ListingLife
NOV 2009Beyond Parking: Buyers Love Spruced-Up Garages
By Beth D'Addono
Is your garage the place where all that ‘extra-stuff’ you have accumulated over the years finds a home? You may not want to use it as a storage unit for broken lamps, torn running shoes or off-season lawn equipment when it comes time to put your house on the market. It’s time to clean up that clutter!
While 82 percent of homes feature a two-car garage or larger, only 15 percent of owners actually use the space to park their cars in, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
Instead of seeing all of your ‘junk’ when they look into your garage, Homebuyers want to see a clean and organized space! Surprisingly, a nice garage is at the top of their wants list when home searching! According to the National Association of Realtors’ 2007 Profile of Buyers’ Home Feature Preferences, buyers rank an oversized garage above air conditioning and walk-in closets as a must-have feature of their new home. Bigger is better, with two-car garages the baseline. So, to sell your home you better start organizing all that ‘stuff’ in your garage.
“The garage is the new frontier in organizing,” says Barry Izsak, author of Organize Your Garage in No Time. “Thanks to all the home makeover shows, the inside of the house is done. But the garage is like purgatory — stuff gets in there, but it never gets out.”
Izsak recommends thinking of the garage as a mini hardware store — group like things together. If you haven’t used an item in two years, get rid of it. “If you’ve been saying ‘I’ll get this fixed,’ – you won’t. The worst that will happen if you toss it is you might have to repurchase it down the road.”
Chris Kruger, storage pro at The Home Depot, has a few suggestions for getting your garage in shape:
- Make a plan. “Take stock of where you are, what you want to accomplish and what your obstacles are,” he says. “Then create a realistic plan and schedule.”
- Be tough. Dive into clutter, sorting items and getting rid of anything broken or unused for two years. Have a yard sale, donate useful items to charity, recycle and throw out what’s left.
- Spruce up the surfaces. Once you’ve slashed the clutter, move everything (or almost everything) out of the garage for cleaning. Paint the walls and the ceiling so it looks fresh and clean! What about the floor? Paint it with special paints designed to stand up to heat and resist spills.
- Hold Everything. Choosing a storage system depends upon what you’re storing and how much you want to spend. There’s no "one size fits all" solution; instead you may mix and match perforated headboard, shelves,
Anna Marie Fanelli, a designer, is finding more and more clients interested in a fancy garage space. “They want their toys to look good in the space,” says Fanelli, who designed Eddie Murphy’s 2,000-square-foot New Jersey garage.
“Garages don’t have to just be a big mess,” says Fanelli. “They can become very useful spaces that add real value to your home.”
