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 🤣

@Wineisrequired I think some people on this thread haven't had their first coffee of the day yet.

Proudboomer, parking permits aren’t expensive, at least not where I live! Certainly less than £100 per year for one car.

TenTalk : it does add significant value and we frequently get stuff put through our door offering to buy the house. My neighbour has a NOT FOR SALE board outside hers.

[quote Sparklingbrook]@Wineisrequired I think some people on this thread haven't had their first coffee of the day yet. [/quote]
Agree.

People move to where they can afford. Unfortunately sometimes that means that they can’t afford a driveway. Also, as families grow and kids stay living at home, the number of cars per household may increase. Unfortunately that means that the strain on local roads becomes worse.
In areas where congestion and ULEZ charges apply, at some point people won’t be able to afford to run a car, so the numbers of these will gradually decrease. I visited Greenwich (where I was born) a couple of years ago for the first time in 25 years, and it was almost devoid of cars for this reason (transport links helped here)

Not sure. My neighbour has no parking and 6 cars

@Ginuwine

The snippy little kicks at OP ("you're a hypocrite" or "you can't afford it" ) are so unnecessary and typical of this site.

Here's my take on things.

Due to my sheer fortune in the lottery of life, I live on a farm. I could park 40 vehicles here and not disturb myself or anyone.

I did however live in the borough of Wandsworth once upon a time. I was there pre, and post, the introduction of CPZs.

Controlled parking zones help because if they're not there, you can have someone bring 6 cars (yep this really did happen) to a narrow Victorian terraced street, and destroy whatever parking balance existed if houses had one or two cars per household.

There was never any point arguing about it before as everyone had every right to the kerb so to speak. Which is why a limited number of permits per household is the only solution for this kind of thing.

Back to my point though, I own enough off street parking to deal with my parking "needs". However that doesn't make me think "ooh let me come on this thread and chastise the OP for not provisioning the same".

What an ugly way to behave - why do some people do this?

No one is chastising OP for not being able to afford off-street parking. People are chastising OP for complaining that other people are doing exactly what she's doing. That's what a hypocrite is. Why does OP think she's doing nothing wrong by buying a house with no off-street parking but that everyone else should because when other people park on the road it makes it harder for her to park on the road?!

Why have 3 cars

Well we live in a village with crap public transport. DD works rurally in a village 3 miles away with no public transport. She has chronic health conditions so can't walk or cycle to work.

I work 7 miles in one direction and hubby 10 miles in the other. I do actually mostly cycle to work but need a car at weekends for going places. DH does stuff separate to me at a weekend and also needs a car.

So not rocket science. We can afford 3 cars. And I don't moan about having to park one down a side street.

I live on a street like the OPs. It was fine until a family moved in with his car, her car, and his fucking work van. God the van

@Cattenberg

Proudboomer, parking permits aren’t expensive, at least not where I live! Certainly less than £100 per year for one car.

They are no practically expensive here either but there does seem to be more issue than there are spaces for or maybe it is because people will not park in such away as to allow the maximum number of cars to park and leave large gaps as they can’t parallel park properly.

@PaperbackRider

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

Cars cost a lot less than houses. HTH.

A monthly lease on a car can easily be almost as much as a monthly mortgage payment, depending on the car and area. Plus petrol, insurance, mot/repairs.

Personally I would rather buy a second hand car outright but many people want that shiny new SUV (or indeed 2 of them).

HTH.

Lobby the council to bring in residents permits and allocate one per household.

Personally I would rather buy a second hand car outright but many people want that shiny new SUV (or indeed 2 of them).

Many people couldn't give a shiny shit how new the car is, but many people also want the guarantee that the £280 a month they are paying for their car, with full service plan, means that should the gearbox drop out of it then it isn't their problem. Older cars come with unexpected bills. We always lease our main car because it does a lot of miles and it's someone else's problem.

Our street is residents parking, with a limit on 2 permits per household.

It used to work out just fine. We are close to public transport in a commuter area. Lots of families get by with one car and a few bikes.

But recently more houses are turning into HMOs, and it seems that the local parking warden is taking back handers not to ticket cars without permits. It's bloody infuriating.

