How much is a private driveway worth?

lookstraightahead

I really find the whole issue of having a driveway a bit old fashioned. You don't 'need' a driveway as a general rule. It's a bit like having a bath in the bathroom. Some  want one, others don't really see the point.

mi-key

lookstraightahead said:

I really find the whole issue of having a driveway a bit old fashioned. You don't 'need' a driveway as a general rule. It's a bit like having a bath in the bathroom. Some  want one, others don't really see the point.

It depends where you live. In lots of areas on street parking is a nightmare. Houses now typically have two cars, and if older kids are living at home, which is more and more common, then you can have three or four cars for a house that was designed to have one on street parking place out front.

The convenience of being able to park both your cars on a driveway right by your door is a big selling point for a lot of people. 

[Deleted User]

lookstraightahead said:

With so many people living in flats etc, the whole electric car thing will be sorted. You won't need a driveway to charge a car, in the same way as you don't need a stable to keep your horse and cart, or a huge room to keep your videos in. Or a tank for your water. Or a meeting room for a staff meeting. Or a floppy disk. Etc. Space needs to be utilised in a better way so driveways will feel really old fashioned in the future, and a waste of space/resource.

It's the UK. When do we ever sort these things out?

Look at the parking situation. It's Mad Max in many parts of the country. Far from being sorted, it's actually getting worse.

You would be mad to trust this to be worked out.

MobileSaver

lookstraightahead said:

You won't need a driveway to charge a car, in the same way as you don't need a stable to keep your horse and cart ... driveways will feel really old fashioned in the future, and a waste of space/resource.

If you could go back in time would you get rid of your stable ten years before most people had a car?

Land becomes more precious every day, rather than old-fashioned I think driveways will become a premium, luxury item in the future; where else are you going to land your flying car of the future?

tooldle

[Deleted User] said:

lookstraightahead said:

With so many people living in flats etc, the whole electric car thing will be sorted. You won't need a driveway to charge a car, in the same way as you don't need a stable to keep your horse and cart, or a huge room to keep your videos in. Or a tank for your water. Or a meeting room for a staff meeting. Or a floppy disk. Etc. Space needs to be utilised in a better way so driveways will feel really old fashioned in the future, and a waste of space/resource.

It's the UK. When do we ever sort these things out?

Look at the parking situation. It's Mad Max in many parts of the country. Far from being sorted, it's actually getting worse.

You would be mad to trust this to be worked out.

Provisioning of charging points for electric cars is definitely being worked out. Councils are on it both with identifying residential areas that will need points installing and in some cases preparatory works already started. 
The UK is a car obsessed country.

GDB2222

Spurs1711 said:

I’m buying a house now with no driveway. The first thing I will be doing is getting one installed. Most of the houses on the road have done it and I have read it will add 20k value to the house on average. Wether that is true or not, I don’t know but it’s invaluable to me and this is potentially a forever home so we’ll worth and if I do sell I’ll make over 10k extra so win win

You would think that the potential to add a driveway would have been factored into the price of the house. 

Why would someone sell the house £20k more cheaply, if a simple £5k driveway would add back that value? And, even if they did, surely there would then be a queue of buyers seeing the potential and pushing the price up?

Is there really such a thing as a free lunch?

GDB2222

[Deleted User] said:

lookstraightahead said:

With so many people living in flats etc, the whole electric car thing will be sorted. You won't need a driveway to charge a car, in the same way as you don't need a stable to keep your horse and cart, or a huge room to keep your videos in. Or a tank for your water. Or a meeting room for a staff meeting. Or a floppy disk. Etc. Space needs to be utilised in a better way so driveways will feel really old fashioned in the future, and a waste of space/resource.

It's the UK. When do we ever sort these things out?

Look at the parking situation. It's Mad Max in many parts of the country. Far from being sorted, it's actually getting worse.

You would be mad to trust this to be worked out.

Between 2000 and 2020, the number of cars on the road in the uk went up 20%. That trend may change if car pooling becomes more widespread, but there’s no sign of it yet. In the meantime, I guess, parking issues will get worse, not better.

Slinky

We have a drive where we park our two cars. We've had a lot of building work done over the past year which has meant having a skip and a portaloo on the drive, and it being used as an unloading area for all the materials, a workspace for the builders, etc. In the meantime we've had to park our cars on the street, not a problem overnight, but the nearby park means that in the summer, when you go out in the day, you're not sure where you're going to be able to park when you get back. It brought home to me the value of our drive.

As for being 'old fashioned' words fail me........ I suppose one could always dig up the drive and have a nice front garden instead if that poster finds a drive so offensive.

Section62

tooldle said:

rigolith said:

lookstraightahead said:

With so many people living in flats etc, the whole electric car thing will be sorted. You won't need a driveway to charge a car, in the same way as you don't need a stable to keep your horse and cart, or a huge room to keep your videos in. Or a tank for your water. Or a meeting room for a staff meeting. Or a floppy disk. Etc. Space needs to be utilised in a better way so driveways will feel really old fashioned in the future, and a waste of space/resource.

It's the UK. When do we ever sort these things out?

Look at the parking situation. It's Mad Max in many parts of the country. Far from being sorted, it's actually getting worse.

You would be mad to trust this to be worked out.

