Garage (and house) shopping

[Jawn]

Pardon me if this is the wrong forum.

I'm starting to look for a new garage (and house). I have been in touch with a realtor that will help me find what I want... but from the garage junkie point of view (or just things to look out for), do y'all have any additional advice?

What do you think about buying one without a garage then building it later, vs having to limit myself to houses with a suitable garage space?

 

[46Nash]

We were looking for houses with 2 car garages or detached garages. But none were quite right. Then we found a house we loved but had a 1 car garage. Bought the house under the expectation that I would build a detached garage at some point. Here were are 5 years later and my new garage is almost complete, exactly how I want it.

 

[JimVonBaden]

IMHO, unless you are totally in love with a garageless house, don't do it. You will find building a garage takes a back seat to so much more that it might be years before you get one.

Jim

 

[NUTTSGT]

IMHO, unless you are totally in love with a garageless house, don't do it. You will find building a garage takes a back seat to so much more that it might be years before you get one.

Jim

I'd agree with Jim.


If you find a place with a nice detached shop/garage don't get all giddy in front of the realtor. Remember they make more money off a higher selling price. Down play it or they will let the homeowner know how to counter offer.

Not everybody wants a nice place (like the majority of us here at GJ) and some might be having a hard time selling their home with a "eyesore" garage. No need to play into their hand.

 

[camarotoolman]

Can you get a bigger loan to cover the garage built? is the lot big enough? And our big ememy, will the home owners assoc. allow it?

 

[Jawn]

Can you get a bigger loan to cover the garage built? is the lot big enough? And our big ememy, will the home owners assoc. allow it?

I told the realtor no HOA, unless I review their regs and find nothing overly restrictive (fat chance).

 

[Mush07071]

Look in the back of Hemmings Motor News, I frequently oogle at the avail awesome Garages with Homes....

 

[cyamaha2007]

I guess im a little different. We looked and looked but couldnt find a house in the right area with a decent garage (24x24 or bigger) We found that the garage added alot of value so we put a offer in on a new home that the owners ran out of money before completing. We bought it and the 5 aceres of land. 6 weeks after closing i broke ground on my 36x56x14h fab shop. I have 20k all in the barn thats a nice building package 8in floor 200a service, 50 t8 8ft fixtures lots of windows. Now that ive hand built the shop of my dreams i would never go back.

 

[Modern Jess]

Having just been through this process (about a year and a half ago) I think I can speak to this.

Start with Redfin. Create an account. Learn how to use it to its fullest. Don't wait for your realtor to feed you listings, go out and find them for yourself and use the realtor to get you into the places you find.

In particular, take full advantage of the built-in map view in Redfin, or copy the address into Google maps and take a peek at the property with satellite view. If you're lucky, you can look at a 45° angle from all four sides of the property, depending on the area you're looking at. Keep an eye out for outbuildings. Find the back wall of the garage and figure out if it's open to the back yard (future expansion) or if there's an immovable object (like a living room) between the garage and your future workshop. Trust me here, the two-car garages you find will quickly be filled with junk. Or cars that don't need to be garaged. Same same.

Open up Redfin every day and look at the new listings. Mark the ones that don't meet your criteria (you can "cross them off your list", so to speak, within the site) and keep looking for that ideal property. Its out there, for sure. Your realtor won't be able to find it, though. That's on you.

Outbuildings are golden. Already permitted and built and accepted by the neighbors is worth a lot. Don't plan on building a garage unless the property is huge.

Get pre-approved. Have all your ducks in a row. Be prepared to jump at a moment's notice. Have your realtor write offers when you find the perfect property. Be prepared for heartache when you get outbid, or the selling agent jerks you around and/or doesn't accept your offer for [_fill_in_irrational_reason_here_]. Don't get too emotionally attached, because it will fracking break you.

Avoid short sales unless you really, really like prolonged agony. They can drag on forever, and in the end your offer might get turned down. REO (bank-owned) sales are almost like a regular sale, maybe even better because the bank will be in a hurry to get through escrow.

Your mileage may vary. Offer void in Hawaii and Alaska. Professional driver on a closed course. Pigs cannot actually fly.

 

[Cougar67]

I agree with Modern Jess. If you have the time try looking on your own via the internet. When you find one that interests you copy the address and paste it into the search feature at Bing Maps. In the bird's eye feature you can rotate the image and see the buildings on the property. I'm surprised at the number of homes in my area that have detached garages not mentioned in the listings.

 

[Modern Jess]

I'm surprised at the number of homes in my area that have detached garages not mentioned in the listings.

+1. The house we ended up buying had an entire detached 20x22 workshop behind the house, completely absent from the listing. Not pictured, not mentioned, nothing. And it was a fully legal, permitted structure. Selling agent blew it, IMHO.

