Area Under the Front Stoop Shared or Private?
Hi, I am curious if other people living in brownstones have had experience with this issue. The lower unit in our brownstone has a separate entrance under the front stoop, behind a gated door. Is it your experience that this space under the stairs would be used by them only, or would it generally be…
Hi, I am curious if other people living in brownstones have had experience with this issue. The lower unit in our brownstone has a separate entrance under the front stoop, behind a gated door. Is it your experience that this space under the stairs would be used by them only, or would it generally be considered shared space for everyone in the building? I would be very interested to know as it is a usuable storage area that is not mentioned in the building documents, but just wondering what the normal convention is.
When I owned my house, I lived in the lower duplex, and I had exclusive access to the storage under the stoop, also behind a locked gate, which led to the door into my bedroom and en suite bath (that was for you, Dave).
Had I kept the house, I was going to convert it to an owner’s triplex and garden rental, and I would’ve then given the garden tenant exclusive access to the stoop storage. I might have wanted to keep the shovel and snow melt there in the winter, but I configured the garden floor to retain exclusive cellar access for the owner, so I could have brought the shovel, etc. up through the cellar hatch when needed.
If you’ve lived in a garden apartment, you would know it could be (depending on the situation) rather invasive for others to be using that entrance unless clearly defined, as people who rent or buy these spaces usually come to expect this. If that entrance opens directly up into the apartment and not a closed inside / shared staircase i would consider thinking twice.
Giving out the gate key to everyone and making it a public storage facility or stroller parking lot might breed a little contempt – and i would definitely approach the subject gently.
I’m currently in the “stoop access” apartment of a brownstone. When looking at it, we asked and were told it was our storage area. Personally, I don’t really want neighbors in there even if we didn’t use the storage space–the actual door into our apartment has a lot of glass and anyone inside the gate can see clearly into our apartment, including the bathroom. That stoop storage to ourselves actually swayed us to take a place on a block we didn’t really like.
That being said, we have given our neighbors a key to the gate and tried to make it clear that they are welcome to go in to borrow the shovel in the winter. Unfortunately, they never have (shoveling was supposed to be a shared duty).
I consider it as part of my tenants space. They don’t really use it for anything though.
I think this is completely a personal choice. My ground floor tenants never had access to the understooop area, even before I put a door on it! I stored bikes, salt, shovels, yard stuff etc.
My tenants had their own locked front door (separate and apart from the locked gate under the stoop), so they never felt like they were losing anything…
Agree. My tenants have bottom floor. It’s their space. However I do tend to store snow shovel and salt under there for very occasional access.
Aaah..if there’s a locked gate there why would it not be private? I would not want someone rooting around a foot from my door. But maybe if you asked them nicely if you could store your stuff there?