Compromising on home/garage req's with spouse when house hunting

It's a ways off for my wife and I, but we are outgrowing our little 1940's 2 bedroom city bungalow. Our son (3 1/2 y.o.) is getting bigger, we're thinking of a 2nd child, and the city's schools are not gonna cut it.

I currently have a 20x20 detached 2-car garage, which proved to be a good find in the city and has served me well.

That said, if we're "moving up" for our next move... I want a bigger man cave.

It seems whenever I've found a home in our price range with a big garage, or two garages, or a pole barn for that matter, the house is ugly as E36 M3... with "bad bones" (i.e. interior decorating/simple remodelling won't fix the layout). It seems car guys must not typically give much care or thought to the house (which I can understand), but it would seem to me more of them must've been married to pickier women???

On the opposite end, whenever she finds a home she loves... 3 bedroom minimum, master bedroom/bath, must have a fireplace, they all seem to have a 2 stall garage, and no room to expand.

The few times I find BOTH, they seem to be stupid money... like 2X our budget, which seems silly because the garage construction costs aren't nearly that of the home... it just seems it's rare to find someone who's selling a nice house AND a nice garage setup.

On the plus side, we're in no hurry... probably sell/buy in the next 2 years. What criteria have you used? How have you compromised when house hunting? Where did you draw the line? Did you find your unicorn house?

Living in southern california the best advice is to look on the edges of the communities she likes in hopes of finding something with a larger lot. I don't hope for finding the perfect mancave but I hold out for the room to make one.

My wife likes newer suburbia track homes so I will be lucky if we manage to find something with like a 3 car garage we can afford.

When we were home shopping 8-9 years ago I only had a couple of stipulations- a big yard and/or a big garage.

Unfortunately this was at the peak of the housing bubble, so I got neither Unless I wanted to bump our mortgage to $800K-$1M

Luckily for you it's a buyer's market, so keep looking.

If that is your garage now... why can't you just add on to your current house?

Jaynen wrote: If that is your garage now... why can't you just add on to your current house?

lol... not my garage.

Having the same problem right now. We have been looking for a house to buy and the few that have 3 car garages are out of our price range.

We have found a new construction home where we can build a really great house with a 3 car garage in our price range but it is pretty far from where we are now. We are supposed to make a decision on it by Sunday since it is the last lot in the development.

Gone through this before also...the first house we bought we looked andfound a house that had a garage just like the picture you posted, it was newly built and actually had a partially finish apartment attatched to it. i about crap myself, then we went inside the house...all was well until we got to the kitchen, i mean Kitchenette. it was over, i was crushed. my wife and i are on our second house and again, i made the compromise, although i've got a 2 car it's just not enough, the lot is big but with overly elaborate landscaping i work on the yard more than my projects. anyways...find a house she really likes on a large lot, nice grass, but with minimal amount of flowerbeds, pavers ect. Good luck house hunting.

I left a nice 2-1/2 car 25'x25' well lit detached garage for a 18' x 20' single light bulb attached garage.

I went with the house the wife wanted more than a giant garage. Wife = #1.

On house #1 the "me" requirements were "garage" and "basement". We got a great, tiny, hideous, unwanted house in 2000 for $250k in a zip code where the median house house price is about 7 figures.

In 2010 my wife tired of my tirades about the lack of space in the shop and garage, and found a huge (hideous, unloved) mid-century rambler in the only better zip code. Giant basement, and an additional basement below a master BR extension that could only be described as a machine shop without the machinery. 18x22 feet, 1/2 below grade, short, wide poured concrete steps with a 34" door - right off the driveway....

Which leads to the 26x32 detached garage in the back yard.

We wrote the offer an hour after we saw it - bought it, and sold house #1 for 2.4x what we bought it for. We renovated house #2 for 6 months while we finished and detailed #1 and sold it (twice actually. Buyers #1 bailed with hours left on their last contingency - I hope they're miserable)

So, I got by w/ an 11x22' garage and tiny shop for 10 years. The balance of my life will be lived here where I have a full machine and fab shop and room for a project car, a race car, a modest trailer, and indoor space for a 24' rowing shell. I'm minutes from my favorite road bike loop, and 1/2 hour from rowing. The office is 20-25 minutes away.

