I am not sure if it is code in your area or not...but I would expect that it could be. My house has a large garage and has an entry/exit door, and our house is 22 years old. Our door is at the back of the garage and opposite of the door going into the house. I think it is a good idea to have another escape route out of the garage. Since all the other houses have this door it makes sense that yours should.

Casey
"Sean McDonagh Racing"

If it is new construction, can you just look at the floorplan of that model and see if it had a door? Maybe they just 'forget' it? If the plan shows it, I would talk to the builder and ask them what happened to the door shown in the plan.

How funny, I never thought about this before I read your post. Our house, which is 9 years old ,also does not have an exit from the garage except the overhead garage doors. My mother has one in her 50 year old house, but it never even occurred to me to look for that when we were house hunting. Ummmm, now I am going to have to check out the other houses in our neighborhood.

I had a house, newer construction, with a 3 car garage and no exit beyond the overhead doors. I suppose it met code but in your case, check with your local building code folks. They should be happy to answer your questions and fine the heck out of the builder if he screwed up. ;-)

Generally it's pretty easy to add a door if you want one.

Hmmm....I can see this being nice. As far as an escape, could you not run back into the home and out the front door? Are tehre windows in the garage? In ours. there would be no place to fit a door...

Is this a detached garage? If so, ever seen a post, "After electrical storm, our garage door openers quit working. How do we get in?"

in our new construction it was an extra that could be added. I never understood having one - it just becomes more more entrance that you need to secure or at least worry about.

I think it's essential for safety, overhead doors fail and jam all the time, and not everyone in all circumstances can lift a door manually (or knows how) if the power goes out.

"I never understood having one - it just becomes more more entrance that you need to secure or at least worry about."

If there is a garage door opener you will not be able to open the door without electric power, or access to the inside of the garage to disconnect the door from the opener.

A very few models of openers used to have a key lock in the door to allow disconnecting the door from the opener from outside, but they do not seem very common.

The key lock in the door is an accessory that is readily available and will work with any opener.

"The key lock in the door is an accessory that is readily available and will work with any opener."

Not the crappy one previous owner left in my place.

You have to remove a hitch pin to disengage the traveler.

Oops sorry. I forgot about that elusive exception to the rule.

Not all new construction homes in Arizona are built with side entry doors anymore. I don't quite understand it and seems like a potential fire trap. What if the garage caught fire with someone in it and the door entering the house was locked? Sure, you might be able to remotely open the overhead if you could find the remote in time or manually pull it open, but how long could that take? Not everyone is capable of lifting up those heavy doors. I see many homes in the community where I live that don't have side doors. Buyers usually don't notice until they move in and go to take the trash out (usually through the garage).