My gain.

 

[Jawn]

Having just been through this process (about a year and a half ago) I think I can speak to this.
(snip for brevity)

Haven't been on Redfin much, but I have been eyeballing the local market on Movoto and Trulia for quite some time, and I am a Google Maps ninja.

A "huge" property is not likely to happen in this area with my budget... but that depends on your idea of huge... when I think "huge", I think several acres or more... I'd probably be looking at something around 1/2 to 1 acre.

Why the lack of confidence in a realtor being able to find a suitable house? My requirements are pretty simple... basement and garage. Oh, and a roof over it all. I guess I could send her links to examples of what I want though.

And wtf do you mean pigs can't fly? Put 'em on a big enough trebuchet and they sure would!

 

[ScaldedDog]

What do you think about buying one without a garage then building it later, vs having to limit myself to houses with a suitable garage space?

That's what we did. Our search took 10 months, and we were were in a lot of homes. I searched only for 4+ car garage homes, but my wife eventually found a house with a 2-car, and huge side yard. We bought it, and built an attached 1000sf 3-car + shop space. Couldn't be happier with it.

Mark

 

[info2x]

Having just been through this process (about a year and a half ago) I think I can speak to this.

Start with Redfin. Create an account. Learn how to use it to its fullest. Don't wait for your realtor to feed you listings, go out and find them for yourself and use the realtor to get you into the places you find.

We didn't use redfin but there are plenty of sites out there. The house we ended up buying wasn't on our realator's radar because it was too far past our price range. Wife thought it wasn't worth the price they wanted and it had been sitting for a bit. We knocked almost 100k off of their asking price.

Outbuildings are golden. Already permitted and built and accepted by the neighbors is worth a lot. Don't plan on building a garage unless the property is huge.

Yup! My garage wasn't supposed to be build according to HOA regs but he built it and it's been grandfathered by two owners plus myself. My neighbors aren't bitter either. That being said the HOA was going to go after the guy but the town told them to go to hell.

edit: that being said don't by something you don't want either. Make sure you read all of the codes for a given town so you don't find out a year or two later that you can't build the dream garage the way you want because of X, Y or Z.

Get pre-approved. Have all your ducks in a row. Be prepared to jump at a moment's notice. Have your realtor write offers when you find the perfect property. Be prepared for heartache when you get outbid, or the selling agent jerks you around and/or doesn't accept your offer for [_fill_in_irrational_reason_here_]. Don't get too emotionally attached, because it will fracking break you.

+1... we had everything together and still weren't quick enough because of backroom deals...

Avoid short sales unless you really, really like prolonged agony. They can drag on forever, and in the end your offer might get turned down. REO (bank-owned) sales are almost like a regular sale, maybe even better because the bank will be in a hurry to get through escrow.

Two friends just did the short sale thing. Took over a year in both cases.

I told the realtor no HOA, unless I review their regs and find nothing overly restrictive (fat chance).

You never know. I didn't want a HOA but ended up in one because it had the structure that I wanted, the land I wanted, at a price I wanted. I'm now the treasurer of said HOA if for no other reason than keeping the real stickler's out. That being said our HOA has about 10 rules and almost all of them are broken by several houses. That being said it's good to be wary and know what your are getting involved with.

 

[Modern Jess]

Why the lack of confidence in a realtor being able to find a suitable house? My requirements are pretty simple... basement and garage. Oh, and a roof over it all. I guess I could send her links to examples of what I want though.

I think your standards are too low.

There are properties out there with bigger garages, or workshops, or outbuildings, or features that might pique your interest that your realtor won't know or maybe even understand. Putting someone else in charge of finding your house assumes that they have a complete understanding of what interests you. If "house and a garage" is all you want, then it's probably simple. But then, if you're reading Garage Journal, I'd be willing to wager that it's quite a bit more complicated.

There's also the matter of timeliness. Depending on the area you live in and whether you're looking at a specific neighborhood or a wide area, you can probably find the fresh properties on Redfin (or some other site) faster than your realtor can. The only way your realtor could do better would be if you were looking at a very specific area and the house came up on one of the weekly realtor tours before it was listed.

Seriously. Take control of this aspect of the process. You can do it better. Let your realtor deal with the paperwork. The worst case scenario is that your realtor hands you a listing for something you've already seen and rejected. There's no real downside.

 

[Curtis_Peterson]

I just bought a house almost 2 years ago. My realtor (family friend) said that with the market the way it is (in my area) detached garages and pole barns and the like are not adding to the value of the house as much as they once did. If you can find one already built that you like, I think you will spend less money than trying to build on a property.

I bought mine and in the process of remodeling it. IMO if you can find one with the size you like, remodeling it would be cheaper than buying one. And Im no realtor but if my realtor is correct you will spend less money buying existing garage, than building your own.

