Always inside.

Inside.

I always park inside. My husband’s pickup truck won’t fit in the garage, but it is parked in the driveway.

Inside.

Maybe 10% of our neighbors in the Philly burbs park inside. One-car garages are common in our 40's-50's-60's homes, and where else does one store movers and snow blowers?

Summer car, motorcycles, scooters, tractor park inside, other cars and truck are outside. I’d like to park all of them inside, but garage is not big enough, want a pole barn. I am in the snow country, a lot of neighbors have their cars parked outside.

Inside. I think most of our neighbors park inside. But we also have quite a few small homes with single-car garages so having a second car parked outside is common as well.

Our garage is filled with ”stuff” but we always put the cars indoors

Inside. They are warm and snow free in the winter and cool in the summer.

Inside but even in the snow belt many garages are used for storage while cars sit out.

Inside always.... Both cars go inside, third car space holds extra stuff.

I would prefer to park inside, but it is a 1941 one-car garage, and all of the space is taken up with tools, bikes, lawncare & gardening stuff..... even with one of those vinyl sheds on the patio where I keep potting mixes and pots. Many neighbors have built sheds to hold all of that, but I prefer to use all of the yard space for plantings.

We've always parked our cars in a garage - having enough space to do so has been a non-negotiable requisite when house hunting. It's not needed for weather reasons but the motivation is to keep the cars cleaner so as to require less frequent washes and waxing. (Californians tend to be compulsive clean car freaks).

Inside, but that ship has sailed and ain't coming back.

Inside. If a car is outside it's most likely broken into by morning... and maybe even the catalytic converter is gone too.

Interesting that you ask about what we prefer......I dare say most would prefer to park inside, but don't because their garage is used for other stuff. I've never lived in a house that had a garage suitable for parking cars - they've been really small single car garages, or no garage at all (houses from the 20s or 50s). Now I'm a condo dweller, and I love having underground parking (and I don't have to shovel the driveway).

Inside. And we are careful to put all the things we store in the garage away so that there is always room for both cars. I appreciate having a 2 car garage even though it's not very roomy.

Inside. House is from the 50s with a detached two car garage and every inch of available real estate is used. We have storage cabinets and mounted shelves, bikes and ladders hung frkm the walls and even some stuff stored in the rafters.

No driveway, so we just shovel our walkway and sidewalk, but do have lots of lawn and gardening tools and a lawn mower. I do have to pull the cars out to get the lawn mower past them to the door, but to me thats not a huge deal to be able to keep it all in the garage.

Come to think of it, my dad never parked his car in the garage. He built the garage, used part of it as a workshop, part for storing the caravan and the other part for storing all sorts of stuff, including his and my mother's bikes from when they were young. He was always planning to rebuild the garage to match the house (which he made into a cape cod) but never got around to it.

We don't park in our garage (which husband has always proudly called the workshop). I don't even park in the carport as that's where the other car is. Our little car has to make do with the driveway, under the branches of the liquidambar that the birds sit in.

I prefer to be young, rich and carefree! Hasn't happened yet. Neither has fitting six vehicles into a two-car garage.

So two are stored off-site, four on the driveway. (Though I haven't checked yet this morning to see if the aging but still spry German twins are there.)

Both vehicles and all the mowing equipment are inside the garage.

This may differ by area/climate. Here in a suburban area in Texas, hardly anyone parks inside the garage, although all houses have two/three car garages. Most vehicles are parked in driveways. There are several reasons for this. Large trucks are too big to park inside comfortably, people have too much other stuff, some people convert garages into man-caves, bars, game rooms etc. At most, people may have one vehicle in the garage, and others in the driveway, and if that's full, then on the street. Personally, I would prefer to park inside the garage, but with different junk we can only fit one car in the garage, and the other one is outside.

Here in the carolinas, we have never parked in our garage. i would say neighbors are split between the two, and since our neighborhood is all 2 car garages, when there are three cars or more cars cars, of course youll see plenty of cars parked in driveways. never in the street, however.

