Category Archives: Laneway House

Hot on the heels of my previous post about ownership of our laneway comes this article on the Senior Living website.

The “canny senior” , Ann Eynon has built a laneway on her daughter’s property (such a clever idea!). She says

“It’s lovely to free up the cash rather than sitting on it,” she says while pouring over travel brochures. Where to go next?

Exactly!  Plus there’s some info on how different families are handling the ownership “situation”.

 Some families enter into joint ownership; others agree to forgivable loans. Put everything in writing, especially when adult children are involved……… amortizing …payback over 25 years and clarifying a payout schedule if, or when, the unit changes hands.

Or, if no payback is expected, as in Ann Eynon’s case,

she made sure everybody understood her situation before she broke ground. Ann will have her laneway house appraised and then assign percentages of its value to each of her two children.

Read the article for the full story.

I was showing a friend the plans for the souped-up kitchen in the laneway house (more on that in a future post) and even dragged out the little square of wood veneer to show how the cupboards will be finished. She oohed and aahed, I kvelled, it was a pleasant time.  Then she said “It just makes sense to spend money on the kitchen, because of the resale value.”

And just like a needle being dragged across a record, the conversation veered off from cozy decor to cold hard facts.

We are paying for the laneway home to be built.  And we’ll be spending a little more than absolutely necessary to get exactly what we want in the way of finishes, appliances and building materials. And we will live in it.  But we won’t own it. The owners of the main home on the property own the laneway house as well. That’s the rule.

All our money is buying us is the right to live in the house until…..we don’t want to live there anymore.

Oh, we’ll get our money out of it.  Eventually the property owners (DD and DSIL) will eventually start making payments to us for the amount we paid to build the home — but no more, no matter how much the property may have appreciated in value.

It works out very well for us all.  They get a free babysitting at hand, we can share shopping trips, it’s a nice convivial living situation for everyone involved.

But we are stepping off the real estate merry-go-round forever.  And that’s the way we want it.

We cannot have our cake and eat it, too.  We can stay in this condo and watch it go up in value every year, but we can’t take that money and use it.  Yes we are sitting on the proverbial gold mine, but that’s just it, we’re sitting on it, not mining it.

Building the laneway home gives us a chance to live mortgage-free in a lovely neighbourhood in our favourite city in the world.  Next to the nicest neighbours we could imagine.

What more could we want?

The folks at LaneCraft homes blogged today on the evolving rules surrounding Laneway Home construction.

While it’s good that there is continuing discussion about laneways, and methods of making them more popular not just with the home-owners but also with their neighbours……there are current talks with the city about the problem with parking.

It’s true that most people who build enclosed parking spaces for their laneway homes are using them for living space.  And that means that they have to use street parking (or pay for parking elsewhere).  But for us, if they change the rules in mid-stream, it is going to mean problems.

Right now we have an enclosed parking area in our laneway.  There is a proposal that laneway homes should also include another space.  To quote LaneCraft:

To address the issue, the City is proposing to require an unenclosed surface parking spot when building a laneway house. This would address the issue by ensuring at least one on site parking spot, but, by reducing the buildable footprint (keeping current setbacks and height limits in place), would create more challenges in designing liveable spaces.

Creating more challenges right now would send our designer back to the drawing board and delay start on our project.  I hope nothing happens in the next few weeks to jeopardize our current design receiving a building permit.

I feel for the city and their wish to reduce street parking.  But no one wanders up alleyways with a flashlight to make sure that every garage contains its quota of automobiles, and has not been converted to a workshop, a studio, or even a storage area.