Planning, Building and Bill 108

Ronald DeCouteau

Sarah: I'm going to introduce Ronald DeCoteau. I've worked with Ronald personally. And by leveraging his years of experience and education in the commercial construction sector, he became a secondary suite zoning bylaw and building code subject matter expert. And has since successfully assisted hundreds of real estate investors in Ontario. On the legal secondary suite conversion process.

I don't know if you guys have heard of bill 108 in the chat. If you have heard of bill 108, so yes or no. We're going to talk about that today. It is very interesting for real estate investors to really get that lift, get the cash flow. And he's going to help us understand today how that bill is going to change our real estate investing strategies.

I think in my opinion for the better. Ronald has a great presentation put together tonight for us. Ronald the floor is yours. Welcome.

Ronald: Hi, how are you, Sarah? Thank you so much for having me on this presentation tonight. I certainly look forward to adding value. With that said, I do have a lot of information that I want to get to and I have about 10 to 15 minutes. I believe the slides will be posted in the forum after. With that said, I'm going to jump right in. I'll share my screen. I just know that you guys can also access it. I will be blazing through some of this content here.

There's a lot to be said about bill 108. With that said this presentation that I'm going to be doing is about implementing the 108 in our realist and how it is impacting and evolving real estate investing. All right. With that said, bill 108 will change real estate investing strategies.

This is something that everyone on this call, I know you guys are all running your businesses. It's really important that you understand what the municipalities are doing right now with that said, let's look at it. First slide. Really, in 2011, there were amendments made to the planning.

I'm going to go to a higher level. That's giving you guys a real quick insight as to how all of this comes to life. Back in 2011, 2012 the province of Ontario, they actually implemented or released a bill 140, which actually had provisions to amend most of the official plans on municipal bylaws to basically contain provisions that would allow for secondary units. We all know what secondary units are because most of you on this call already have converted a single family to a two-unit dwelling. That second dwelling, that's what you'd call a secondary unit. However, now, what it is we're actually looking at now as what's called an ARU, an Additional Residential Unit.

In 2019, that's June of 2019, the government of Ontario actually amended the planning op to, for a few things. One of them is that all municipalities need the content provisions in their bylaw or implement provisions in their bylaws for additional residential units. What are those? That's essentially a third unit, not a triplex, but adding a third unit to a lot.

Essentially now you can add three units per lot. What is bill 108 in summary? This is a summary. These are elaborate documents guys. I've actually just really summarized it. Just pull out the bare bone minimum that can just explain what it is. This is my summary of what bill 108 is. It really allows up to two accessory dwelling units put a lot. You have your primary residence. You have one, two accessory dwelling units. And of course, one of those can be in a detached dwelling. A detached building on this bill also mended some timelines. It did have some requirements and there were cities needed to have a certain timeline how quickly they needed to amend a day's official plan and so forth.

It also had some really cool amendments for fees. And of course, these things are all interpreted differently from municipality to municipality. Now, they also have a regulation that backs up the amendments that they're making in these various legislations, like the planning heart.
And of course, one of those things that I mentioned was that parking can be tandem. One additional parking needed to be added for each dwelling unit.

If you have three units on a lot, you need that minimum three parking spaces, and we'll talk a bit more about that. And the property does not require the owner to be owner occupied, right? You don't need to live there. And also, basically the structure can be in an existing structure or it can be in a new structure. Newly built structure. Some of these cities are actually cities that I'm pulling up here right now, the cities that are actually that have already implemented provisions for the municipal bylaws.

I'm going to speak a little bit in the Western region here. I know there's tons of other municipalities that have completed on that are going through the process. And I can name a few of them as a barrier. There's some out in the east as well, there's Lindsey and so forth.

With that said there Hamilton being one of the biggest cities out in the Western region. I'm going to use Hamilton for lack of a better word as a Guinea pig. To go through some of the requirements that you can find in most of these municipalities again Hamilton just released, I think, in April the sixth or so the final sort of draft of what the amendments will look like. I'm going to just talk high level here guys, can a secondary suite configuration these additional units. It could be done in an interior unit. And as you guys know, it could be done on the inside. Like this very little to be said about that.

It could be done as a converted detached. Converted detached is located within an existing detached building. Like for example, a detached garage. And then of course you do have the new detach, which has basically a newly built detach, which is a newly built detached building with an accessory dwelling unit its purpose built. What are we going to focus on here? And just discussion, is it converted to detach as well as the new detached buildings. Okay. That's for a high-level overview. For those of you who don't know, I don't want to get too much into this, but basically, we know this is a planned view of the sky level, but as I view it, we typically buy existing bungalows.

We added a second unit. We know that in an existing bungalow, you need to have two parking needs. I have a front yard setback of six meters. These are some of the basic Bylaw requirements. 1.2 meters side as setback. You need to maneuver. I'll have 2.8 meters. You need to add a second driveway depending on the width of the vehicle, but here's where things get interesting.

Now, we're talking about adding these new detached buildings. In a new detached building, you have to add a second or third additional parking. And as we'll go on and discuss that this varies from municipality to municipality. And the city of Hamilton, which I'm using as my specimen for this presentation. They do require that parking is placed in a third parking area that is actually located for this type of a unit. Now, your new detached unit, you have to make sure the parking is set up properly. And of course, you can't have car vehicles park in the aisle. And of course, we need to have a minimum side-out setback of 7.5 meters from the existing buildings.