I might like to park one of my cars inside my three car garage...if there was any room that wasn't taken up by my shop, my extra refrigerator and freezer and wine chiller, my filing cabinets, my 5 ladders, my extra pantry storage, the treadmill I last used 15 years ago, and all the stuff I'm storing for my daughters that they will move to their own houses someday... ;-).

Thanks for all the comments so far! I'm looking to moving to the suburbs soon so this is really insightful.

Has anyone tried one of those canopy portable garages to shelter your cars if you can't park them in your garage?

The canopy garages don't last a winter around here. The wind tears the shell and the snow collapse the structure. I would rather get a large shed to hold stuff and park in the garage.

The canopy probably won't be allowed in most HOA.

@sushipup2 Oh what are the regulations around that?

How many people on this forum live in HOA communities?

mtvhike-

Probably quite a few...and not all happily.

"How many people on this forum live in HOA communities?"

I think it would be really interesting to see some user stats -- how many live in houses vs apartments, how many live in cities over 500,000 people, how many live suburbs of big urban areas, how many in condos or HOAs, etc.

Regardless of whether or not you live in a HOA community, such “tent like structures” used as permanent shelters for cars, stuff, etc. are often forbidden in cities and towns. Check your local city ordinances. Also…where are you located? High winds, heavy snows, etc. might make such a structure impractical. I like Toronto Veterinarian’s query about Houzz users. It would be interesting to know the demographics of participants!

I'm not in an HOA, but we have local planning rules for what structures can be added and where. If you have a target suburb in mind, call its Planning Department (or public works, or building inspectors, or city hall, or public library, to find out who to talk to) for a general overview of what is allowed, what is restricted.

Just for example, in my town you can't build any sort of roofed or permanent structure within 5 feet of a side or back lot line, or within 20 feet of your front lot line.

@ptreckel I'm definitely interested in the demographic too, does Houzz have a polling function?

@nickel_kg From what I'm seeing from their websites, it is mostly targeted at permanent tent structures; but how about collapsible ones? Like this

Has anyone tried something similar to this? From what I've researched its retractable, collapsible and quite sturdy.

That is really interesting!! (I would call it a caterpillar tent!). You might see if a “temporary” tent has to be permitted as such, with an expiration on its placement in your yard or driveway. In other words, you might need a permit to put up the structure for a limited period of time. That is how it is done in my community. If you keep the structure up longer than permitted, then you are fined.

I wonder if American's infatuation with cars will ebb now that more people work from home. I grew up in a Chicago suburb where most homes had a one-car garage, intended for the breadwinner's car. HE went to work. SHE stayed home. Sometimes SHE was the taxi service if there was public transportation to HIS workplace.

In recent years we've seen 'garages with houses attached' -- the garage is more than half the structure...but there are still cars in the driveway. DH and I are in the minority in our suburb; twenty years ago we built a home with *only* a two-car garage.

Do you remember "Ferris Buhler's Day Off", featuring the suburban home with the enormous garage? (It's in a suburb just south of mine.)

.

I don't think a temporary structure like that would be allowed in my neighborhood. RV, trailer, and inoperable vehicle parking are also not allowed.

"I wonder if American's infatuation with cars will ebb now that more people work from home."

So many communities were built with the expectation of cars, with virtually no public transit and no walkable shops or services.

In my state, the one place with the greatest amount of available public transportation is San Francisco. It has geographically limited access (at the tip of a peninsula and surrounded by water on three sides), narrow streets, limited parking for residents and commuters alike, many walkable shopping areas, and a compact central business district that's a commute destination. Public transport in the city includes an extensive network of buses and trolleys and external services includes a commuter rail system (BART) and commuter ferries. They're all underutilized and wouldn't continue without heavy governmental subsidies. In other parts of the state, geographic settings without such physical geographic restrictions have a similar story - lightly used systems and heavy subsidies to keep them going.

