No garages...whats the deal? (Arlington, Winchester: sale, new house, transfer)

[zotmeister]

I've noticed that in many homes being on sale in NoVA, many do not have garages. Given the weather in NoVA, why is that? I would expect more homes with garages and not just parking in the driveway or carport? Any ideas? is it a zoning, property tax issue?

[weezycom]

price point for the original builder. Folks could get a new house in a neighborhood they wanted and saved a significant amount of money by getting it with no garage and an unfinished basement, then could add those things later when their incomes and/or cash flow improved. However, kids come, folks get transferred, two-earner families go to one-earner families, and the basement may/may not get finished as a couple of weekends project, but the money for the garage seems to vanish as the furnace needs to be repaired and the car dies and has to be replaced, etc. etc. etc.

[boyd888]

At least inside and close to the beltway, a lot of the smaller rambler style homes were built in the 50s/60s before garages were the norm. Even the "newer" stuff like split levels from the 70s/80s still don't have original garages (many are converted family rooms or built detached at a later date).

[RedKnightt]

I always figured that builders left them off so they could squeeze a few more houses into a small area and make more money. I'm a bit cynical, though .

[South Jersey Styx]

Costs to the builder and space.

Although for the "lucky" ones, I read somewhere that a garage was the #1 home space or home improvement project when selling.

[statecollege]

In my community many of the homes have carports. Those with garages have been converted into rooms or have turned into storage areas. Some homeowners, however, have converted their carports into garages. Thirty or forty years ago, not many families had 2-4 cars, which appears the norm around here, so garages likely were not considered as necessary.

[Alicia Bradley]

What everyone else said, PLUS VA's having relatively mild, Southern-lite winters (most of the time). You'll even find that a lot of the nicer/non-tract mid-century-ish homes around here (and of course south of here) just have carports, while a lot of their equivalents in more northern climes will have, for instance, detatched enclosed garages.

[South Jersey Styx]

Originally Posted by Alicia Bradley

What everyone else said, PLUS VA's having relatively mild, Southern-lite winters (most of the time). You'll even find that a lot of the nicer/non-tract mid-century-ish homes around here (and of course south of here) just have carports, while a lot of their equivalents in more northern climes will have, for instance, detached enclosed garages.

Good point AB. I am from NJ and nearly everyone in my small town, even those with small houses, have garages -- attached or detached.

We just bought a historic home in downtown Winchester, VA and even though the houses are close together and there is a space issue, we have a detached carriage house (lord knows not to call it a "garage"). And I have noticed that since it's detached, there are more windows and light where an attached garage would have been.

[ACWhite]

I had the same reaction after moving here from a colder part of the country. I think the major reason is the high cost of land. Buyers and/or builders reasoned that if they were only permitted to put a structure of X square feet on a smallish plot of land, people would rather have living space than a garage because the living space would otherwise be very small. Even in the older homes that had garages, people converted the garages and basements into family rooms, bedrooms, etc. However my own preference is for a garage. There are a lot of good uses for them and I don't have kids at home.

I think you'll find that in high price ranges, at least in Arlington, garages are offered more than 90% of the time. It's in the middle to lower ranges (for detached houses) that garages are much less common.

[bangorme]

Land is worth more than the house here, that's why you see all those huge homes with a foot of lawn on all four sides lol.