by Stuart Leavenworth
The Sacramento Bee Ever since the first suburb was built, the yawning maw of the American garage has served as a barometer of financial prosperity.
First these garages held one car. Then two. Then three. Now, in a superheated economy, the garage is undergoing a new era of expansion. In subdivisions around Sacramento and elsewhere, home buyers are increasingly demanding four-car garages, and many are finding them.
"If there is a four-car garage available, people want them," said Carolyn Agostini, who sells homes in Davis, a town hardly known for its worship of the automobile. "People have a lot of toys these days--boats, jet skis, lawn mowers--so there is a big demand for it."
"Big" is the word for these garages. Some top 1,000 square feet--larger than a typical apartment. Their radio-controlled entrances are wide enough for a Ford Expedition, deep enough for a squash court.
Realtors say they are selling well. In a matter of months, agents have sold 10 out of 13 homes featuring four-car garages at JMC Homes in Laguna Park. In Roseville's Highland Reserve subdivision, Warmington Homes has sold 20 percent of its homes to people seeking four-car garages. At El Macero in Davis, the figure is close to 25 percent.
"There is definitely an increased interest in four-car garages," said Marilyn Fierro, who manages sales for JMC Homes in Sacramento. People are buying more cars, boats and other stuff, she noted. And there are other causes for the garage bulge.
"Children are staying at home longer, so they need a space for their car," said Fierro, who owns a quadra-car garage in Roseville. "In some subdivisions, you also have CC&Rs (restrictive covenants) that prevent homeowners from parking their cars on the street."
Then there is the testosterone factor. Men love garages. After all, where else can a guy put his boat? His John Deere mower? His miter saw? His shop vac?
"Generally, it is a guy thing," said Bill Sampson, a mortgage broker who bought a home with a four-car garage this year at a Davis subdivision, the Warmington Collection at El Macero. "Guys have a lot of tools and stuff. We need a place to put it all."
For years, behemoth garages have been an option for the rich. Microsoft's Bill and Melinda Gates, for instance, have garage space for 17 cars in their $56 million mansion near Seattle. Lately, though, more and more middle-income home buyers are trying to keep up with the Gateses.
Earlier this year, elementary schoolteacher Max Karl and his wife felt they had outgrown their 1,600-square-foot house in Elk Grove, which had a puny 2 1/2-car garage. So, for $230,000, the couple bought a 2,600-square-foot house in Laguna West that came with a detached four-car garage.
Now Karl has plenty of room for his 20-foot boat, his Dodge Ram truck, his wife's Saturn wagon, tools, bikes and other sports gear. The 600-square-foot garage also has a doggy door, which means that his two pets have the biggest doghouse on the block.
"Without a doubt, the garage was a big selling point," said Karl, who teaches physical education. "If we hadn't found this lot and this garage, we wouldn't have bought this home."
Not everyone is thrilled about this trend. For years, architects and urbanists have criticized how multidoored garages tend to dominate the streetscape of new suburbs, sometimes revealing a distasteful display of people's possessions.
"Anyone who goes down the street gets a view of garage shelves stocked with auto supplies, washer-dryers against the garage back walls, bicycles hanging from the ceiling, lawn mower, refrigerators, boxes full of household goods and other effluvia of the consumer age," complains Philip Langdon, author of the book A Better Place to Live. "It's as if a succession of enormous messy closets had been opened to public inspection."
Others complain that garages are eating up more and more real estate, adding to problems of sprawl. "It's a sign of the mega-materialism that is going on," said Eric Brown, who works for a Washington nonprofit group called The Center for the New American Dream. "If one is good, 10 is better. If big is good, then enormous is even better."
Brown says developers and real estate brokers are partly to blame. But the real culprit, in his view, is the country's mass-media culture that encourages ever-increasing consumption.
"People are getting the message from all over. That their Christmas table is no good if it doesn't look as good as Martha Stewart's. That their garage is not good unless it is as big as a basketball court."
Get over it, responds the real estate industry. Times are good. Lifestyles are changing. People need more storage space. The two-car garage is a dinosaur. In fact , half of the 1,082 home models being sold around Sacramento now include three-car or larger garages, according to the New Home Network, an online shopping service.
"Isn't it crazy?" said Agostini, who recently sold all 14 homes in El Macero that featured four-car garages. "First there was one, then two, then three. It makes you wonder where it will stop."
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)
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