What The Heck Is A Carriage House?

It goes by many names. Carriage house, carriage home, laneway house, garden suite, ADU (accessory dwelling unit), or detached suite. It’s a small dwelling built on a property that already has a primary house on it. Several years ago, our city council followed the lead of cities like Vancouver with their Laneway housing and decided to allow this type of housing in our town. The popular version in Vancouver is a separate garage building with a suite above it. I would guess there are now hundreds of them in our city! At Boehm Construction Ltd, we are known as the guys who build carriage houses. We have completed twelve of them to date, so our reputation is warranted!

There are some rules to follow; of course, the square footage is limited to 968 square feet, and you also need to obey setback minimums. And you can’t have a suite. You can have a carriage house or a secondary suite, but not both. The obvious benefits to the carriage house are that you can get more rent than a suite, and the renters aren’t sharing the same house as you are.

Depending on the land, you have to work with a typical carriage house, which can cost between $250,000 and $350,000. Contact us anytime if you have questions or want to know more about carriage houses and laneway housing.

(Update for 2025) The recent addition of the Building Block Program promises to help increase carriage homes' affordability. These are stock blueprints for little cookie-cutter style housing that are available for free from the BC Government. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/farming-natural-resources-and-industry/construction-industry/building-codes-and-standards/guides/bc_std_des_catalogue_v1.pdf Also, Bill 44, which gave all R1 zoned properties instant change in zoning to R5 has now given us more options than just suite or Carriage home. You can have both; you can have a duplex; you can have up to 4 units on one lot now!