We'll talk a little bit about lot sizes in a very short minute. And of course, the side set box is super important for this entire process and we need to make sure to maintain a 40 meter from the street. This is your firewood. As I mentioned, there's a lot of information that I'm going to be summarizing here and hopefully giving you guys a kind of my design desk overview, because this is what I look at when someone comes to me and says, hey, I'm looking at this property that can be converted. Can we add a detached unit? These are some of the prompts as I'm looking at running these. Everyone got numbers, these are design numbers. Let's look at some lot sizes here. We got some lot sizes, typical lot sizes, 360 square meters. You're looking at, this is a very typical lot size.

There are three different types of lot lengths. I just really kept it simple and core of them 12, but you'll find that in most cases, this is what you will find in the city of Hamilton and other municipalities. Lot sizes are generally within these areas and measurements.

I'm going to use these to explain how it is. We can actually implement these additional units. With that said, let's zoom into the first lot, which is a lot that is 360, as you can see, the other lot is 504 and the other one is 720 square meters. I will be talking in meters here, guys, because this is a site plan we're talking about here. We do these in metrics, right? Not Imperial. That's looking at this existing lot here. What we have is basically generally, if the ratio is between 7.5 meters and 11 meters, it detaches you then will be challenging to actually be feasible.

It might most likely require minor variance. And if a minor variance is granted, the setback will make the massing and layout will most likely be impacted and impractical. Basically, the lot will be compressed to the point where it doesn't make sense. And again, this is for a newly built detached accessory dwelling unit on a lot that is approximately 12 by 30 meters. If there is an existing lot, now this makes this property a little more feasible. Why? Because the city has actually implemented what they're calling a vacuum clause. It will waive all of the bylaw requirements for new detached. Basically it does make it a bit easier. It will make it feasible because you don't have to meet some of those existing or new bylaws amendments. 

The only thing I would really see a need to look at is the structural capability of the dwelling as well as what are the landscape area can be achieved, which we'll certainly get into every new, the bylaw law has amended the landscape area for these new detached buildings and it would apply to an existing building that you're converting it to a detached dwelling. You would need to achieve a minimum of eight meter per square meters of landscape area for the new detached building, if it is less than 50.

This is all written into their discussion paper. I'm using that as I mentioned in the specimen, the information that I want to be using to assess whether these properties are right or feasible. And of course, parking must be provided for each unit on the lot and tandem. parking is not allowed. I'm going to say minor variance warning on all these in most cases. That's again this is the city of Hamilton. You will likely require a minor variance because some of these requirements are extremely difficult to achieve on most lot sizes. Let's look at this second lot size, which is like 500 is like 504 square meters.

This is an estimate guys. These are like written into the bylaws, typical sizes that are found on most properties out in the city of Hamilton. Let's say, for example, I know these are a little more feasible simply because you have a lot more backyard to work with and you need a backyard when you're actually working with these types of properties.

Let's say, we actually need to put a dwelling unit back there. We need to make sure we can put in a new one. Because as you noticed on the previous one, we didn't have 7.5 meters between the back elevation or back wall of the property to the front elevation of the new detached building.

With that said on this size lot, you can most likely achieve that. That's why I said between 15 and 24 meters in a detached unit is feasible. However, you need to make sure that you run some numbers here. Again, these are all designed numbers. The test to determine feasibility of the school process is 25% going to work. 25% off the lot area can be allocated for detached units or detached buildings. If you have a hundred square foot lot, then essentially you would need to have a building that is only 25 square feet. That's important there. 

The other thing that I wanted to get into here is we need to make sure that we have a clear path to the street and setbacks from the swales now minor variance again is important. And essentially, I go to the same thing for these properties as well as the exact same process here, guys, all we're looking at is the gross lot area, which is 25%. You need to make sure that this does not exceed 40 meters from the street.

You also need to make sure that you have a side setback. That is from any swale and you guys might be asking what is a swale? It's essentially a very gentle ditch that is oftentimes along the side of the property to allow for drainage in the event of a very severe storm event where there's a lot of water runoff that needs to happen. And again, minor variance is oftentimes required. 

Here is some real high-level sort of summary of what it does. I think it is necessary to take into consideration when existing converted detached units you basically have these things to work with the vacuum because it's all written in there. I'm not going to read it. These will be made available. You guys can download it and read it yourself, or you can download the almost 200-page document and also go through it. That is quite interesting. Read and fact the minimum lot size setbacks, landscape areas, fire routes.

Like these are the things that you need to consider. I do advise you guys to take a look at it. And in any format that pleases the stuff that I was showing before essentially does take this, write up the summary and place it into a design format for simplicity of visuals. And of course, this is an important slide here.

These are some of the things that you will not be able to put secondary units on. I advise that you guys take a read through this. This is super important. And of course, this may not be exhaustive, but it does. It is somewhat comprehensive based on the discussion paper and the amendments proposed in the city of Hamilton.

This is extremely important. I really want to bring attention down to the minor variance. If you guys have ever done a minor variance like $3,320 is a lot. But what they're going to be doing is actually amending the bylaws, the fees to make it $600 for most secondary unit minor variance.

That's actually really good in terms of cost savings. But this time, I don't think they'll make any amendments to the timeframe, which will still be about six to eight weeks. And then another 20 days just for you to get your decision granted. And yeah, that's pretty much the end of the day guys. I try to run it through so you guys can slip in and ask questions inside.

Sarah: Thank you so much, Ronald. We will have questions at the end. If anybody has any questions during the networking, hang tight.