Ink, as you know, in congested cities parking is at a premium. In many U.S. cities residents are not allowed to park on streets during the winter to facilitate snow plowing, or they can only park on one side one day and the other the next day. Yes, I would say that off-street parking would add value to a city property.

Also, there are many HOA developments that prohibit overnight parking on the streets. Here in the south it is common to find off-street parking pads on house lots especially when there is no curb running along the roadside. I doubt that they subtract value from a property.

Can't comment on the UK, but I do live in a university town where the number of students living in basements, attics, and closets is an indicator of parking issues.

Parents in Mpls/St. Paul, Chicago, etc. purchase much of the moderately priced available housing for their kids who, in turn, rent out every available square foot to their friends. Some much too late off street parking ordinances and occupancy regulations by our not too forward thinking city council brought us into the realm of unintended consequences and made ripping out front yards for parking pads inevitable. And the unstallation is so slapdash which just adds to the ugly. In a few neighborhoods, houses stand like islands in the asphalt jungle. And suddenly now, as if this just happened overnight, there's a hu et cri that some of the charm of our city is being scraped away X number of square feet at a time.

Curb appeal doesn't filter down to all sectors and perhaps it's only something like HGTV that defines curb apeal for us. But if I were interested in getting into the student rental business, parking would be a plus (as would be a working toilet) although I wouldn't pay a premium for it - not in this town. If I wanted to occupy the property myself, to clinch the deal the seller would be chunking up all the hardscape and restoring the yard to some semblance of normalcy.

Yup, they have "paved paradise and put up a parking lot."

Shore town chiming in here, and plenty of off-street parking is definitely a plus in this area! During the summer months residents are hard-pressed to find parking on the street for guests or any other vehicles that don't fit in their driveways.

It's all over now, but going back some years, not only off-street, but out-of-view parking carried an ultra-high premium in one section of our community: Ocean Grove. Motor vehicles were banned from the streets (parked or moving), and from view, on Sundays. Every Saturday night before midnight, residents who lacked a place to hide their cars moved them to lots outside the Grove until Monday morning, when the big chains strung across the two main entrances were removed. I'm sure it was inconvenient, but how peaceful to stroll the victorian town on a Sunday! Many a time I've felt I'd stepped into a Norman Rockwell painting. The "blue laws" were challenged and struck down about 20 years ago.

Considering the continuing trend of suburban sprawl, and the resulting dependence on private transportation to work, school (more students seem to be commuting to college than ever) and other activities, added to conerns about car theft and vandalism, I would expect that generous off-street parking (short of displacing the front lawn, of course) would be a plus in any market.

Older neighborhoods with narrow lots and no access to an ally have been converted to 2 to 4 unit apartments. Parking on one side of the street only because they are so narrrow. People spray paint parking places with their house number on it in front of their house in an effort to stake a claim to a parking spot. This does not hold water and there are fist fights and police called and all kind of problems. The city has an ordianace that requires two parking space per unit, but there are many that are grandfathered in or have more than 2 cars.

Value is what you or a potential buyer perceive as valuable. I've read a lot of posts here and elsewhere about how to demo an inground pool. Value is situational.

"Value is situational."

Truem but only to a certain extent. But tax assessors, appraisers and real estate agents have to assign a realistic value, one that accurately reflects what the average prospective buyer would be willing to offer (and the seller willing to accept) in that market at that point in time. This is based upon recent transactions ... or "comparables."

What you have described is the current "situation" within that market. Value is situational.

Any improvements that increase the salability of a property (and by extension, the selling price) can be considered added value. In areas where offstreet parking is at a premium, this could obviously be one, although the aesthetics of paving over your front yard to accommodate your cars is certainly questionable and may be considered a decrease in value to some.

As laag has so succinctly stated, it IS situational.

One thing amoung many that real estate gurus were telling the newbie spec developers who were popping up all over the place a few years ago was that a walkout basement was a universal added value. You should see some of the back yard craters that these people were left with when they put basement sliders on flat lots. They wrecked the back yard in order to be able to market a "walkout".

We see people post here looking to correct problems caused by "adding value" to the house. Remember the person looking for cheaper alternative retaining walls because they decided a walkout would be great, but had no idea of the consequences?

If there is a regional or local condition that is more or less a standard problem in an area, it makes a lot of sense that correcting that condition adds value. Parking in urban areas can definitely be a problem.

Another phenomena that takes place in the design and planning community is that applying what is a great solution in one situation to becoming a standard to all situations. You see historic trends where this has happened. The current trend is the concept of multi-use in down town areas. Every town should have retail on the first floor, office on the second, and housing on as many more floors as there are. Everyone lives happily ever after and the planners drive in from their rural homes and acreage to see all the shiny happy people hugging each other as they commune along the sidewalk. No one needs a car because they work down stairs and use public transportation. This will be very succesful in some places and a total disaster in others.

It is situational.

I did plant selection and installation etc. for a local landscape contractor for awhile. Most of the projects I worked on were residential re-development schemes. The first one was two new side-by-side houses going into an older neighborhood, both had underground garages and driveways that filled up half of each small front yard. I was told Seattle was now requiring off-street parking for new projects. It's too bad square footage of paving is being extended like this but it's also undesirable to have narrow streets lined with parked cars, not being able to find a space can get old as well.

Remember the other week when laag posted about the effect of the motor car on the landscape? I think we were considering highways through beauty spots at that time but isn't this another, dare I say adverse effect?

Yes, it's all due to so many people all driving around in their own cars.