ONCE the family is comfortably housed the second consideration for many home buyers is where to keep the family car.

Most buyers regard a garage as desirable if not essential but few of us actually use our garages to park in.

After the initial honeymoon period of comfortably tucking the car away every night in a cosy dry garage away from the wind, rain and frosts other priorities seem to step in and oust the beloved motor to the driveway or street.

Luckily modern cars don’t seem to rust like the old ones so like New Forest ponies they seem to survive unscathed.

The garage becomes the secure home of household hardware, bikes, toys and the ubiquitous exercise machine.

Many a small business has started in a garage as it seems to have an environment that encourages individual activity away from the relaxations of the house and industrious dads often take refuge there.

It’s a golden rule of garages that they’re never quite big enough.

The older garages, although sometimes very pretty, struggle to accommodate all but the smallest of cars as many of them were only expected to hold an Austin 7 or motorbike with sidecar which were the Mondeos of the 1930s when the first of our housing stock with garages was built.

If you are lucky enough to be planning a garage make it bigger than you need as it will quickly attract all that stuff that you don’t really want but don’t have the heart to throw away.

Moreover, despite repeated fuel scares, the size of the family car continues to grow.

A garage can easily add £10,000 to £20,000 to the value of a home and it is difficult to sell an expensive property without one.

As street parking becomes more restrictive and Ministry clampers roam the streets in search of untaxed or badly parked vehicles the garage will command an increasing premium but I wonder how many will contain cars?

Ron Kennor is general manager of Robinson & Jackson Estate Agencies and can be contacted on 020 8850 7788.