One brand new laneway house, recently completed on the west side, has caused a flurry of additional applications by the neighbours.
This is from Toronto Life:
This Toronto couple built a $550,000 laneway house as a place to retire. In the meantime, they’re renting it out for $3,200 a month
The laneway house: In 2018, Franz and Karen began thinking about retirement.
“What most people do is sell their house and move somewhere else,” said Karen. “We’re not going to be moving out into the country and we really love this neighbourhood. We started to think of how we could stay in the neighbourhood and age in place.”
In late 2018, Karen brought up the idea of building a laneway house where the garage stood. Franz, who had heard about the recent change to zoning by-laws that would allow laneway housing in Toronto, agreed that it could be the perfect solution. They imagined moving into the laneway house and renting out the main house to bring in some extra cash. “That would be our pension,” said Franz.
In addition to adding a home to grow old in, the couple saw it as a way to reduce pressure on housing in the city and allow them to pursue their dream of building a house that was as green as possible. (Franz has been pursuing green solutions for the past 30 years. He was an environmental advisor to former Toronto City Councillor Jack Layton, and advocated for a variety of energy-efficient programs in the city.)
Franz started to crunch the numbers. Taking into consideration the cost of an architect, permit applications and construction costs, he budgeted $500,000 for the entire project. They figured that they could rent out the laneway house for at least $2,500 a month until they were ready to move in, and, after that, rent out the main house for at least $5,000 a month.
In the summer of 2019, the couple hired architect Monica Kuhn, who, according to Franz, has a reputation for designing green buildings. In addition to designing their laneway home—the space needed to be suitable for older adults, with features like wider staircases and doorways—Kuhn could help them navigate the city’s requirements for laneway housing, like being close enough to a fire hydrant and far enough from the neighbours’ house.
The couple hoped to complete the permit application by the spring of 2020. Then the pandemic arrived, and they decided to hit the pause button on the project. With all of the uncertainty in the first few months of the pandemic, Franz and Karen were wary of committing to such a major project. Eventually, they picked it back up in the fall of 2020 and submitted the application in April of 2021.
By June of 2021 they had their approvals and were ready to begin construction. The couple hired South Park Design Build and just six months later, in December of 2021, the work was complete. All told, the couple spent roughly $550,000 to build the laneway house. Franz estimates they paid about $20,000 more in material costs because of Covid.