Provisioning of charging points for electric cars is definitely being worked out. Councils are on it both with identifying residential areas that will need points installing and in some cases preparatory works already started. 
The UK is a car obsessed country.

The real issue here is that councils can't install on-street charging points if the parking doesn't exist in the first place.

Charging facilities will also indirectly regulate on-street parking far more than it currently is.  To a degree rigolith's 'Mad Max' comment absolutely describes the parking situation in some locations.  Councils know that if they introduce parking restrictions (e.g. footway parking bans, double yellow lines) it will reduce the availability of on-street parking, in some cases to an unacceptable degree.  In a situation like this the council will often take a hands-off approach and not regulate the parking, beyond dealing with any specific complaints about obstruction.

Providing on-street charging points regulates parking in the sense there has to be some degree of alignment between the postion of charging points and the positions cars will park.  At present the typical approach is to provide a parking bay to the standard dimensions, which is significantly longer than some cars need.  Whereas currently the residents in the street might manage the parking organically (i.e. small cars take up less space and fill smaller gaps), the provision of regulated bays with charging points fixes the total number of parking spaces at a number less than typically is possible through unregulated parking.

Councils can look the other way and ignore parking problems.  What they can't do is install a charging point (or mark a parking place) in a position where use of that point/bay would be dangerous or unlawful.

Up and down the country councils will have to start looking at areas of land like the grass triangle on the OP's sketch and consider how best to fit additional parking spaces onto it.  Someone buying a house in the corner imagining that they will have a green space buffer between them and the road forever would need to appreciate that as public space, pressure from other residents may result in the green becoming just another car park.

There is also another point which hasn't really been addressed in the thread.  The issue here is not just about charging an EV.  Increasingly it looks like the UK's energy future will involve a lot more storage of electricity generated when it is possible/cheap, and avoiding buying electricity at times of shortage/high cost.

Some people will invest in a "Powerwall" type installation.  Others will find it more economic to have their EV plugged in at home when not in use and for the vehicle's batteries to be used both as somewhere to store 'cheap' energy and as a source to power their home (and the grid) at times of high demand/cost.

If/when that happens, people without a driveway will be missing out.  How much that facility might add to the value of a property isn't something I'd take a guess at, but I can see it potentially being something of considerable value.

tooldle

Section62 said:

tooldle said:

rigolith said:

lookstraightahead said:

With so many people living in flats etc, the whole electric car thing will be sorted. You won't need a driveway to charge a car, in the same way as you don't need a stable to keep your horse and cart, or a huge room to keep your videos in. Or a tank for your water. Or a meeting room for a staff meeting. Or a floppy disk. Etc. Space needs to be utilised in a better way so driveways will feel really old fashioned in the future, and a waste of space/resource.

It's the UK. When do we ever sort these things out?

Look at the parking situation. It's Mad Max in many parts of the country. Far from being sorted, it's actually getting worse.

You would be mad to trust this to be worked out.

Provisioning of charging points for electric cars is definitely being worked out. Councils are on it both with identifying residential areas that will need points installing and in some cases preparatory works already started. 
The UK is a car obsessed country.

The real issue here is that councils can't install on-street charging points if the parking doesn't exist in the first place.

Charging facilities will also indirectly regulate on-street parking far more than it currently is.  To a degree rigolith's 'Mad Max' comment absolutely describes the parking situation in some locations.  Councils know that if they introduce parking restrictions (e.g. footway parking bans, double yellow lines) it will reduce the availability of on-street parking, in some cases to an unacceptable degree.  In a situation like this the council will often take a hands-off approach and not regulate the parking, beyond dealing with any specific complaints about obstruction.

Providing on-street charging points regulates parking in the sense there has to be some degree of alignment between the postion of charging points and the positions cars will park.  At present the typical approach is to provide a parking bay to the standard dimensions, which is significantly longer than some cars need.  Whereas currently the residents in the street might manage the parking organically (i.e. small cars take up less space and fill smaller gaps), the provision of regulated bays with charging points fixes the total number of parking spaces at a number less than typically is possible through unregulated parking.

Councils can look the other way and ignore parking problems.  What they can't do is install a charging point (or mark a parking place) in a position where use of that point/bay would be dangerous or unlawful.

Up and down the country councils will have to start looking at areas of land like the grass triangle on the OP's sketch and consider how best to fit additional parking spaces onto it.  Someone buying a house in the corner imagining that they will have a green space buffer between them and the road forever would need to appreciate that as public space, pressure from other residents may result in the green becoming just another car park.

There is also another point which hasn't really been addressed in the thread.  The issue here is not just about charging an EV.  Increasingly it looks like the UK's energy future will involve a lot more storage of electricity generated when it is possible/cheap, and avoiding buying electricity at times of shortage/high cost.

Some people will invest in a "Powerwall" type installation.  Others will find it more economic to have their EV plugged in at home when not in use and for the vehicle's batteries to be used both as somewhere to store 'cheap' energy and as a source to power their home (and the grid) at times of high demand/cost.

If/when that happens, people without a driveway will be missing out.  How much that facility might add to the value of a property isn't something I'd take a guess at, but I can see it potentially being something of considerable value.

You'll notice that i did not mention 'on street parking' in my comment. Solutions are tailored to the local environment. Part of the solution is letting go of the idea of travel necessitating car ownership.