It has nothing to do with how areas were built. The populated areas in much of the US, especially here, have relatively low densities except in city centers and have large footprints. Public transportation in this part of the US has never been extensive or reliable and has never attracted a high level or ridership. In many areas of my state, public transport customers are folks who can't afford commuting or other travel by car and have no choice but to endure the inconvenience of lousy service that often requires 2X or 3X or more in transit time compared to car travel.

@Orion Tay, What a cool idea! but also kind of disturbing how much it looks like a outsized roly-poly bug eating your car! My guess is that if your lot sizes are large enough where this could be somewhat concealed, like beside or behind the front line of your house, it might not be disallowed. But my 'guess' is not worth as much as you finding and talking to your future zoning people. Good luck!

Chicago has a lot of public transit options, including rail going out to the suburbs. It was much more convenient for my DH to take the train to and from work in each of the suburbs where we've lived.

I don't think my friends in and near big cities in California have been uniquely unlucky, but several have been seriously injured (some more than once) by being rear-ended in traffic.

"It has nothing to do with how areas were built."

It has everything with how things were built --- as you said, building for low density virtually requires people to have cars. The auto industry itself promoted the development of highways between and through cities, and the post war population boom required more housing, and so the suburbs developed in planned patterns that relied on and required a car.

The region I know best is California. Your comment suggests a lack of familiarity with the sprawl that has existed here for a very, very long time. While more has been built in the last 20 years than before, there is relatively little high rise, high density housing nor high density districts. These aren't what most people want to have for their living environments. They'd rather have a distance to commute to get more space and the similar geographic spread of employers makes public transportation use unsuitable for most. The same is true in much of the US.

Even for lines that run along the more heavily travelled routes, public transport usage is low and heavily subsidized. Why do you think that is?

I think garage use is at least somewhat related to location. In the northeast, where basements are pretty much the norm, it seems most people use their garages because they don’t need them for storage beyond yard equipment. Where basements are uncommon, I’m guessing people use their garages for storage rather than cars

", there is relatively little high rise, high density housing nor high density districts. These aren't what most people want to have for their living environments. They'd rather have a distance to commute to get more space and the similar geographic spread of employers makes public transportation use unsuitable for most."

Yes, that's what I've been saying -- that the US has and still is generally designed and built to require an abundance of cars. That's a big part of why they have such a reliance on fossil fuels - their environment requires it, and the tax system has made it unnaturally cheap.

Tell me about Canada's environmental record insofar as the massive environmental damage caused by oil sand operations.

Sovereign, democratic nations make their own decisions as regards land use and urban zoning and planning. In the US, such decisions are and have always been local, at the city and town level. There is no "national" policy nor would our laws allow one.

I live in Wisconsin. Being able to park our cars in the garage has been a top priority since the first house with the one car garage that made that impossible. Scraping windows at 6 am sucks.

"Tell me about Canada's environmental record insofar as the massive environmental damage caused by oil sand operations."

Sure - if you want to start a new thread about it, I'd be happy to discuss it. Unlike the US, we don't shy away from the damage and mistakes that we make, nor about the political controversy about it. We could also discuss our proportional reliance on renewable and nuclear energy if you like.

"In the US, such decisions are and have always been local, at the city and town level. There is no "national" policy nor would our laws allow one."

That's too narrow an interpretation about what I said, and I never mentioned laws or policies. Again, you're putting your bias into what I said, rather than actually reading what I said. (But, if you do you want to talk zoning laws and policies, that would be an economic and racial injustice discussion, not an environmental discussion.) Actually, what I meant was really the absence of laws or policies, and the abundance of lobbying and marketing. The auto and energy companies wanted those broad, laid out roads and suburbs; they just convinced the governments that was what they needed.

My response was motivated by the biased, uninformed, sanctimonious and condescending tone of the comments I read. This most recent comment is more of the same. I don't feel any need to respond but in the interest of offering a suggestion for you to be more polite, try to avoid insulting the US. Canada has very many problems of its own it doesn't deal with very well but subjects like these or other matters really don't belong in a forum like this. As with your comments, they probably violate the site owner's rules of use.