For a long time, we’ve been taught to think about investments in pretty simple terms.

What does it cost today? What will it be worth tomorrow? What kind of return can I make?

Those are obviously important questions. But I think we’re entering a time where there’s another question worth asking:

What does this investment actually add to my life?

That question is a big part of why I believe garage condos — and communities built around them — have such an interesting future.

We Have More Ways to Connect Than Ever. Somehow, We’re Less Connected.

One of the lasting changes from the COVID era wasn’t just where we worked or how much stuff we ordered online. It changed how comfortable we became living life from home.

Work from home. Food delivered to the house. Amazon at the front door. Movies streamed to the living room. Meetings on Zoom.

A lot of those conveniences are great. I use them too.

But somewhere along the way, we lost some of the places and reasons that naturally brought people together.

That isn’t just a feeling. The U.S. Surgeon General has called social disconnection a serious public-health concern and specifically identified the built environment and physical community spaces as part of the solution. The advisory recommends investing in local institutions and designing spaces that encourage people to actually interact with one another.

And the issue hasn’t simply disappeared as the pandemic faded into the background. An analysis of the 2024 Household Pulse Survey found that about 12.7% of American adults reported frequent loneliness and 20.6% reported frequent perceived social isolation.

I think people are hungry for connection again.

Not forced networking events. Not another group chat. Not another social media platform.

Actual connection.

The kind that happens when you’re standing around somebody’s car with a beer in your hand and a conversation starts.

That’s Where Garage Condos Get Interesting

At the most basic level, a garage condo is real estate.

You own a physical space instead of sending another monthly payment to a storage facility or landlord.

And demand for storage itself isn’t exactly disappearing. StorageCafe reports that the United States now has more than 2.2 billion square feet of self-storage space, with roughly one-third of Americans currently using self storage. Another 18% say they intend to use it in the future.

Storage condos take that concept a step further.

Instead of renting a box, you’re buying an asset. Depending on the property and its rules, you may have the ability to customize it, improve it, use it, sell it and potentially build equity in it over time.

That’s an important distinction.

There are obviously no guarantees in real estate. Location matters. Purchase price matters. Supply matters. The quality of the development matters.

But there is something compelling about owning a limited piece of purpose-built real estate that serves a growing lifestyle rather than continually renting space to support that lifestyle.

Even institutional real-estate investors have taken notice of storage-oriented assets. In CBRE’s 2025 U.S. Investor Intentions Survey, self-storage and industrial outdoor storage ranked among the most favored alternative real-estate assets.

That doesn’t mean every garage condo is automatically a great investment.

It does tell us the underlying demand for specialized storage and flexible real estate is very real.

But Cars Change the Equation

This is where I think garage communities become something completely different from storage.

Car culture isn’t dying.

It’s changing generations.

Hagerty surveyed more than 2,000 Americans and found 60% of Gen Z respondents said they were interested in owning a classic car, compared with 31% of Baby Boomers. Thirty-two percent of Gen Z respondents said they had owned or currently owned a classic enthusiast vehicle.

One of the statistics I found most interesting was how people discovered the hobby.

Forty percent said their first exposure to classic and enthusiast cars came from attending car shows.

Think about what that means.

The future of the car hobby isn’t dependent only on cars.

It’s dependent on places where people can experience them.

For decades that might have been the neighborhood garage, the local cruise night, the racetrack, the dealership or the Saturday morning parking lot.

I think garage condo communities can become another version of that.

Except this time, you own part of it.

The Garage Becomes the New Front Porch

This may actually be the part I’m most excited about.

Imagine pulling into your garage on a Saturday morning because you’re going to work on your car.

Your neighbor has his door open.

Someone else is washing theirs.

Another guy is fighting with something that absolutely should have taken 20 minutes and is now entering hour three.

Pretty soon somebody walks over.

Then somebody else does.

Someone orders food.

Cars start moving outside.

And suddenly you’ve got ten people hanging around who had absolutely no plans to hang out that morning.

That’s community.

And we need more of it.

The Surgeon General’s advisory actually uses the term “social infrastructure” to describe the physical places and organizations that help relationships form — parks, libraries, clubs, community organizations and other spaces that naturally bring people together.

I think enthusiast garage communities can be a form of social infrastructure too.

They give adults something we’ve gotten surprisingly bad at creating:

A reason to show up somewhere.

Not because there’s an appointment on the calendar.

Because you want to be there.

That’s a Different Kind of ROI

Could a well-located garage condo appreciate financially over time?

Absolutely.

Could ownership make more sense for some people than paying storage rent indefinitely?

Absolutely.

Could demand grow as cars, boats, RVs, motorcycles and other hobbies compete for increasingly limited space at people’s homes?

I think that’s a very reasonable bet. Current storage trends certainly point toward continued demand for space.

But there’s another return that’s much harder to put into a spreadsheet.

Maybe you finally have somewhere to keep the car you’ve wanted since you were 16.

Maybe your kids come over and work on it with you.

Maybe the guy three doors down becomes one of your best friends.

Maybe someone in the community teaches your son how to weld.

Maybe Tuesday night randomly becomes the night everybody opens their doors, orders pizza and hangs out.

Maybe you buy a piece of real estate and accidentally end up buying yourself a community.

I don’t know what that’s worth.

But I know it’s not zero.

We’re Building More Than Garages

When we started developing the GKR Paddock Club, it would have been easy to look at it simply as a real-estate project.

Build garages. Sell garages. Move on.

But the more we’ve worked on it, the more I’ve realized the buildings themselves aren’t really the most interesting part.

It’s what happens between them.

We’re creating a place for cars, boats, motorcycles, collections, businesses and whatever else our owners are passionate about.

But more importantly, we’re creating a reason for people with common interests to get out of the house and be around each other again.

I think we’re going to see more demand for places like that over the next decade — places that combine ownership with experience and real estate with community.

Because after spending years figuring out how to do almost everything without leaving our homes, maybe the next luxury isn’t convenience.

Maybe it’s belonging.

And if you can own a piece of real estate that gives you both?

That sounds like a pretty good investment to me.