Tag Archives: Lane Home

Two stories in the Vancouver Sun today about laneway homes:

West Vancouver is considering allowing laneway homes.  Or, as they say in the carriage trade, “coach houses”.

As a community planner put it all into perspective,

“We have a community that is aging, that needs different housing options. We have younger families who are having difficulty establishing themselves or remaining in West Vancouver because of the cost of housing,” Mikicich said. “At the same time, it’s a community that highly values the established character of its neighbourhoods.”

It’s a way to increase density in this charming suburb of Vancouver without incurring the “monster house” syndrome. As Jake Fry of Smallworks remarked,

“You may have more roofs per acre, but they’re going to be smaller roofs. They’ll probably even have less square footage per city lot, but there’s going to be more families and you’ll see the … communities become much more dynamic”

In this story, homeowners who have build laneway homes and applied for HST (now GST) rebates were instead charged bills by the CRA.  The Canada Revenue Agency rules are not just confusing, they can be contradictory.

It LOOKS straightforward, you build a house and apply for a tax rebate.

But where the rules may get sticky — especially in high-priced Vancouver — is when it comes to determining the value of a laneway home built as a rental.

“The GST/HST new residential rental property rebate is limited to rental units that are less than $450,000 at the time of substantial completion of construction,” CRA said.”

Most laneways can be built for less than $450K, but if you take the value of the property into account the value would be much greater.

To me, this is ridiculous.  You cannot find a property in Vancouver that is worth less than $450K.  As the writer, Don Cayo, says, determining the added cost of the property is difficult and moot:

But simple division may, in fact, overestimate the land value — it hasn’t been subdivided and it can’t ever be, so there’s no market reference to determine its value. Land assessments are usually based on “highest and best use,” but there’s no other use — or only unlikely or very limited use — for pieces of property that small. So their “worth” is highly hypothetical.

I’m taking more than a casual interest in how this plays out, so stay tuned for updates.

All last week I’ve been home from work with a pinched nerve in my back.  Ugh. Also OW! I’m taking a prescription that will help alleviate the nerve pain, but it takes 2 weeks to work, so in the meantime I’m relying on my old standbys, extra-strength Advil and whining.

However I have been rising from my bed of pain and inconvenience to do the exercises my physiotherapist assigned me, and to pack some boxes of things we are putting into deep storage — the storage space we have rented to put things we won’t need for our temporary home during the build phase.  These things include three decorative teapots, some of the dozens of mugs we have managed to accumulate, “plain” martini glasses we bought for our yearly martini parties (from the dollar store, cheaper than renting!), a set of lager glasses (drink from the bottle!), and flower vases (no frou-frous at the temporary place!).

Then yesterday, DH picked up the van he had reserved from ZipCars and doing all the (literally) heavy lifting, managed to fill the entire thing and then regurgitate its contents into the storage space.  I stood by and gave him the benefit of my opinion.  We also made a stop at the bike repair shop where he is getting his old, classic bike reconditioned, and some side trips to the transfer station, then to some recycling depots when we found the transfer station would not take old tires or old paint (who knew?).

And now our condo storage space is empty and ready for more packed boxes.

We thought it would take two hours, it took four. Luckily, DH was able to extend the reservation on the van on the spot with his cell phone.  Also unlock and lock the van with his cell phone.

When DH was using his cell phone to unlock the van, he stood beside the van, the signal travelled up to a satellite, then back down to the van he was standing beside.  It’s funny to think of that.

But that made me think of this:

It’s a picture of Vancouver, taken from the ISS by our own Canadian satellite jockey, Chris Hadfield.  I joked to a friend that I could see my house — but you know, I can!  It’s easy to pick out which main streets are which, and work out approximately where our building is.