think I made up that last word...)

I love the ones with a driveway long enough for one car, and a one car garage which can't fit a normal size car. Those communities often have even less parking than the parking space ones.

The parking (along with some of the other pluses of SFHs) was a major reason that drove me from buying a newer updated TH to an older, out of date SFH for about the same money. But obviously there are a lot of people who want new(er) and if you can't afford a very large house, you're going to be dealing with the TH drawbacks. Seems like plenty of people around here are perfectly willing.

[FC Merrifield]

Originally Posted by snowdenscold

It's one thing to have townhouses - it's another to pack way too many into one spot and not have adequate parking for them to add insult to injury. I think many communities in the NoVa area would have been better served by about 10% fewer TH's and 25% more parking spaces. Many people's homes are practically unvisitable. (I think I made up that last word...)

Yeah, this is a legitimate complaint. Maybe we could enact some laws requiring a certain number of spots per townhouse? Fortunately, my community has two-car garages and there are 15-20 visitor spots right next to our place. Still, I notice that one of my neighbors with teenaged kids uses a visitor spot all the time. If we were ever short on visitor parking, this would definitely annoy me and others in the neighborhood.

[jillybean720]

Originally Posted by FC Merrifield

Yeah, this is a legitimate complaint. Maybe we could enact some laws requiring a certain number of spots per townhouse?

There are such laws; they're just insufficient.

[snowdenscold]

Originally Posted by jillybean720

There are such laws; they're just insufficient.

^^This. They should have been changed years ago (since the average cars/household has gone up drastically in the past several decades), but unfortunately any changes now would be impossible to retroactively modify TH communities. Might help out Loudoun though.


Not only are you a prisoner to your home from 4-7 PM most nights due to traffic, but even if you could get around, you can't visit half your friends because there's nowhere to park.