Of course with that said, if you do build your own, you will know EVERYTHING about it. I would find a friend that is a builder or carpenter and he can come with you to over look any garages/houses you are looking at. Checking for foundation issues, or rotting wood and stuff like that. Do your homework, other than HOA, there may be restrictions on the land by the city about building external structures.

GOOD LUCK!! its the greatest and worst thing I have ever done...looking at houses *****, moving *****, having your own space...amazing!

 

[Zeke]

Well, finding closer to what you want/need is the cheapest way in, of course. I have to add never look at a house w/o your own real estate representative. Don't even meet the seller if you can avoid it. Unless you find some hot piece of property, ask for a professional inspection at the seller's cost. If you have to act eagerly, try to conceal your hand or you will not make your best deal.

Now, by "best deal" I don't mean trying to low ball and steal the place. There are a lot of things you can do in negotiations. Let me throw just one example out for consideration: seller finances a 2nd mortgage to build a garage on an otherwise great property lacking what you want. There are lots more ways to "deal" and bring a seller to the table.

 

[DirtRoad]

+1. The house we ended up buying had an entire detached 20x22 workshop behind the house, completely absent from the listing. Not pictured, not mentioned, nothing. And it was a fully legal, permitted structure. Selling agent blew it, IMHO.

My gain.

That is most likely because out buildings regardless of how nice they are do not add value. They might add value if two buyers try to out bid each other, which isnt legal but does happen behind the scenes. No point in listing it and making a big deal out of something that has no value to the property.

Me and the wife went through this for a year. We wanted 4+ acres secluded, attached garage plus a pole barn/detached garage plus all the other house junk the wife wanted lol.

Anything with a detached structure sold within hours, not days or weeks or months….hours. The reason was houses with detached structures cost the same as ones that didn’t so anything that went on the market that had a pole barn or second garage had a huge list of buyers waiting to jump on it.

I cringe when I see these amazing threads of people spending an obscene amount of money on their “shops”, they are amazing builds but I have wonder if they realize that they will never get that money back. The property will at least sell really fast I guess.

 

[Modern Jess]

That is most likely because out buildings regardless of how nice they are do not add value. They might add value if two buyers try to out bid each other, which isnt legal but does happen behind the scenes. No point in listing it and making a big deal out of something that has no value to the property.

There's no downside to listing it in the MLS, and lots of upside: it may not increase the value, but it might very well increase the number of offers to choose from.

The only possible downside to listing it would be if it was an illegal / unpermitted structure. In my case, I was able to pull up the permits for the structure (from 1966) in a matter of minutes from the city's website.

I think the agent was just too lazy to check the permits, so they erred on the side of not listing it.

 

[bazzateer]

I cringe when I see these amazing threads of people spending an obscene amount of money on their “shops”, they are amazing builds but I have wonder if they realize that they will never get that money back. The property will at least sell really fast I guess.

Depends if they're doing it to add value to the property or to their own lives?

 

[oldmerc]

Find a nice sized garage for sale 3-4 stall 10-21 foot ceilings , wired for 220 volt allready . Ideally with a snug little 800 square foot house that requires no renovations.

 

[NUTTSGT]

This help ?

http://www.homeforsaleinga.com/list...reclosure+Bank+Owned/sort/mlsupdatedate+desc/

 

[5mall5nail5]

Also buying a house now and per recommendations (and realization) I know that if I were to buy a house w/o a garage or with a 1 car, I would probably never get around to building one. Its VERY expensive and its hard to do as a first time home owner as you have no equity.

 

[JimVonBaden]

Haven't been on Redfin much, but I have been eyeballing the local market on Movoto and Trulia for quite some time, and I am a Google Maps ninja.

A "huge" property is not likely to happen in this area with my budget... but that depends on your idea of huge... when I think "huge", I think several acres or more... I'd probably be looking at something around 1/2 to 1 acre.

Why the lack of confidence in a realtor being able to find a suitable house? My requirements are pretty simple... basement and garage. Oh, and a roof over it all. I guess I could send her links to examples of what I want though.

And wtf do you mean pigs can't fly? Put 'em on a big enough trebuchet and they sure would!

When house hunting last year my realtor found exactly one house for us to look at. It looked nothing like what we asked for. My wife, on the other hand, found dozens, including the one we eventually purchased.

IMHO, most realtors are lazy and looking for an easy buck. Some, like ours, are outright crooks! He steered us away from one house because the commission was 5% instead of the normal 6, and fraudulently told us we would have to pay the commission on the the house we put in an offer on (both sides of the commission $16,000). This forced us to decline the counter offer. We later found out that this was not true, we were friends with the owners. The realtor lied because the commission was 4%.

Jim