Glamorous Garages and Beautiful Barns: The New Must-Have Amenities

Luxury homes with decked-out family rooms, kitchens, primary bedrooms and bathrooms are standard today and practically a given. The latest mania, however, has owners glamming up their often overlooked garages and barns.

Called “toy barns,” “barndominiums” and “toy garages” in real estate circles and by the amenity-obsessed set, these functional spaces are being repurposed into gleaming showrooms filled with pricey outdoor gear—think ATVs, snowmobiles, electric bikes, boats and more.

Sitting areas, bars and diversions such as pool tables also figure in and turn barns and garages into entertainment venues that become a hub for owners to socialize with family and friends.

Take Jeff Collins, founder of Glennwood Custom Builders in Charlevoix, Michigan, for example. His lakefront home features a 2,500-square-foot barn with a lounging space, sleds, dirt bikes, a card table and a basketball hoop. The back doors open into a yard with a shooting range. “My friends come over a lot, and we hang the whole time in the barn,” Collins said. “We drink beers, play around with the equipment and shoot hoops. I can’t remember the last time we actually went into the house.”

A rendering of a toy barn in the still-in-construction Legacy Ranch in McCall, Idaho.
Courtesy Whitetail Club

Barndominiums like his are the craze in his town, according to Collins.

“They’re what everyone wants,” he said. “I’m building two for homes in my neighborhood and have inquiries for more.”

An Amenity That’s Gaining Popularity

Real estate agents and brokers who focus on upscale homes also report an increasing interest in toy barns and say that a property that offers one can attract more buyers than a listing with typical amenities such as swimming pools and wine cellars.

Timothy Di Prizito, the CEO of The Di Prizito Group & DPG Estates at Christie’s International Real Estate/AKG in Los Angeles, for instance, said that showpiece barns and garages are becoming a more popular feature in luxury homes, particularly in new construction properties.

“Wealthy owners are investing in turning their homes into resorts. It started with building commercial-sized gyms and onsite spa facilities,” he said. “Today, it’s all about having onsite entertainment annexes and auto galleries. They give a property a distinct edge.”

Di Prizito is currently selling a property called Bella Vista in Montecito for $70 million that features an estimated 32-car collection garage. Originally designed as a helicopter hangar, the space has vaulted ceilings, epoxy flooring and a second level with two studio apartments.

Patrick Nesbitt, the CEO and chairman of the real estate development company Windsor Capital Group, owns the estate with his wife, Ursula, and said his family regularly uses the space. “We’ll have friends over for dinner there and loan it to charities to host events. We even had my son’s wedding party in the garage and transformed it into a beautiful reception ballroom,” he said.

The outdoor gear changes with the season at Aspen Valley Ranch.
Courtesy Aspen Valley Ranch

Nesbitt is selling Bella Vista, he said, because his children have moved out, and he wants to downsize.

Another home with a toy space is currently for sale in Honokaa, Hawaii, asking $7.4 million. Its 3,300-square-foot freestanding barn is solar-powered and is where owners Matthew and Susan Russell display their stash of luxury gear such as life-size model airplanes, ATVs and motorcycles.

“We had many happy memories in the barn spending time with our grandchildren and friends,” Matthew said. The couple is selling the home, he said, to settle full-time in Sedona.

A Perk Not Reserved For Houses

Eye-candy barns and garages are also becoming more common in upscale residential developments.

Martis Camp, set on 2,177 acres in Truckee, California, in North Lake Tahoe, has several homes with what Brian Hull, president and broker at Martis Camp Realty, refers to as “activity garages.” They typically house snowmobiles, ATVs, motorcycles, boats and ski equipment. “Our community has access to a 26-mile trail network through national forest land and the mountains, so owners amass a lot of gear,” Hull said.

More developments are highlighting their toy storage areas as an amenity for all residents to enjoy, in the same vein as a fitness centre or clubhouse.

Tributary, a private club community in Teton Valley, Idaho, offers a recreation barn stocked with gear like paddleboards, fishing gear, rafts and snowshoes. And in McCall, Idaho, the still-in-construction Legacy Ranch, set within the existing Whitetail Club, hopes to entice potential buyers by giving them the option and the designs to build homes with toy barns.