So - If the house is THE. HOUSE. I'd be a bit picky. If it's livable and a step on the path to dream accommodations, suck it up.

You mean we are supposed to actually look at the house? Crap, I wish someone had told me that. No wonder SWMBO was pissed.

Actually we got lucky. I was looking about the time a board member was ready to sell. I bought Curmudgeons house when he moved back inland. It has a two car garage attached and a 26X26 in the back yard with a concrete drive all the way to the back. The front garage holds all the kids bikes, the lawn mower, golf cart, and crap like that. The back garage is all mine.

Lucky for me the Wife liked the house.

I told my wife to buy whatever she wanted, as long as it was on a corner lot.

I figured, I could always bring a driveway in from the opposite road, and build whatever I wanted at the back of the lot. I built a 30'x40' shop with a second story loft and a 16' cathedral ceiling so I could handle a lift easily.

Having said that, it's not what I would recommend.

Buy an ugly house. Buy it cheap. Fixing it is unlikely to be that hard, as long as the price is low enough to account for the renovations.

I've never met a house that couldn't be fixed if there was enough in the budget.

Datsun310Guy wrote: I left a nice 2-1/2 car 25'x25' well lit detached garage for a 18' x 20' single light bulb attached garage. I went with the house the wife wanted more than a giant garage. Wife = #1.

Yup. Happy wife = happy husband. Well, that's the goal anyway My wife and I were blessed. She got a new house with Amish oak trim/cabinets, I got a garage that's bigger than the house.

I wanted a two car garage. She wanted 5 acres. I got a single detached with a workshop above. Property is .98 acres. Was are minimum requirements. I've been jonesing for a new garage at the top of the driveway while we've redone the bath, the kitchen, the living room, and the dining room. Oh yeah, and the backyard patios. Yes, two of them. Right now I'd settle for a car port on the side of the single car for winter storage of the Vette. How expensive is a concrete slab anyway?

Best of luck. Be picky. For her sake. Happy wife, happy life.

http://www.carproperty.com/

I'll take that Alfa off your hands then you can get a smaller garage, it is sweet. Of course so is the VeeDub. Nice.

You both need to come up with a list of the bare minimum stuff you each require. If the sum of your requirements exceeds your budget you BOTH need to comprise on what you BOTH require individually so a house meeting the sum of both of your requierements can be meet. If that compromise is buying enough space AND securing funding up front for building your cave and the house meets her needs then great. If that compromise is buying a dog house that already has your cave and securing funding upfront to fix the house then that works. Only the TWO of you together can decide what home situation will make you both happy longterm.

This method is how my wife and I have bought our houses. It's worked well for us so far and we both are happy with how much we have spent and the houses we've owned. Neither house has been our Individual perfect house but it has been the best compromise of what we each want in our price range.

Remember that in a marriage you both should put high importance on each others desires. If you can't hold her needs in high regard why should she hold yours?

I got tired of weeding through crap that didn't have enough workshop space, so I ended up doing my search on realty.com with the only requirement being 3+ garages, 1+ acres, and the general area I wanted. From that relatively small list, I then found a house we both like and bought it.

Motomoron- that is a dream... great grab. We bought a place with an 8000 sqft lot in Arlington (DC area), no garage, but good flat lot. My original design for a 24x32 garage became 16x20 with a loft. Compromises, man. Ideally, I would have a 16x20 shop and a 20x20 garage, but this one is serviceable until I get out of the military and when (if) we ever find more permanent digs.

I wanted 3 beds, and a basement with at least 2 car and not on too much property.
I am not a "yardwork guy" in any way. Here in this small town area one acre tends to be the minimum for houses that are not in an association. We also wanted a house with character.

