Garages that form part of a house extension - should they still be built?

Some house extensions will incorporate a single or double garage but these are becoming less and less of a requirement from homeowners these days due to the overriding requirement for more habitable room space rather than a very expensive brick built structure to simply house a car or to use the area for rough storage.

If you do want to incorporate a garage within your house extension I would ask every householder to challenge and reconsider their current thinking for such an expensive item before implementing it into the design. When I have done this with many of my own clients what often comes back as the homeowners answer to wanting a garage is that they thought it would devalue the property if their house was not able to offer a garage to the next set of house purchasers.

When I go on to explain that for their type of property, having usable habitable room space for a defined amenity or use or even making an existing room larger is more desirable to most homeowners rather than as a space to store a car that, in reality, would probably be used more as rough storage space.

Provided the house (semi-detached, terrace or even detached) can accommodate an element of easy to use off road car parking space for between 1 and three cars depending upon the properties size then that’s all most homeowners want.

If the property is a detached house within a rural location on a large plot then garaging can be seen as a very important part of the sites value but these are very often detached garages rather than attached garages and those that are attached are very often converted within 10 years to a habitable room.