If you’re a single-family homeowner in Burnaby, the city wants to make it easier for you to build a multiplex on your property.
The city has published a new “housing design library” featuring 12 designs for laneway homes, duplexes, quadplexes and sixplexes.
The city says the online catalogue will make it easier for homeowners and builders to explore multiplex development.
City staff have reviewed the designs to ensure they meet the BC Building Code and comply with city bylaws, according to a city press release.
The design library comes after Burnaby rezoned every single- and two-family lot to the new “small-scale multi-unit housing” zone last year, as mandated by the provincial government.
The new zone allows property owners to build three to six units on the lot, depending on its size and distance from rapid transit.
The designs were provided by local architectural and design-build firms.
Interested residents can reach out to the firms to purchase the licence to use the design and full set of plans (the city simply hosts the design library and isn’t a part of any financial transaction).
Estimated construction costs for the designs range from $493,000 for a laneway addition to $4.08 million for a fiveplex on a large lot with the potential for a café at street level.
The licensing costs for the plans range from $950 to $30,000.
The city said the benefits of the design library include access to reputable designers who have been vetted by the city, potential time savings in the design phase and “potential cost savings, as designs in the library shall be listed at a reasonable price,” according to the call for designs last May.
Designers can benefit too, according to the call, as they get exposure to more potential clients and potentially a higher return per design, depending on how many times the design is used.
The city said other general benefits include:
- Increasing community awareness about multiplex housing
- Providing assistance to small-scale homeowner-developers
- Offering potential opportunities to visit built examples of designs in real life
- Familiarity for builders when dealing with the same designs more than once
The provincial government released a similar catalogue of 10 free standardized home designs in September.
There are almost 31,000 residential lots in Burnaby, most of which are now zoned for at least four units.
For more information, check out the city’s housing design library and new home construction webpages.