What The Heck Is A Carriage House?

A carriage house is also known as a laneway house. It’s a small house built on a property that already has a 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 that has a suite above. Lately there have been dozens of them popping up in neighborhoods all around town. At Boehm Construction Ltd we have become known as the guys who build carriage houses. To date we have completed two of them and have just started on our third.

There are some rules to follow of course, the square footage is limited to 950 square feet and you also need to obey set back 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.

Our most recent build was one we did for Carsten Jensen of Jenseys Buildings Ltd. Which is a design build company. This carriage house on Howard ave was built as a prototype for future builds and incorporates the Insulspan SIPS wall system and some very innovative storage and kitchen solutions from Ikea.

Depending on the land you have to work with a typical carriage house can cost anywhere between $180,000 and $220,000. Contact us anytime if you have questions or want to know more about carriage houses and laneway housing.