If it was super common in the area, then it probably wouldn't affect resale. Also, if shared driveways are super common in your area, private driveways might really come at a premium.
But tandem parking with just must husband was a PITA enough, let alone knocking on the neighbor's door at 6am when I want to go to the gym.
Post by imojoebunny on Feb 8, 2014 20:35:38 GMT -5
We own a house with a shared drive. It is in the city and houses with no driveways are not uncommon. It has parking for one or two cars, but usually one. It is not a problem in this location. In the burbs, it would be an issue, since expectations are different, but where this house is, even really nice, expensive houses ($500k+) often don't have off street parking. We used to live there and never had a parking issue. We have 5 tenants there now, and they have never complained. Lots are small, and if the house next door was willing, we could put a one car pad in the back, as could they. I have lots of neighbors that have a shared drive to two car pads even in our less densely populated part of the city.
My mom looked at a house near us that was on a flag lot and had a shared drive, that wasn't even paved. My first question to her was "who is in charge of maintenance?" That was enough to her to cross it off the list.
Am I the only one who would never arrive at someone's house and just assume I can park in their driveway? This seems incredibly presumptuous unless it's a longtime/close friend.
our circle of family and friends do; including myself. Especially if it's a large get together and the street parking is minimal, this may not be avoided.
Not only guests, but delivery vehicles, etc. Where parking for 'just a few seconds/minutes' could end up being half an hour to hours.
Post by everafter07 on Feb 8, 2014 21:13:22 GMT -5
We have a shared main driveway that forks between our house and the neighbor. It's not a problem and nice to share the responsibility with. Though it would depend on the neighbors...
Am I the only one who would never arrive at someone's house and just assume I can park in their driveway? This seems incredibly presumptuous unless it's a longtime/close friend.
No. I always park in the street, even if I am at someone's house in the burbs with an enormous driveway and turnaround. The only place I park in the driveway is my mom's house. M
Post by thatgirl2478 on Feb 8, 2014 22:20:24 GMT -5
Nope. We looked at a house that we LOVED, but the shared drive turned us off enough that we opted not to bid. It didn't help that it was shared with an apartment building...
We live in a house and share a driveway with our neighbors. It is one lane between the houses but in the back it becomes wider and we each park on our own "side". None of the things anyone has mentioned here (snow removal fights, kids being run over, having to ask the neighbors to move, having trouble when company comes over) has ever happened to us in the 7 years we have lived here. Most of them wouldn't even occur to me.
I think it is really nice to share the cost of maintenance, responsibility of shoveling, etc. I also think it is nice to occasionally see my neighbor when I am getting in or out of my car and say hi. One of the reasons that I enjoy living in a fairly densely populated area (still suburban though) is the feeling of being a part of a community. If you don't want to be seen by your neighbors and don't want to interact with them at all then a shared drive isn't for you but otherwise it wouldn't affect my decision about buying a home.
We're renting a side-by-side townhouse right now. So we share a driveway with the other half of the townhouse (we have separate garages) but we also share a driveway with the townhouses next door to us as well. So it's like a 4-person driveway. It's pretty big and not the biggest deal, but I will say it's somewhat annoying and that I would not want to buy a house with this. We're saving money for a downpayment, so this is not where we'll be for too long, so I can deal with it for me.
H and I just signed a lease & put a deposit down for a condo in which we'll share our driveway with our neighbor and have our own garages. We've never had a garage or driveway as adults so this is a first for us (apt living at its finest). We'll see how it goes when we move in next month.
We have a private driveway in a neighborhood with lots of shared driveways. I am glad mine is private but my friends in the neighborhood don't seem to mind their shared ones at all. My neighborhood BFF used to share her driveway with a neighbor she didn't get along with which was unpleasant, but the people who live in the house now she gets along with great so it's nbd.
If you really love the house, I would try to find out more about the people you'd be sharing with if that is at all possible. Even knock on their door under the pretense of asking what the neighborhood is like to see if they seem friendly or not.
We live in a house and share a driveway with our neighbors. It is one lane between the houses but in the back it becomes wider and we each park on our own "side". None of the things anyone has mentioned here (snow removal fights, kids being run over, having to ask the neighbors to move, having trouble when company comes over) has ever happened to us in the 7 years we have lived here. Most of them wouldn't even occur to me.
I think it is really nice to share the cost of maintenance, responsibility of shoveling, etc. I also think it is nice to occasionally see my neighbor when I am getting in or out of my car and say hi. One of the reasons that I enjoy living in a fairly densely populated area (still suburban though) is the feeling of being a part of a community. If you don't want to be seen by your neighbors and don't want to interact with them at all then a shared drive isn't for you but otherwise it wouldn't affect my decision about buying a home.
You must have normal neighbors. Some people are crazy.
I'm having a hard time picturing a shared driveway that doesn't have parking for at least two cars, one on each side. We had a shared driveway when we lived in a duplex but 4 cars fit across the driveway and each unit had a single car garage. There were 0 problems wth parking and I would share a driveway like that again. What you're describing sounds more narrow and I don't know if I would be ok with that.
H and I live in a SFH with a pipe-stem driveway that we share with our 2 neighbors. Basically, it's one driveway that comes off the side street we live on that splits into 3 separate parking areas. We are in the middle of the 2 other houses. Each house has enough private driveway to park 2 cars, one behind another.