Net result was 2450 sqft but only two bed. No basement but a concrete floored, 2450 sqft, 4ft tall crawl space that houses the furnaces and hot water heaters with sump pumps and full lighting. 3 car garage with hot and cold water spiket inside and floor drains. You could actually wash a car inside (like in the winter) with warm water if you wanted. One full wall of cabnetry which includes counter space and built in deep sink. Unfortunately, short ceilings. My entire 3 car garage has a ornately textured drywall ceiling. Overkill in my book but white walls, white ceiling and white cabinets and good lighting for bright.
Small yard by local standards at .65 acre. A quarter of the .65 acre is covered by house, a quarter by concrete leaving a quarter as front yard and a quarter as back yard. Set back off the main road down a shared private drive with the 18th fairway in the back yard. I own the whole driveway. In the deed I give easement to the neighbor place to use the drive and in return the court record states that the other place must plow it and maintain the concrete.

Now, I have been here a year and what I have learned is that I still have yet to put a single car in the garage inthat an additional garage door is not a real substitute for a real basement and a crawl space is also no substitute for a real basement.

I also learned that what I bought was a real compromise but I love the place dearly.
A golf course makes for a great neighbor in that they do all the work and I get all the view. They do not do the work in my yard but they do a hell of a good job with their own yard.
I mentioned association and even on the course I am not tied to an assoc and not required to be a member (which I am not.) We are in a township (not an incorporated city) so in Ohio that means loose zoning and best of all, no income tax to pay to a city(still pay state income tax.)

Man up

I LOL'd when I saw this thread, as we're going through this right now. We closed on the sale of our old house in May, and we have an accepted offer on what looks to be our future house. The previous house had no real garage, but we had a 20'X10' temporary garage on a pressure-treated wood platform for several years while we lived there. We took it down last fall in anticipation of selling the house.

The first house we looked at had a three car, 34'X28' garage, and very high ceilings. However, the house itself was a disaster! We've probably looked at 30-40 houses, and that first one was the only one with what I would consider a perfect garage. The one we have an accepted offer on has a 21X22, two bay, attached garage. At this point, though, I'm thrilled to have any garage! The house was the only one we look at that had every one of our "must-haves" and a really good chunk of our "nice-to-haves."

One of our must-haves was that the house needed to have enough property that we could add a detached garage later on. Thankfully, this property definitely gives us the opportunity to do that. Now it's just a matter of saving up for one!

I'd say go with the best house/property that meets your needs, but try to get something that gives you the ability to add something later.

DILYSI Dave wrote: I got tired of weeding through crap that didn't have enough workshop space, so I ended up doing my search on realty.com with the only requirement being 3+ garages, 1+ acres, and the general area I wanted. From that relatively small list, I then found a house we both like and bought it.

^This, we've used the same realtor for our last 2 houses. She tries real hard but invariably I find the homes I want and get her to show them to us.

Most of our hunt this last round was like the OPs found some great places with massive detached garages/pole barns but the houses were almost always terrible. Wife really had a pool at the top of her list. Large, preferably detached garage at the top of mine. 1+ acre on both lists. Found a place in our budget on 5 acres with a pole barn big enough to drive my schoolbus inside and turn around. In the rear it had an office on the left, a full bath on the right and a tool crib in the middle. Fully plumbed with hardlines for air, just add compressor. Back yard had a beautiful inground pool and amazing deckwork/poolhouse around it.

But the house....it would have been a gut job. I was up for it but SWMBO has not lived in a construction zone and wasn't ready to start.

In the end we found a decent place on an acre, no pool but a 4 car attached garage. I got the lighter end of the compromise this time.

You are in a good position, you have time, you have to just keep looking. Our last 2 searches took over 6 months each, we drive our realtor nuts and she earns every cent working with us.

Dare I even ask how much houses like that go for in your neck of the woods?

My only requirement was a man cave and two car garage (it's our first house). I got both and a bedroom for my office.

The aftermath of the move has scarred the wifey (mumbles of "a cold day in hell" are heard when I talk about upsizing for a bigger lot 10-15yrs from now). . . so I may get to build a nice 30ishx30ish in backyard a few years down the road

Jaynen wrote: Dare I even ask how much houses like that go for in your neck of the woods?

I see from your profile that you are in Oceanside. I assume the San Diego County Oceanside?
If yes and if this question is aimed at me, the answer would likely make you fall off your chair but in short, my payment to own is likely equal to half of the rent of a good two bed apt near you.