Why buy a house with no parking if you have 3 cars

[Wineisrequired]

So parking where I live is awful. Made worse by people buying houses with no driveways or parking. So you now have extra cars and vans being parked on the side road. If you have that many vehicles why buy a house with no parking . Is it me and shall I just shut up. I know it’s not a given right to park near your house but parking miles away because new people moving in have lots of cars parked really grates on my nerves. Anyway rant over 🤣

OP are you on my street?

We have no drive but a tiny, Smart style car which we can usually park outside our house - I can fit in the garage if not.

Next door have a driveway for one car - they have a van and 2 four wheel drives and you can hear her moaning from outside if she can't get parked.

*IT can fit in the garage (I can also fit in there).

@StillCoughingandLaughing

Your point is..?

That you’ve been weirdly aggressive and condescending throughout this thread.

Also a bit dim if post no 3 is anything to go by.

I struggle to understand why any family would need three cars tbh. We do fine with just one

Do you often struggle to understand that other people are not you and have different requirements? I'd keep that to yourself.

I live in SW London/Surrey and regularly get approached regarding renting out our driveway or residents parking permit 🧐 Perhaps flexible working patterns will change this.

We live on a street like yours, but we have a drive. Half the time we can't use it because of inconsiderate twats parking across it- not fully, just enough to stop me getting on or off. Drives me nuts!

I'm assuming the location (of our house) is a big enough lure that people cope without parking. The houses on our street are much larger than the equivalents with drive ways, so it isn't a cost thing. We'd never have bought it without the driveway though and it (drive and garage) adds about £50k to the value of the house.

This is the one time where I, a non driver, feel that I have an advantage over people with cars!

I met a new neighbour the other day. Her existing neighbour is known locally for being difficult. He has 5 vehicles and one garage parking space. She has a drive in which she parks her one car. Neighbour regularly blocks her in and refuses to move the car......despite there being LOTS of parking along the road (most houses have drives).....just not directly outside his house for his FIVE vehicles.

We have 2 cars and a driveway was a must for us, we made it priority and compromised on other stuff. The location we live in isn't as desirable as the place we were interested in, but as new builds with no driveways they were more expensive. I do agree that not everyone can afford a home with off road parking, but similarly it isn't always the case that they are more expensive across the board.

Cause they liked the house and there was street parking available?

I struggle to understand why any family would need three cars tbh.

Because they have multiple adults commuting to work in the household? Because in many areas public transport is at best inadequate and often appalling?

Just as the answer to the OP's question is pretty obviously "lack of other affordable options" the answer to this one is equally driven by what people need in the absence of adequate public transport. Whether the cars are cheap or expensive is irrelevant.

Our local council actively discourages new developments from being built with parking because they want to push people to cycle/use public transport. This pushes more cars onto on street parking (and increases the council's revenue from permits). We basically have a car because with DC and all their kit (buggies, travel cots etc etc), it's impossible to get to our family, who live all over the country, on public transport.

"lack of other affordable options"

Where I live, there's an enormous amount of Victorian housing stock. And virtually no 4 beds in other housing types, so the choice is space or drive way. Regardless of how much money you have. There's a crop of new build 4 beds coming up, but they are 4 tiny bedrooms.

@cupsofcoffee

Not everyone can afford houses with off-road parking

But they can afford to buy/lease and run 3 cars?

We have this issue on my road, terraced houses with no private parking so everyone parks on the road, most houses have 2/3 cars and park both sides of the street. It infuriates me, I watched an ambulance struggle to get through a few days ago, delivery drivers can't pull up anywhere either. Drives me mad.

But they can afford to buy/lease and run 3 cars?

But 1 of those is usually either a teen/ adult child who bought the car themselves but whose income isn't relevant to the mortgage, or a work vehicle bought by the business or employer. Plus my car has never cost more than £1500 and last 5+ years.

But they can afford to buy/lease and run 3 cars? hmm

Cars cost a lot less than houses. HTH.

Why buy a house in a road with no off-street parking if you are going to get you knickers in a twist about who parks where? You know the situation when you buy the house, if you are the kind of person who is going to be looking out of the window worrying that so-and-so never moves their car (and so by deduction doesn’t really need one), that two-doors-down now have three cars, that the woman in the next road sometimes parks in your street because she can’t find a space in hers, that people have parked inconsiderately and if you could just shuffle the whole line of cars down you could create an extra space then DON’T DO IT. It’s a free for all - end of. I lived in London and tolerated it because I liked the house and the area. My dad always thought I was mad. MIL nearly drove herself mad by buying such a house and then being the kind of person I described at the start of my post.

Our street is particularly frustrating because every house has a driveway with space for at least 2 big cars but potentially 2 big and 1 small or some people might have a work van, 1 big car and 1 smaller one. Some people decide to have 3 big cars so park one on the pavement in front of their house totally blocking the pavement so I have to walk in the road regularly with my pushchair. I don’t know why anyone would require 3 people carrier/4x4 type cars but there you go. They totally cover the whole pavement so you can’t even walk past. I’ve been in a position on more than one occasion where I’ve had to wait for cars to pass before I can walk in the bloody road or I’ve heard a car coming speeding up behind me so I’ve had to run quickly around it or even had to tuck in between that car and another that was parked in a similar fashion in front of it to wait for cars to pass. So dangerous, I’m literally endangering my own and my toddler and baby’s lives because they can’t fit 3 large cars in their driveway.

Such a strange thing to complain about, especially when you are doing the same yourself. We have little choice about our housing as it is provided by our employer. We have three cars and two to on the road because one fits on the drive. We don’t need three cars but it’s nobody else’s business!

In a few years time this is going to be a real issue for me as I want to downsize but move nearer town.
Most of the housing stock that is the size I want and in the areas I want don’t have drives and the parking is permit only. I am willing to pay a premium for a small drive but they are few and far between. If I can’t get the drive I will either need to buy bigger than I want and need or be further out of town both of which kind of defeats the object of moving in the first place.

I sympathise OP, as I used to live on an estate of Victorian terraced houses. It was in easy walking distance of the town centre and the railway station. I didn’t even have a car, even though I worked one day per week in another town.

Yet, the street was clogged up with cars on both sides. My friend with arthritis couldn’t park in our street when he came to visit. I had great trouble getting a new sofa delivered, as the delivery driver couldn’t park nearby. And I knew DD would never be able to walk to school by herself as the streets were too dangerous - there was nowhere with good visibility to cross the road.

The Council held a meeting to discuss a Residents’ Parking Scheme. Some people were strongly opposed. One irate man said that two permits per household wasn’t enough, as he had adult children. My response would have been that he could have as many cars as he liked. But he couldn’t park them all outside his house, could he? Because there wasn’t room.

Personally, I think the people with excess cars should have parked them in a car park. Or, they should have realised that if you want to live in easy walking distance of the town centre, the trade-off is fewer parking spaces.

Anyway, the Council will soon be imposing a Residents’ Parking Scheme and I’m glad.

Do you often struggle to understand that other people are not you and have different requirements? I'd keep that to yourself.

Hilarious

At one pint we had 5 cars here, as a relative was living with us, all but mine needed for work and college, mine for travels and errands.
Luckily we all have large drives and garages, but many families are in the same situation.

I live in a 3 car household and no way would we live somewhere without a drive.