When he renovated his home in San Diego, Wes Wasson made some new additions: a Tuscan-themed, ruggedly elegant suite with a master bedroom, two smaller bedrooms, a bathroom, a great room and two private decks with ocean views. Downstairs is the garage—home to a Lexus LX-470 SUV, bike racks, yoga mats and assorted sporting equipment.
Mr. Wasson spent a good chunk of his high six-figure renovation budget on this apartment for guests above the garage. “The subcontractors joked about how it was nicer than some of their homes,” says Mr. Wasson, 49, a former high-tech executive who moved from Silicon Valley.
The garage apartment once had a downscale aura (think of the leather-clad Fonzie’s abode above the Cunninghams’ garage on “Happy Days”). Now, say architects and designers, as much thought is going into building and renovating living spaces above the garage as for the main house in many high-end, custom projects.
It has become a panacea for modern housing issues. For members of the so-called Sandwich Generation, garage apartments are a place to house their aging parents and boomerang adult kids at a time when continually rising housing prices and rents make it tough to find other arrangements.
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More stringent building codes in many cities have made going up the only way to get an extra room, while the rise of home-letting services like Airbnb makes having a rentable space more valuable for resale. Often people put in a garage apartment first and live in it for a few years while they build their main house, architects say.
Nils Finne of Finne Architects in Seattle says he has had many more requests about spaces over the garage in recent years. When he posted a photo on Houzz.com recently of a $350,000 detached garage apartment he designed for a client, it was downloaded more than 12,000 times; he started getting scores of emails from people asking to buy the plans.
Tim Shigley, the chairman of the National Association of Home Builders’ remodelers council, says garage apartments tend to be about 400 square feet; the cost of the projects he has done range from $75,000 (usually an existing, attached garage so there are no extra hard costs like heating and air systems) to $200,000, depending on the level of the finishes.
It takes about 10 years to recoup the cost of adding living space above the garage, say contractors, but since the project adds another bedroom and about 10% more square footage, it is beneficial to future sales prices.
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Mary Nunan, 65, and her husband, Terence, 67, an attorney, are including an apartment above the garage at the new home they are building on a 3.8-acre lot on Bainbridge Island, Wash. The Nunans, who currently live in Los Angeles, have two sons, one of whom is autistic, and they want a space where either he or his caretaker can live long term.
The 700-square-foot space above the garage will have an elevator. The Nunans say the apartment will have the same luxury finishes as the main house they’re planning and will cost about $300 a square foot.
Since the apartment will be connected to the house with a door that can be locked and will also have a separate entrance, Mrs. Nunan feels confident that they would recoup their investment if they ever sold the property. She notes that the space could be used for many purposes: teenagers, adults, kids, in-laws, nannies.
When Chris Brennig, 48, a physician and his wife, Nicole, 38, an attorney, built their 5,000-square-foot home in downtown Austin two years ago, zoning restrictions meant they had to go up rather than out for more space.
They put in a 550-square-foot bedroom with its own living area, bathroom and kitchenette above an existing two-car garage, a project that cost about $120,000. It’s where their relatives now stay when they visit and where their kids, 8 and 6, have sleepovers with their older cousins. It’s also where Dr. Brennig goes to escape and watch golf.
When Julie Daugherty, 58, moved with her husband to a new home in Minneapolis, she discovered she had a chemical sensitivity to the home’s insulation. It got so bad, she started sleeping in her car in the driveway every night.
Eventually, she and her husband arrived at a solution: They hired an architect and a designer to create an apartment above their three-car garage. The garage apartment, which has a bedroom and full kitchen and fireplace, features custom cabinets, marble countertops, hardwood floors, radiant heating and space for an elevator when they get older.
The couple slept there for two years while they replaced the insulation in the main home. Now her daughter Meghan, 33, and her husband occasionally stay there while they renovate a home they recently bought. Mrs. Daugherty declined to comment on the cost of the apartment.
These spaces have their shortcomings. Large home builders have jumped on the trend of “multigenerational” houses in the past few years, offering suites for parents and in-laws, but they rarely put these extra rooms above the garage. Unless there’s an elevator, the apartments are hard for aging parents to access.
Kim Ashbaugh, director of home builder Lennar’s “Next Gen” brand, says the company mainly offers above-garage spaces in Miami, where international buyers tend to use them for either rentals or visitors, rather than older relatives.
Mr. Wasson in San Diego says he built his garage guesthouse in part to accommodate guests who might not be able to afford an oceanfront getaway. He dubbed it “AirBNFree” because he lets friends of friends use it; about a third of the time he’s never met the people who are staying there.
Mr. Wasson left his job as chief marketing officer of Citrix to run a social-enterprise startup that aims to use technology to help alleviate poverty in Africa.
He says the guest space contributes to his goal of helping others, but his gets something out of it too. “It’s a wonderful thing to meet new people and hear their stories,” he says.