“The lots at Whitetail Club are less than two acres, and owners don’t have space on their properties to store all their outdoor equipment, which they are asking for more and more,” said Whitetail Club’s head of development Dan Scott. “Several have told me that they want to upgrade to Legacy Club for the sole purpose of having a toy barn.”

Then there’s Aspen Valley Ranch in Aspen, Colorado, a development with homes starting at $15 million. According to vice president Simon Chen, the 5,000-square-foot two-story toy barn is the heart of the community’s action.

The equipment in the building changes seasonally. During warmer months, that means top-of-the-line dirt bikes, four-wheelers and a fleet of regular and e-mountain bikes. Come winter, the barn is stocked with six snowmobiles, four-wheelers with tracks to navigate through snow, snowshoes and sleds.

A rendering of a toy barn in the still-in-construction Legacy Ranch.
Courtesy Whitetail Club

Residents can also avail of the barn’s second floor, featuring a games area with ping-pong and pool tables and classic arcade games such as Pac-Man and Skee-Ball. The adjoining bar, lined with premium wine, and spirits such as Macallan 18-year scotch and Clase Azul Ultra tequila, retailing for close to $2,000 a bottle, is a big attraction for residents, Chen said. “Our owners are welcome to enjoy the alcohol for no charge,” he said. “Our development has a gorgeous swimming pool and spa and a massive gym, but the barn is where they most want to be.”

This article originally appeared on Mansion Global.

A historic Barbados estate with a 300-year-old villa and 11 acres overlooking the Caribbean Sea is now for sale with a guide price of $22.5 million.

The seller is Kit Braden, chairman of the U.K. branch of French beauty empire L’Occitane Group, whose family has spent every winter for the last 13 years at the island property, known as Fustic Estate.

“It’s very much a family house,” Braden said. “We love having a lot of people there. It’s a collection point to keep everyone together.”

The main villa dates to 1712, though it’s been reimagined and expanded substantially over the years.

It spans 13,000 square feet and features seven en suite bedrooms across three wings, as well as expansive verandas, stone courtyards and rows of louvered doors in gay Caribbean pastels.

In the 1970s, when the home was owned by Charles Graves—brother of British poet Robert Graves—it was reimagined by stage designer Oliver Messel, one of the foremost theater designers of the last century. Messel expanded the home, added a lagoon pool with a natural waterfall and other theatrical features, according to Braden.

“The whole place is a little bit magical,” he said.

The home sits about 350 feet above the water, and surrounded by lush gardens that slope towards the water.

“We look down through our garden—which is about 12 acres of tropical gardens and palm trees and wonderful old mahogany trees—onto the Caribbean,” Braden said.

He and his wife first saw the property on New Year’s Eve 2013, during a quick trip from where they were staying in Grenada.

The couple spent an hour walking the perimeter, some of it still untouched jungle, in the pouring rain.

“By the time we got back, I had fallen in love with it,” Braden said.

His wife, however, wasn’t so sure. But in Braden’s telling, a second visit in sunnier weather with two of their children brought her around.

“She had to be talked into that it was a jolly good idea; now she absolutely loves it,” he said.

When they bought the property, the edge that runs along the waterfront was a jungle, so they cleared the ridge and transformed it into gardens.

They also bought an additional sea-level parcel with two beach cottages, giving the property direct access to the water and the town below via a five-minute walk.

The property also has a 15-person staff, a reflecting pond, an outdoor pavilion suitable for yoga and a commercial grade kitchen that can serve more than 100 guests, according to a brochure from Knight Frank, which posted the listing in March. They did not provide further comment.

For Braden, the property is special because of its natural beauty, its proximity to the town of Saint Lucy and its history—which dates way way back to when the island of Barbados was first formed via tectonic activity.

“It was basically tectonic plates that collided about a million years ago so the seabed is the top of the hill,” Braden said. “We’re on coral rock.”

As a result, Fustic Estate includes an extensive network of caves that were likely used by the Arawaks, a Venezuelan fishing tribe that followed the fish to these islands about a thousand years ago.

“If the fish were good they’d camp here,” Braden said. “There’s evidence that they stayed there in those caves, they lived there in good winters.”

Now it’s someone else’s turn to live on the land shared by Arawaks, the plantation owners of 1712, Charles Graves and the Braden brood.

Glamorous Garages and Beautiful Barns: The New Must-Have Amenities

Kit Braden, an executive at French beauty empire L’Occitane, has spent every winter for the past 13 years at the stone vacation home.