Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought landlord need to occupy at least 50% of your house to be considered your primary residence. Otherwise, it’s an investment property.

We have rental income with basement suites and we offset the rental income with interest, utilities, property tax (?), etc. Every year it’s still a huge outflow of cash to RRSP. If we have the cash, we contribute to RRSP because I feel like that money is gone paying tax right away.

https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-age...residence.html

It's long read so I won't find the specific clause you mention but it sounds like a reasonable rule - if I do a build and rent out the basement and laneway I'll just make it under wire and will be living in about 55-60% of the house. There's a whole host of tax complications with being a landlord of a house that's also your principle residence - I'm just kicking it all to my kid when I die, she's getting enough money from me anyways. But since my parents and in-laws are eventually going to live with us I'm only dealing with rental income in some years of my ownership (making it even more complicated).

Honestly this was our exact thought process. We decided we wanted a home with a separate entry basement suite, not because we need to rent it in order to make the mortgage payment, but because it's nice to have the option.
- We can rent it while we're childless
- We can take our time finding a tenant we like
- The extra $ is nice to fund renovations or luxuries like travel
- If we stay 10+ years, good if an elderly parent needs to move in
- Likely makes it easier to sell later

the inlaw/parent units best be ground floor without stairs
something to consider even if they're able-bodied now

That's exactly what we are thinking about right now. Dad is 68, mom is 60. They are still independent, but give it a few more years we'll need something relatively flat and at most half a dozen stairs for my dad.

Dad won't give up his sports car still despite starting to have a hard time getting in and out. Gonna be a fight on my hands as he gets older.

Definitely was a consideration. We managed to find a home with a zero-entry basement suite, but it wasn't on our "must-have" list as that would've narrowed our search a little too much.

100%. I just convinced the wife that it's worth giving up 6' of our backyard to build the laneway as a 1 story so the parents don't have to walk up the stairs.

It's tricky to find homes with ground floor units ever since the RS-1 standard was updated to allow basements (about 20 years ago I think). I know the city is reviewing the RS-1 rules and allowing the basements to be higher is a strong consideration as the current rule often forces basements to be cellars (nearly all the way below ground) and that's not very liveable. The new regs will probably allow RS-1s to be 2' higher, not all the way out of the ground but enough that the steps are fairly small (the basement would be 2-3' below ground).

How will you decide who gets to live in the basement suite or LWH between your parents or in-laws?

:Popcorn

Whoever gives us the bigger inheritance.

Difficult to say which one is the more appealing suite though... :pokerface:

LWH over basement any day lol, at least you get sunlight and no noise from upstairs.

Personally I agree, but some people might prefer basement suite over LWH - aforementioned issues with steps, the idea of living over/beside a garage, generally smaller floorplan, etc.

My basement unit has a ton of stairs to get down as well. But I can definitely see the convenience if you're on the main level basement.

Who the fuck pays $4-5K per month to live in a basement suite? :heckno:

There has to be a proverbial tipping point here.

That's the combined rent of 2 basement suites AND a laneway house, not just 1 suite.

Totally agree with you that having the OPTION to rent out is great. However, if you can't afford the place WITHOUT rental income making up half your mortgage payments, then I would say that you can't actually afford the place. Unfortunately the banks disagree with me on this, and that's why we have people thinking paying over $2M+ for a property just so that they can rent away half the place is actually palatable.

Hopefully they don't play victim to the tenant horror stories we hear about, because that would be catastrophic

I get why you want a SFH. It's price that's ridiculous. I hope everything works out for you and your extended family and you don't over extend yourself chasing this crazy market.

Ahh I see. So that's the game now? Build a laneway home and rent it out along with your basement, in order to afford a single family home in Vancouver?

Cool.

Sounds like a bright future.

That's pretty much what most of East Vancouver is. Just take a drive down some alleys and you'll see more and more LWH.

I agree with Hakkaboy's take on all of this. You need to reconsider attempting to purchase a detached if the only way you can afford it is by renting out half the house AND a laneway. What happens if one or both of the basement suites go empty? What happens if the LWH goes empty? Even worse, what will happen with your mortgage if you're stuck with 3 shitty tenants that end up squatting or not paying rent?

There's nothing we can do though other than move to Kelowna

why not?
income is income isnt it? as long as its reliable, stable, and legit right? there's risks to everything...your job..your property.....if anything having rental income is favorable in my mind as you have multiple streams of income sources...what if you lost your job due to another pandemic? or your business was forced to close for 6+ months...people still need shelter at the end of the day...

it seems as though banks are discounting the value of rental income (ie. a $1 in rental income yields less mortgage amount than $1 in regular income i beleive) so if anything happens on the rental side they're still negtively affected but probably not as much as you think

people have been doing this for like 10 years now...and this is how their wealth was built/added on thats all...10 years their mortgage is like half paid off already and we're at a lower interest rate environment now than we were back then

i think if worst case if you get 3 shitty tenants...it takes like what 3-6 months to kick them out? you would hope that they have 10-20k worth of savings to offset such an event...which as you can see with the previous poster looking to build he's got that buffer in case something like that happens...and even then if you can get by with maybe 1-2 years of good rent with good tenants...i would think you'd have that buffer built up if not more by then

however if one or both suites or the laneway go empty and undesirable...well that would mean vancouver's housing problems for the past few decades of low supply and high rents just suddenly disappeared!

In East Van there really isn't a real single family home anymore and it hasn't been that way in a long, long time - pretty much every house has at least 1 rental suite and even duplexes have them and now we're seeing it with a few townhomes.

It's only on the West side that we see homes without suites and even then all the new builds have one now. They just usually skip the laneway as those folks have a lot of cars and/or want the privacy.

Here's some data from 2016 on how many homes in Vancouver have a suite: https://doodles.mountainmath.ca/blog...tes-and-taxes/
Here's COV data from 2009, see page 12: https://vancouver.ca/docs/policy/hou...ary-suites.pdf

You'll see that East Van has a very high percentage of suites and that's just people declaring it on their taxes - it's probably close to 70-80% of SFH have suites today.

I don't think I said it outright and maybe I implied it but I don't have a problem affording a new build with no rental income, it's just that I don't want to spend my money that way.

I want flexibility to house my parents and in-laws, a yard + garage, and, if possible, someone else to pay my mortgage. Those 3 criteria leads me down the path of a new build where I rent out a good chunk of it when it's not in use by my parents/in-laws. I only personally need 1800sf and a place to grill meat and entertain, the other parts of my life add on some additional needs.

I hinted at it but I'm totally serious that the garage in the laneway is needed to house a Porsche. I've been very, very fortunate the last 10 years with work and with some steady rental income it means I get to fly to Germany to pick up a 911 in a few years time (Wife might downgrade me to a Cayman).

That all said, I've been renting to people for 12 years and never had a bad tenant - maybe I'm lucky (I know people who have had shitty tenants) but maybe I've vetted well and treated them well enough that they treat me well. In 12 years I've only had 1 month where I didn't have a tenant and that was b/c COVID hit right as my tenant moved out.

how does that work? just a mild grade to the door? must be a big lot?

unrelated, but how come we dont see space-saving spiral staircases (indoor and outdoor) in modern builds..aside from probably tricky to move furnitures and you lose storage space underneath. Not a fancy one just cookie cutter minimalist metal one for example