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]
I’m with Steve. I’d also like to know if people with curb cuts pay any special fees for those curb cuts?
I’ve got both a garage and a largish back yard so they’re not mutually exclusive. Since I have a collection of motorcycles, a garage topped my list of house hunting qualifiers. I was paying $150/mo/each to keep those bikes in a commercial garage on Mulberry Street.
Curb cuts are about the least-enforced buildings issue in Brooklyn. Making those permits harder to get has only increased the proliferation of illegal curb cuts. I read an article last year about a study commissioned by a previous boro president, Howard Golden, which concluded that as much as 90% of the driveways in Brooklyn were illegal. In some cases, crooked architects self-certify blatantly non-compliant driveways but in many the home owner just hires some fly by night sidewalk contractor to install a curb cut and parking in the front yard.
In most cases, if you see a car parked in what would otherwise be the front yard it’s probably an illegal driveway according to DOT and zoning regs. In all but only a few Brooklyn neighborhoods, it’s mandated that cars need to be parked inside enclosed garages or beside or behind the house, well away from the public right of way (18 feet sticks in my craw).
There’s a stretch of trashy, 80’s-era row houses on 67th St that looks like a friggin strip mall, with cars parked three-quarters the way across the sidewalk. NYPD does zero enforcement in this regard.
It’s these illegal driveways which are making it tougher to find curbside parking in many neighborhoods. Mine’s legal (I’ve got a 1942 tax photo with the garage) but since I don’t drive my car much and the bikes aren’t an issue, I let my neighbors park in my curb cut so long as they give me a spare set of keys to move their cars.
What’s really needed is a review of all curb cuts in Brooklyn, legal and otherwise. If you’ve got a garage and you’re using it for an attic, you shouldn’t have a curb cut. If you bought a fat-assed SUV that won’t fit in your little garage, same deal. The city doesn’t owe you reserved personal curbside parking area in your curb cut.
Montrose;
Now THIS is a newsworthy development. Stop the presses!! Run a new headline: Montrose Morris and Benson agree on something!!
😉
Benson, I gotta agree with you on this one. Well said.(planet stops turning on axis)
A private garage in brownone Brooklyn is, of course, a wonderful thing. I note that many of the folks who have one are among the first to champion the elimination of curbside parking (for environmental reasons) and car ownership in general(for the hoi polloi who could use more exercise).
It must be great to come down hard on drivers and parkers when you have your own sweet little garage and protected curb space waiting for you at home.
That’s an idea! And also- who says having a garage AND a yard are mutually exclusive? There are plenty of homes in Brooklyn that have both. There are a number of corner lot homes with detached garages (sometimes 2 or 3 car garages) and fairly big yards.
A garage is Gold. The ability to come and go, never having another thought about parking worries is priceless.
I am dumbfounded by this excerpt from the article:
“A recent check of real estate Web sites turned up about a dozen listings for town houses with private garage space in Manhattan and Brooklyn, ranging in price from $1.195 million, for a brownstone in Crown Heights, to $18.75 million for a restored carriage house in Greenwich Village”
This statement is proof that the New York Times is headed for oblivion as a local New York City paper. At best, it will transform itself into a national newspaper,such as the Wall Street Journal. The other prospect is a continued decline in readership and ad revenues. For the first time in its history, the NYT had to recently cut back on editorial staff.
Is the author of this article for real? Did they really do any research for this article? In the parts of NYC developed after 1920, there are thousands of single-family homes with garages. This statement can be made even if one restricts the search to single-family rowhouses with a garage in either the front or the back of the ground floor. Moreover, most of these homes are moderately priced. I’m talking about areas like Flatlands, East Flatbush, Gravesend, Canarsie, Old Mill Basin, etc.
I believe what happened here is that the author was talking about areas where he or she would consider buying, as the NYT reporters would never get caught dead in areas where the great unwashed live.
If the author had simply stated that he was talking about Manhattan and Brownstone Brooklyn, the article would at least have been accurate. For an institution that once considered itself to be the “paper of record”, however, this is just sloppy reporting.
Headed into oblivion.
For someone who has a garage but no curb cut, what would stop him/her from placing a portable ramp at the edge of a curb to allow his/her vehicle to go to/from the road?