The Luxury of the Garage
The bar for “luxury real estate” continually rises in New York these days—wine cellars, heated pools or screening rooms are increasingly par for the course. But perhaps the most coveted amenity continues to be the parking garage, says the New York Times. Their recent tally of listings in Manhattan and Brooklyn with garages included a…
The bar for “luxury real estate” continually rises in New York these days—wine cellars, heated pools or screening rooms are increasingly par for the course. But perhaps the most coveted amenity continues to be the parking garage, says the New York Times. Their recent tally of listings in Manhattan and Brooklyn with garages included a dozen from $1.195 million, for a Crown Heights brownstone, to $18.75 million for a Greenwich Village carriage house. A garage, according to Jonathan Miller, chief executive of Miller Samuel Inc., can easily add five percent to a house’s asking price, and sometimes as much as 25 percent. One Bedford-Stuyvesant resident moved into a Crown Heights four-bedroom brownstone with a garage, which he’s now selling for $1.195 million — apparently having all that storage space for rakes and such resulted in an insatiable desire for the suburban life. The article comes on the heels of a Transportation Alternatives study called “Suburbanizing the City,” which critiques the Bloomberg administration’s policy of requiring developers to build off-street parking with new buildings, which, they say, will add 170,000 new cars on city streets by 2030. Might make the buildings more desirable and valuable, but, according to TA, garages and off-street parking could add 431,000 tons of CO2 per year by 2030.
The Ultimate Luxury: A Garage [NY Times]
Suburbanizing the City (PDF) [TA]
Nevertheless, garages and driveways aren’t counted as living space so you don’t pay property tax on them. DOF regards garages the same as a utility basement. It’s not part of the taxable square footage.
The suburbs isn’t a fair comparison, especially when it’s actually illegal to park on the street in many suburban residential areas. Mainly, the neighbors aren’t circling the block looking for parking spaces at 1am.
Chaka: you’re not “entitled” to your sidewalk. You’re responsible for maintaining it, the same as your garage-less neighbors.
Chacka said: >
ONLY two cars? That’s precious!
Agreed, they need to address the illegal curb cuts.
However, I think with anyone who has a driveway or a legal garage it’s not neccesarily about a curb cut so much as it is about the city allowing/preventing your access to your legal garage/driveway.
If you bought a house out in the burbs where everyone parks in their garage or driveway would you feel the same way? Would you suggest that they should have to pay the town or municipality for the right to access their driveway? I believe it’s that built into your property taxes.
There is a series of 3 rowhouses on my block that were built further back on the lot than the rest of ours. Each one of them has a driveway/parking spot in the “front yard” of their home. They applied for this at some point back in the 60’s and it was granted. Each of those houses are on the same size lot, the house is the exact same size as the rest of ours and they pay higher taxes than those of us without. I only know this because a long time resident of this street clarified it at a block association meeting when the whole parking issue came up.
“buying a house and property taxes doesn’t entitle you to a piece of public property.”
It most certainly does. That is precisely why I am also ‘entitled’ to clean trash from the entire public sidewalk and street curb in front of my home, shovel all of the snow and keep the entire stretch of cement sidewalk in good repair, even replacing it if necessary. BTW, that runs about 7K-10K out here and you pray that the cement doesn’t crack. I would say that my garage and driveway being taxed yearly and maintaining the public property in front of my home is a fair trade off.
However, I do feel for my neighbors who live in more densely populated Brownstone neighborhoods. I owned an apartment in one and parking was a pain. When I traded-up, I decided to sacrifice being walking distance from some of the best ammenities in Brooklyn and being minutes away from the city to have a big yard, big house, driveway and garage. We can’t have it all.
Oh almost forgot lurker, it does mention both garage and driveway which according to DOB includes the curb cut. I wanted to make sure that mine was legal before I purchased.
Townhouselady: please tell me where on your tax assessment you see a line item for your curb cut? I have a legal garage too and I know I didn’t pay the city a nickel for the curb cut when I bought this place.
Garages aren’t taxed because they’re not living space.
ah, there’s the rub. Enforcement. You sound like a really good guy, steve. Read your blog the other day. So…when can you come over and renovate my place?? (that’s a hint!)
Perhaps there should be an annual fee. I own a garage and I don’t think it’s fair that I have curb privileges that my neighbors don’t just because I bought a house with a curb cut. That’s why I let my neighbors park in my curb cut so long as I have their spare car keys to get my own car in and out of the garage at 2am. I certainly don’t think it’s fair when people who don’t have functioning garages treat their curb cuts as reserved street parking spaces for themselves. That’s not why those curb cuts were permitted.
I think a more productive initiative would be to crack down on all the illegal driveways in Brooklyn first. Vincent Gentile has several bills to introduce in the city council that will address at least the illegal curb cut issue. Whether they will be enforced is another matter.
townhouseLady- gary lists him/her/itself as a woman. Go figure.
gary does seem to love race baiting however I and many others find you to be a perfectly lovely poster. You got gc angry- it’s a badge of honor!
Which is far better than writing like a silly little boy who’s desire for attention is causing him to act out.