I hadn't asked if you are in a subdivision with regulations. Most municipalities allow a 10' width for the driveway itself and 24' for the garage approach on a 2 car side entry garage. They allow wider for 3+ car garages. We have a 3 car garage and my DH cannot pull his large truck into the garage without pulling up and then backing up to get into his space. I like enough of a turning radius that I can get into the garage with one turn only. The 30' is what our architect and landscape engineer recommended. My DH would have liked it a little wider (but we have plenty of land).

This is always a kind of guessing game but you can make more educated guesses if you do your homework. Get on Trulia or Zillow, for example, and look at the homes that recently sold and the ones currently for sale below, above and in what you believe to be your price range. Before you set a price, you need to establish a baseline of what is expected in your region and, particularly, in your neighborhood. And play Devil's Advocate with yourself: Instead of arguing why your home is better than the ones you see, pretend you own your competition's home and argue why their home is superior to your own. It's a good exercise to get you to be more honest about your own home's flaws which will help you set a more reasonable price. My husband And I did this every time we sold a a home and we've been through three FISBOs, all which have sold in under two weeks. Oh, and read this article on "endowment effect"--it's very helpful. Good luck! http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect This post was edited by Mmmbeeer on Sun, Jun 29, 14 at 22:54

How wide is your lot and will you have a detached garage? Can you post an overhead view of your lot and house site? I'm posting an overhead of mine just for an example because we bought an existing house with a narrow-ish driveway. (Older neighborhood.) It had a small semi-attached garage on the right, which we tore down and replaced with a larger detached garage, but still only had room for a single car driveway. The apron flares out between the sidewalk and the street, but you can't really tell because of the trees. The driveway flares out in front of the garage to access the two separate doors. We staggered the front so that it's not just a flat expanse of one giant door, and to give a bit more space b/w garage and house when backing out of the left side garage door. (Backing out on the left was good practice when the kids were learning to drive.) Also the deeper right side gives it room for an interior stairway up to the 2nd floor storage space, which has windows on 3 sides and is suprisingly bright and roomy. Now that we have 4 cars it's kind of a PITA when everyone is home. But there's enough room to pull up a big truck (F150) on the right side in front of the garage and still have room for my son to pull his car (Taurus) up to park on the left. DD and I get to park our cars in the garage. :)

A concrete walk is going to be the best bang for the buck if your main concern is functionality. If that's too much $ for now, you might be best off to just create a mulch path so as to keep out of the mud at low cost. Later, you can rake the mulch away, use it elsewhere, and install concrete. If you use crushed shells or gravel, it'll be a lot more work to remove and you'll probably have no use for it anywhere else in the yard. If you carefully calculated grade, you could place crushed material lower than what a permanent walk would be, and then build concrete (or whatever) directly over it when the time came. You'd need to make sure it would drain, or puddling would be a problem, too.