And yes. The parking warden has been reported. But the council interviewed him and he said he's done nothing wrong. So nothing can be done.

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

Really? You struggle to understand that a household can house 3 drivers who use their car to work/socialise/run errands in different places at different times of day? It’s such a basic part of most people’s lives I struggle to understand why anyone could struggle to understand it.

We prioritised space when we bought. We had small children and wanted them to have their own decent sized bedroom and some outdoor space so we bought the biggest house we could afford at the time. As a consequence we live in the uninspiring and inconvenient sprawl of a small town with not much going on and poor public
transport. We can park 4 cars but I can absolutely understand why people sacrifice space to live in a better area. When we downsize and don’t have kids at home I won’t be prioritising parking. People make different choices all the time.

Obviously I understand they can't afford to live somewhere with a big drive, but sometimes I find it annoying as well OP. I don't drive and my household doesn't have cars. Sometimes I see a household with a ridiculous amount of cars or vans that hardly/never uses them, and they just sit there taking up space on my road seemingly 24/7. Doesn't really affect me as I don't drive, but I do wonder, why on earth do you need that many cars if they're never really used. I think it's wasteful for households to have so many cars in urban areas, I think people should do what they can to take advantage of public transport, walk or cycle. I do know this isn't reasonable in some areas etc.

At a previous place I lived, we did have a designated parking space each. But as I didn't drive, my neighbour used my space for his second car and he lived alone, he didn't think I'd like the space reserved for family and friends. Once I had a friend staying for a few days, they had driven across the country to see me so parked in my space while the neighbour was out, when the neighbour came back he had the gall to question me why a car was parked in my space.

I think YABU.

Maybe they don't care about parking close to their house so for them it's a non issue. You also bought/rent a house with no parking so why are you complaining?

We had to compromise on something. Either we had the house with the drive or the village location with no off road parking.
For us the village location was more important.

HTH

Proudboomer, I agree that there are often more permits issued than spaces. There’s often only space for one car per household.

Mummytemping, that was my reply to the Council’s consultation on parking. I think councils should offer one permit per household, unless a resident is disabled. Any extra cars should be parked in a car park.

I work full time but unfortunately still couldn’t afford house prices found here . Plus a lot of the new builds don’t have parking as they are built like litre rabbit hutches

This explains car dependency in a nutshell. We always think it's someone else who has the problem car, not us, even though we're doing exactly the same thing as them. We've designed car dependency into our daily lives, but not our streets. 95% of a car's lifetime is spent parked - so actually we don't need as many as we think we do, we just need to find a way to use them better.

Made worse by people buying houses with no driveways or parking.

No. The situation is not made worse by people buying the houses.

The situation is made worse by developers building houses and roads with insufficient parking. People are then left to manage as best they can in areas where there is not enough space for the current car population.

If you want a guaranteed place to park, you have to move somewhere more expensive with off-street parking. Otherwise, everyone is in the same boat and you have no more right to park where you want than other people do.

I once considered buying a house without parking. It was just an ideal location in the centre of lovely town. But decided not to because of lack of parking space, I think it's too stressful for me. I guess some people prioritize location over convenience.

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

We have 4 adults living in our household. We all drive. We have jobs that can be anywhere at any time of day (Dd is working today. She had to get to a field miles away at 5.30am this morning)
No good us having one car as then we couldn’t get out as we don’t have any nearby public transport or shops or anything.

We are looking for a house atm and even those that have off street parking don’t have a big enough drive for the 4 cars and 1 van we have. If we found a house with free on street parking then we could use that but so far even that evades us.

We have 2 cars and a house with no parking. We wanted a period property in catchment of a good school. Newer houses with parking are cheaper where I live. But we don't like new houses....

YANBU. I live on a street where most of the other houses are student houses and each resident has their own car. There can be about four cars per house and there is no off street parking.

I'm not so fussed about not being able to park outside my own house (although that is annoying) but it's really unsafe as you just can't see when turning round corners because of all the double parked cars - made worse by the fact that a lot of the side streets face up hill so you have zero visibility when pulling out.