I would agree that converting a garage would be more cost effective.

I'm curious how this would affect the duplex lots prices in East Van? =T

Maybe originally but not anymore at least where I live. On my block every house except 3 (including mine) have a coach house above the garage. I think they were an extra 40 grand compared to the houses without them. I thought about buying a place with one but I really don't want to deal with renters, I like my privacy. My place is zoned for one, I could add it if I wanted but I won't.

The coach houses had an open concept kitchen/living area. A seperate bedroom and bathroom and I believe they also have a stacked washer/dryer. There small but plenty of room if your single. I think they rent out for $700 or $800 a month.

good idea if you are building a whole new house completely

but waste of 200k if you just add on to a existing house. applying for permits and attaching plumbing plus electricty is ridiclious

Cool idea but seems expensive to add it to your yard. When I first read the title of this thread I thought this was going to be about low income housing lol.

I live like right beside it. LOL well not really but across the street near the Grocery store. People are fucking parking behind my alley blocking traffic......

I didnt really like that laneway house. It sticks out into the alley. Might be noisy if a lot of cars drive through it but alleyways arent suppose to have a lot of traffic.

To spend 200K+ for an extra building to rent out, it is not my cup of tea.

i love it
if i can ever afford a house i would want one on my lot for sure

its nice for a 1, maybe 2 people...

its a good investment..

but if you were to sell it, you dont own it.. so when you go to sell the big house, your lot will be smaller, wouldnt it decrease the value of the big house??

Love this idea! could be great for 1 or 2 people and I could see them becoming super trendy. Great use of space great minimalist designs.

Gotta love good design

the 190K price is obviously their markup for these places

its nothing innovative and i would suspect they cut corners on the foundation etc

to build a house on that size it would cost well under 100k

You do own it, you don't sell your laneway house, you rent it out, so when it comes to selling your property, you're selling both your house AND your laneway house. Although it may be difficult if a potential buyer doesn't want to rent it out or whatever, not sure how it would work with your tenant if you're selling it to someone who doesn't want them. But I'd assume that all the details would be worked out in a rental agreement

If this picks up i'd be more worried about prices of condos and houses going even higher. If rent of a laneway house is $1,000/mth, that might push the price of a condo renting for $1,000 today even higher, etc.
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I think it will have the opposite effect. Increased supply of rental units (all else equal) should drive rent costs down.

so legally you can not sell these laneway houses alone...

it's illegal to rent out a garage.

also i approve anything to condense vancouver more into a real city.

^ not to mention you're still living in a garage.

I know that I was just comparing the costs.

I'll definitely consider this when I move out!

pretty cool and not bad of an idea

I wonder if the owners are allowed to rent out just the land? A company could rent the land put up a prefab house for cheap and rent it out.

Maybe build houses out of shipping containers like this:

http://zerocabin.com/images/100students/3.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ngroomside.jpg

I know. It's also a headache when the city finds out. (and yes it's happened to my family)

Seriously I hope every homeowner in vancouver builds these. It will cause rent prices to shoot down, and increase density in the city. Then maybe we can get some real fucking transit/other infastructer.

That's only one variation, theres other designs where people still keep a one car garage (On a standard width lot) and have the apartment on the other side of the garage as well as ontop of the garage.

good idea if no one owns a car......standard house in vancouver will house two familes and than you have the laneway house so now you got three families sharing that one parking space. If I had a million dollar to build a new house I would most likely have money for at least one car and than have suites for rent. Now these tenants are going to look for parking too

This reminds me of Thunderbolt with Jackie Chan.