Secondary (Legal) Suites
North Vancouver is two separate municipalities, and the first question on any project here is which one your lot sits in. The City of North Vancouver and the District of North Vancouver run their own zoning bylaws, their own permit processes and their own coach house programs. Advice that applies in one can be wrong in the other, and plenty of homeowners only discover this after paying for drawings.
The City of North Vancouver covers Lower and Central Lonsdale, Grand Boulevard and Moodyville – denser, smaller lots, more lane access.
The District of North Vancouver covers Lynn Valley, Edgemont, Capilano, Deep Cove and Seymour – larger lots, steeper terrain, more trees.
Secondary suites: both permit one suite in a single-family home, generally capped at the lesser of 90 square metres or 40 percent of the home’s habitable floor area, with an additional off-street parking space. Both follow Section 9.37 of the BC Building Code for fire separation and exiting, and both require registration after final inspection. The only reliable test of whether an existing suite is legal is a building permit on file – not a separate entrance, a separate meter or a separate address.
Coach houses are where the two genuinely diverge. The District has run the more established program since 2010 and does not require lane access, which makes a great many District lots viable that would fail elsewhere in Metro Vancouver. The City permits them on tighter terms and typically expects lane or corner access. If a coach house is your goal, confirming your jurisdiction is the entire first step.
Slope and soil drive the budget. North Shore lots climb. Sloped sites commonly need geotechnical reports and foundation strategies – piers, stepped pads or retaining walls – that simply do not arise on flat ground. We assess grade and drainage before quoting, because on this side of the inlet the foundation is often the largest single variable in the price.
Trees are regulated in both jurisdictions. Arborist reports are commonly required to protect mature trees during development, and tree permits can sit on the critical path.
A secondary (or legal) suite is a complete living unit with its own kitchen, sleeping area, and washroom facilities contained within another dwelling. The two dwelling units (the primary residence and the secondary suite) and any common spaces make up a single real estate entity that cannot be stratified or otherwise legally separated from the other.
Secondary suites are permitted in most single detached and some side-by-side attached houses across British Columbia and come with many benefits such as providing accommodation for aging parents, adult children or other family members, helping to pay a mortgage or investing in existing property and contributing to more long-term rental housing in communities.
Local government zoning and planning requirements, as well as certain building codes, and building permit requirements would dictate if a secondary suite can be built on a property and what building codes would apply. In the City of Vancouver (municipality), the Vancouver Building By-laws (VBBL) will apply. Elsewhere in BC, the British Columbia Building Codes (BCBC) is applicable.
There are very rigid building code and building permit requirements for converting an existing space into a secondary (or legal) suite. The newer the single-family dwelling containing the space for conversion, the easier it may be to do so. The older the single-family dwelling, the greater the number of requirements. There are also different types of secondary suites as shown in the graphic below.
Types of Secondary Suites
One of the more common conversions is from an existing single-family accommodation basement suite into a secondary (legal) suite. Within the municipality of the City of Vancouver, the basic guidelines for creating a secondary occupancy (legal basement) within a house includes, but is not limited to, the following:
- Approvals and size: development, building and trade permits, with one suite allowed per home at a minimum of 400 sq. ft. and never larger than the main dwelling.
- Height, depth and access: 6′-6″ of ceiling height over all exit routes and 80% of the suite, a floor no more than 6′ below outside ground, and a 3′-wide hard-surface path from the street to the suite entrance.
- Fire separation and alarms: self-closing solid-core doors and 1/2″ gypsum board or sound plaster between the units, plus interconnected hard-wired smoke and CO alarms with battery back-up in every bedroom.
- Escape routes: bedroom windows with an unobstructed opening of at least 3.77 sq. ft. and no bars, and exit doors that are never obstructed or locked from outside.
- Electrical, plumbing and gas: a service sized for both units, the required room-by-room outlets and GFCI protection near water, properly installed and vented fixtures, and a seismically strapped hot water tank.
- Parking: on-site spaces for the house and the suite together.
As a general rule, both the City and the District of North Vancouver work under the BC Building Code, whose suite requirements cover much of the same ground but are generally less restrictive. On sloped North Shore lots, ceiling height and below-grade depth deserve particular attention, because a basement cut into a hillside can satisfy one and fail the other. Specifics will vary with the house and the jurisdiction, so we check both before any design begins.
The graphic below shows a pictorial summary of the different code requirements for secondary suites (and legal basements).
Summary of the different code requirements for secondary suites.
