zzdcar
Home
/
Reviews
/
Wrenching
/
It Shouldn't Be This Hard To Search For A Good Garage
It Shouldn't Be This Hard To Search For A Good Garage-May 2024
2024-02-19 EST 22:13:34

I need more space for my cars. I’m tired of renting a storage unit for parts, storing my Porsche 944 race car in the opposite direction from said unit, and still having more parts in my living room. I need a garage at home, or at least a carport with a storage area attached. Yet there’s no easy way to search for a home by the size of its garage like you can for the number of bedrooms or bathrooms. What gives?

Just like everything else, the internet now allows normal, everyday house hunters to browse home listings in the comfort of their own homes. A realtor may still have the inside line on future listings, but already listed homes are searchable online through services like Trulia or Zillow. Most even overlay results on a map now, letting me see exactly what that weird house a couple blocks away looks like on the inside. That rules.

These home sites have drop-downs and check boxes for everything that you can possibly think of and some things that even the most HGTV-addled brains won’t. You can search by square footage, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, or whatever—but searching by the number of garage or carport bays is either not an option, or highly flawed.

So far, Texas-specific search site HAR.com is the only one I’ve found here that will let me run a rental search based on the number of garage spaces I want. They even let you get specific about said garage: whether it’s attached to the home, oversized or tandem. It’s clearly the product of a state known for big cars. So, I have a search query there stored to automatically send me anything that pops up that—as written—fits my preferences. In practice, I get a lot of disappointing emails.

The problem is, home listings aren’t built for the wide variety of parking situations that tend to come with condos and rental properties. Even when I’m able to specify a certain number of garage spaces needed, realtors filling in the “Garage Spaces” box often don’t differentiate between a private garage that’s all to yourself and a shared garage where you’re assigned a certain number of spaces.

Many of those in-garage parking spaces won’t allow you to work on your own car there at all. Even if the building’s management or HOA was fine with it, you’d still be extremely short on space.

Shared and private garages should not fall under the same results for “1+ car garage” because they’re functionally different from each other. It’s the car equivalent of counting a half-bathroom (just a toilet and a sink) as if it’s a full one. You can take care of a basic bathroom break in a half-bathroom, but you’re out of luck when it’s shower time.

Most rental searches don’t even give you that hit-or-miss drop-down like HAR does, at which point, my search for some car space with a nice living area thrown in with the rent becomes even more absurd.

Typing “garage” into a search field brings up every single mention of the word “garage.” Thus, my search for a place with a garage spits back listings for tiny garage apartments that say, “Occupant does not have access to the garage below.”

It all feels like an extension of a depressing theme I’ve picked up in years of binge-watching home shows: the garage is often just an afterthought. If it’s shown on TV at all, it’s probably because the team remodeling it views it as “free space” to enclose for an ugly add-on. That’s a special kind of heinous, especially if they’re a that’s also based in central Texas.

Yet covered parking is a desirable must-have for many house hunters.

Bird poop eats car paint, sun exposure fades and wears the car’s materials, and hail can pulverize the crap out of it all. I don’t want neighboring cars or inattentive drivers adding to the dents and dings on the sides, either. If you like (or even tolerate) your car even just a tiny bit, a place to store it out of the elements is nice to have.

It’s especially ridiculous when these house searching services cater to every other whim and need out there. I can tick boxes on various sites for media rooms, community tennis courts, wheelchair accessibility and senior, student or military housing. I can specify neighborhoods, housing types or architectural styles! Furnished or unfurnished. Low-income or not.

Trulia’s map even lets you overlay things like flood zones, crime statistics and traffic data onto their search map. But no one’s really thought about the variety of parking situations whatsoever.

Here’s a simple request: give me a garage drop-down that separates the different types of garage spaces out by function. If I specify “1+ car garage,” it should be a no-brainer that I mean the private type, where I can store other crap and work on the car in my own separate space. List the others under “Shared Garage,” or some other obvious name.

Comments
Welcome to zzdcar comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
Wrenching
This Restomod 1956 Hyster Forklift Is Certified Fresh
This Restomod 1956 Hyster Forklift Is Certified Fresh
It’s one thing for you to be forklift certified, but it’s quite another thing for your forklift to be certified badass. Most of the forklifts I’ve used at jobs have been unreliable, smelly monstrosities that have been repaired by . This restomod Hyster is definitely not like that. What’s...
May 2, 2025
I Ordered A Carbon-Fiber Roof For My Porsche 996 Turbo And I Might Throw Up A Little
I Ordered A Carbon-Fiber Roof For My Porsche 996 Turbo And I Might Throw Up A Little
I bought maybe the cheapest Porsche 996 Turbo—that’s right, —on the market a year ago, and I’ve mostly been happily stacking miles on the odometer since then. I have been working on making the car my own with a period-correct set of wheels, some extra carbon trim, and a...
May 2, 2025
Can You Solve The Mystery Of A Chevy Silverado HD That Kept Blowing Fuse Blocks?
Can You Solve The Mystery Of A Chevy Silverado HD That Kept Blowing Fuse Blocks?
Owners of old are to getting stranded and having to wait for a tow, but drift car driver was caught off-guard when the that tows his mysteriously broke down. The pickup refused to start when and his family were at a drift competition in Englishtown, New Jersey, and their...
May 2, 2025
Update: I'm Still Burning Money
Update: I'm Still Burning Money
When I I’d just picked it up from having Subaru BRZ/Toyota 86 front and rear subframes grafted into its crumbling body. When the car came back to me in May, the clock started ticking. I had until mid-September to get the engine and transmission mounted in the car, clean...
May 2, 2025
Feast Your Tired Eyes On Some Unrelenting Car Repair Horrors
Feast Your Tired Eyes On Some Unrelenting Car Repair Horrors
It’s the end of the day on a Friday. Whether we’re at work or not, your brain is probably elsewhere. So, rather than stare at your inbox, or a spreadsheet or whatever, why not stare into the abyss of this Just Rolled In video, where a guy with an...
May 2, 2025
Crappy Jack Stands Can Kill You, But Which Ones Are Safe?
Crappy Jack Stands Can Kill You, But Which Ones Are Safe?
Everyone who has worked on their own car has likely heard approximately one million times that you should and that it’s only safe once that vehicle is resting securely on jack stands. ? Given how relatively simple jack stands are and the fact that they have to do one job...
May 2, 2025
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.zzdcar.com All Rights Reserved