importance of garage (Seattle: condo, crimes, houses)

[RustinginSeattle]

Cars get pretty dinged up in Seattle. Parking spaces are all very close together and parallel parking is the norm around here. Technically my lot in Ballard could fit a garage where our carport is, but we would have to give up a substantial portion of our little yard to get the proper angle off of the alley for parking (one corner of our carport is cantilevered and open so you can pull in at an angle). So be sure to consider more than lot size. If you just go a bit north you shouldn't have any problem. Check out Blue Ridge, North Beach, and Broadview (on the west side). Spendy neighborhoods with 70's builds should have good garages too. Try Laurelhurst and Windermere.

[eskercurve]

If you wanted to live in Seattle proper, you could also look where the "old money" lives in Montlake and Madison Park. Many of those lots are huge with nice homes and many have been modernized to include two car garages. If you are looking for homes in the Windermere and Magnolia areas, your budget would likely be in the $1million and above range. If I could afford a house like that, I would consider Montlake and Madison Park due to their proximity to the botanical gardens.

As others have pointed out, Seattle isn't a very car friendly city. Lot sizes are small if you look for homes in the 500k-ish range, and when you DO go out in a car and park, people have absolutely zero concept of trying not to ding up your car. I used to drive a nice two seater sports car, drop top with 220 horses in a car the size of a postage stamp. Yeah. Dinged up within two months of people smacking the doors, and had my bumper scratched a few times. Boiled my blood, and only parked in paid lots from then on.

In Ballard, when I was walking with a couple friends, I saw someone's brand new Nissan Leaf get its bumper literally crunched, broken in half, from someone backing into it, moving forward, backing into it again ... and just finishing the parking job and walking away as if it were completely normal! Reminds me of the old "Almost Live" skit of the Ballard Driving Academy. I had to laugh later, as it's totally true!

So yeah ... fi you live in the city and spend a lot of time there, be prepared to learn to drive a sacrificial car. Like a used 90s Subaru Outback (you'll fit right in ...). Or, take the bus like most people do.

Trust me, I'm a car lover, and I realized if I was going to live in the city, I would drive only on weekends and NOT park anywhere within city limits.

These days I live in the burbs, and found you can easily find 2-3 car garages attached to homes for a fraction of the price of a similar home in the city. I see plenty in Mill Creek and Kirkland and Edmonds. Nice homes, all inthe 600k range for a three car garage.

[mkarch]

There have been a couple of fixers in North Beach sold in the last year for $500-$600K that have a real 2 car garage. Mostly though you're looking at closer to $900k to get that.

[treuphax]

I just got a two car garage in a couple blocks from the light rail in North Beacon Hill in December for 300K... and they also threw in a three bedroom house. Sure it might need more fixin' than most would stomach. I just hope I have the nerves and stamina to see the project through.

[angelenogirl]

We have a tiny single-car garage in Ravenna, but we're moving to a house with no garage and I'm dreading it. We haven't had much snow the past two winters, but it'll be just my luck that the snow will hit with a vengeance this next winter and bury the old Rover.

[Kayela]

There are several ways in which you pay a premium to live downtown, or near it. Parking is one of those. As someone who babies my cars, and also like to live in dense, close-in neighborhoods - I see paying for parking as an item that needs to be included in the budget. Currently we have one spot that comes with our unit, and we rent another at an apartment complex a few blocks away. And we don't really drive that much in our neighborhood. When we're home, we typically walk everywhere, so having one of them a few blocks away isn't really an issue. As long as one of them is handy when we want to go out in the evening or something like that, it's good - we don't need them both right there.

[Hemlock140]

Most Seattle homes in the lower price ranges $500-600k will have a detached one-car garage, that will barely hold a compact car. They were built close to 100 years ago. You have to either pay a lot for a larger home in an more exclusive area or get to the suburbs where the 2 car garage is normal, 3 fairly common. There is one home for sale now in my Sammamish neighborhood, 3,000 sf with 3 car garage for about $600k.

[RVD90277]

3 car garages are really rare...I'd basically assume that isn't going to happen in Seattle.

In Kirkland, there are some 3 car garage homes around. I rented one for awhile and my current home (Woodinville) has a 4 car garage. In the east side, 2+ car garages are pretty common.

Just saying that if this is really important to the point where you'd rule out living in certain areas, you might want to look a little more into the east side.

[kaonevar]

Even in the multimillion dollar homes in Magnolia and Mercer Island it's rare to see a 3 car garage. Good luck with that.

[LAX2SEA]

Good info here. Thank you all for the kind replies!