Are you stupid? You can't think of a good reason to have a garage? To store stuff, dumb ass. Yes you can build a shed but they are smaller and look poor in comparison.

We have a 3 car garage. Love not going out into the rain & excessive heat. Car is kept clean. Most of all, husband loves it as he has demanding hours that sometime require him leaving during the night to go to the hospital. No need to clean off car or wait to warm up! Whatever makes the family happy! And no, we will never have a home without a garage.

Many of the reasons already cited:
Inclement weather - we have young children and sometimes we'll stay out until their bedtime. We will then take 5 minutes to change them into jammies and then put them in the car where they'll fall asleep on the way home. If we get home and it's very cold, very hot, raining, snowing, very windy, etc, they'll wake up. In the garage, I can take them out and put them to bed without them waking. We've done the same thing when traveling and usually when I get them out of the car, even when it's just a 10 ft walk to the door, they'll wake up and then it takes 30-45 minutes to get them back to sleep (they want a drink, they want a snack, they need to use the bathroom, they can't sleep, etc). With twins, I often had to unload the kids by myself and in my garage with the door closed, I can take one in all the way to the bedroom and then come back for the other. I could never do that with street parking. Basically with street parking, you can't ever get two sleeping kids into the house by yourself without waking them.

Don't like clearing off the car just to use it.

The garage is also good usable space. When the weather is too cold, rainy, snowy, windy, I can move the cars out to the driveway, close the door and the kids have a play space. They can ride bikes, play with some toys we don't allow in the house, draw with chalk on the floors, run around and jump without destroying the furniture, etc.

I've used it to grill when it's raining without having to stand in the rain.

Nice big workspace at night. I've worked in theater and I have painted flats and built large set pieces in my garage. We've helped several productions by building set pieces before a show and then delivering it during tech week. I build it and my wife paints it and she's a scene painter. We can work on it over 2-4 nights after we put the kids to bed and have it ready to go when the theater needs it. Even if you don't work on sets, it's a great workspace where you can use power tools or hammers at night without waking up the family and where you can leave the work set up to work on it several nights in a row.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't like a prominent garage, but I do like either a detached garage or side-loading. A place to put cars during big storms, store bikes and tools, etc.

OP here. I share this with you. Part of the reason I asked this is that in looking at WOTP DC/inside-the-beltway MD new builds, the scale of the garage door(s) on a facade, especially on smaller homes, kills many homes' curb appeal for me.

Classic fashion conundrum - looks vs usability. The usability of a garage outweighs the curb appeal (or lack thereof) 10 times out of 10 for reasons that everyone on this thread mentioned.

It's trashy to have cars parked on the street

Some like it others don't care. I'd never buy a home without a garage.

I love my garage also for the same reasons many people have posted.

I also have a great tip. I have a large space in the garage in front of the door that basically remains empty. I have put an old carpet there and it allows all of us to leave our shoes out in the garage and not track dirt inside my house. Every now and then I run a vacuum over the carpet.

Well, on Saturday morning while trying to scrape off that rock-hard ice encapsulating my car, I REALLY wished I had a usable garage! My husband filled it with junk...

Not a deal breaker for me but wife refused to buy a house without a garage.

After shoveling out our cars multiple times the snowmeggedon year in a TH community parking lot and having assholes park in front of our house because they were too lazy to shovel their own spaces (which was especially annoying when my husband had shoveled multiple guest spots out as well), I swore we would never live without a garage again. We have a house with a garage but no basement. With kids and groceries and what not, I never want to live without a garage again.

What I really don't get are the people who have a garage and don't use it for their cars. Although, most are storing ridiculous amounts of shit in there.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just wait until the first time you don't have to scrape your windshield in the winter, and you won't care one tiny bit about how the garage door makes your house look. Also, imagine driving home in the rain knowing you won't get wet when you get out of your car.

I guess these things don't mean a lot to some people because they fill their garages with overflow from the house and still park outside.

We have had a regular garage and a small garage used as shed. I really don't miss the garage during the winter. But then again I do have remote start.

Remote start won't keep you dry when it's raining (or snowing) outside.

Ok. I don't mind a little rain. It's not like I'm going to melt. But I grew up in a place where is rained and snowed much more than here so it doesn't seem that bad to me.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't want to spend time scraping ice off of my windshield in the morning. I also don't really want to have to shovel out a parking space. I don't enjoy getting into blazing hot cars in the summer. When it's raining and I have things to unload from the car I'd rather do it where it's dry.

Pretty much it in a nutshell.

But don't you have to then shovel an extra several feet of snow to get the car out of the garage?

-Non-garage owner

Yes but at least that area you shoveled is yours and you benefit when you return to your house. If you park on the street and shovel your car out, someone else could take the spot and you are SOL (although I guess you are ok if you have a driveway)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just wait until the first time you don't have to scrape your windshield in the winter, and you won't care one tiny bit about how the garage door makes your house look. Also, imagine driving home in the rain knowing you won't get wet when you get out of your car.

I guess these things don't mean a lot to some people because they fill their garages with overflow from the house and still park outside.

We have had a regular garage and a small garage used as shed. I really don't miss the garage during the winter. But then again I do have remote start.

Remote start won't keep you dry when it's raining (or snowing) outside.

I never had a home without a garage. The only one I didn't like was the house with the garage facing the street. We have a side entry.

In addition to our two cars, we have our giant recycling bin in the garage next to the door to the kitchen, we have a second refrigerator in the garage, and it's where we store all the boxes to our appliances, bulk groceries, and the items I plan to donate to charity. A garage was a high priority for us when we were house-hunting.