I would NEVER buy a house with a shared driveway again. I would say 90% of the time it isn't a problem - there is enough room for each house to back into another's parking area and drive up the pipe-stem driveway to the street. We get along great with one set of neighbors - they always have guests park on the street and walk down. Our other neighbors are assholes, and a few times a month have guests that park so far back in their private parking areas that they are blocking part of the pipe-stem driveway, or they actually park in the pipe-stem driveway so we can't get by at all - this happened just last night so we had to go over to the neighbor's and ask them to get their guest to move their car - it's just annoying (we don't like these neighbors for many more reasons than just the parking situation). We always ask our guests to park on the street - it's a 30 second walk down the pipe-stem driveway to our house, but for some reason these neighbors can never ask their guests to do the same.
We hope to move next year and will never buy a house again with a shared driveway.
In my area, no, because it is totally unheard of. In an area where it is common, maybe, though it wouldn't be my preference.
As for parking in other people's driveways, I don't park in a driveway if it could block the entrance to the garage or another car. If it's a circle drive with no chance of blocking anyone else in, then sure.
Our across the street neighbors had a terrible horrible experience with this situation. I don't think it started because of the driveway but their relationship with the sharers deteriorated to the point that the nice neighbors eventually felt forced to sell their house and move.
If it were absolutely perfect in every other way, I would consider it.
But a major reason I wanted to buy a house in the first place was to not share things anymore
Agreed.
I'm not saying it'd be a total dealbreaker for me, but it'd take numerous +'s to make it worth it. We shared our driveway (with our landlord) at our last (rental) house and it was a nightmare. I got SO tired of being parked in.
Around here, people deal with snow differently, and I wouldn't want to share with someone with a different snow removal philosophy than I have. Our neighbors across the street never do anything. They drive into their garage and don't ever set foot on the driveway, so they don't own a snowblower and never shovel. Their driveway is an icy mess. Some people are out shoveling right away when it starts. We let it all stop falling, then meticulously snowblow and shovel to remove. It'd be a long 3 months of the year if we had to share with a neighbor who didn't deal the same way as us. Throw guest parking, in/out logistics, etc., in, and the house better effing rock to put up with it.
I share a parking lot now and it kinda sucks but I love my house and I'm lucky it has parking at all since most in my neighborhood don't. So I wouldn't cross a totally awesome house off the list for it but I would choose a private drive if I had a choice.
We looked at one house that shared the first half and it wasn't the end of the world. We didn't buy for other reasons but I am glad we didn't have to "settle" for that. It's annoying whenever I visit one of my friend's house so I don't think I'd want to do it.
Am I the only one who would never arrive at someone's house and just assume I can park in their driveway? This seems incredibly presumptuous unless it's a longtime/close friend.
our circle of family and friends do; including myself. Especially if it's a large get together and the street parking is minimal, this may not be avoided.
Not only guests, but delivery vehicles, etc. Where parking for 'just a few seconds/minutes' could end up being half an hour to hours.
See, if it was a LARGE get-together, I would never do that. Why should *I* park in the driveway, versus someone with a disability, or someone who is elderly, or just someone who may be closer to the couple? The only way I'd park in a driveway is if it was a CLOSE family member or friend and I was the only person coming over and had done it before or was told I could.
Thankfully, people think our driveway is our neighbor's driveway (even though the detached garage matches our house) so they rarely park there, although there aren't many parking spots on our street. (Which is the opposite of our last apartment, where people though our neighbor's driveway, which was near our front door, was ours.) The house on the corner has a driveway off the street that runs parallel to their house, so our driveway is technically the second one on our street, but we're the third house.
H and I live in a SFH with a pipe-stem driveway that we share with our 2 neighbors. Basically, it's one driveway that comes off the side street we live on that splits into 3 separate parking areas. We are in the middle of the 2 other houses. Each house has enough private driveway to park 2 cars, one behind another.
I would NEVER buy a house with a shared driveway again. I would say 90% of the time it isn't a problem - there is enough room for each house to back into another's parking area and drive up the pipe-stem driveway to the street. We get along great with one set of neighbors - they always have guests park on the street and walk down. Our other neighbors are assholes, and a few times a month have guests that park so far back in their private parking areas that they are blocking part of the pipe-stem driveway, or they actually park in the pipe-stem driveway so we can't get by at all - this happened just last night so we had to go over to the neighbor's and ask them to get their guest to move their car - it's just annoying (we don't like these neighbors for many more reasons than just the parking situation). We always ask our guests to park on the street - it's a 30 second walk down the pipe-stem driveway to our house, but for some reason these neighbors can never ask their guests to do the same.
We hope to move next year and will never buy a house again with a shared driveway.
We had neighbors like that at our last rental. We shared a 1 car-wide driveway and parking area with 3 other units (including 1 4 bedroom unit). We had 2 tandem spaces assigned to us. Our neighbor often let his friends block us in, or his guests would be blocking the driveway, either in it or parked in front of it, when we came home or went to leave. He was the only one who gave us a problem, but it was a PITA.
Our neighborhood had permit parking on the side streets. We solved this problem by paying for 2 permits for our own cars (in case we had to move them and let someone park in our assigned spaces) AND buying 2 guest passes in case our friends wanted to stop by and park on the side streets. Approximate cost: $60/year, total.