HawthorneVillager.com

I have seen several homeowners who have rented their basement. Is it legal?

It can be as long as built to code.

There are a lot of illegal basement apartments out there.....

Doing it right is not easy. You'll likely have to get your basement windows enlarged, instal a sprinkler system in your furnace room, etc, etc. Call the city and the fire department and don't forget insurance issues.
If it sounds like I'm trying to put you off it's because I am. I don't want my city ending up like Brampton.

John Allingham, Professional Engineer
Owner & Certified Home Inspector
Halton-Peel Home Inspection
(416) 254-5869
inspect@peelhomeinspection.com
www.peelhomeinspection.com

^ agreed

With the university coming in, I think alot of people are going to be doing this.

Most of the Brampton houses with illegal apartments have separate side doors. The newer houses in Milton do not. I imagine it would be difficult to built an apartment and market it without a separate entrance.

Just my thoughts!

Are you sure about this, I know I purchase a single dwelling home. This means the city has approved my home and neighbourhood for residential single dwelling home "not apartments".
If someone built an apartment in their basement and it affected me in any way. I would go to the city and have it removed.

This is one of the reasons I left my old neighbor"hood" in Mississauga. More people living in the houses than there should be, not to mention the overabundance of old pieces of crap parked all over the street leaking oil everywhere. No thanks..

See that's the scary thing....people are already complaining about insufficient parking for single family homes, can you imagine the repercussions of a spike in multiple familes in a single home?

We've just heard that part of the huge school issue is that we're now looking at 6-7 children per household which is why we are scrambling to find spaces to place children. If things are bad now, can you imagine what an increase in basement apartment families will mean?

I'm all for people looking for ways to reduce the mortgage debt but the impact on the greater community needs to be monitored carefully. I hope every one who decides to rent out the basement does it the right way, so reporting on the numbers is accurate for Council to make informed decisions.

And you believe that...

HDSB numbers as per Trustee Danielli. The bottom line is they're citing it as a factor in planning now.

I'm just saying basement apartments will impact the population growth numbers and if anyone is planning one, please get the necessary clearance/permits etc so the additional numbers can be counted in future planning. It will affect us.

OH YEAH! Milton is going to be Brampton 2.0 and once I get my RE license, my billboards will be all over Ray Lawson and McLaughlin....to buy homes in Milton.

Well at least Brampton has household waste pickup EVERY week. Now you can see why!

There's a house that's up for sale for a while now near where I'm living. It's listed at a pretty high price (especially initially, they've dropped the price on it $25K already), so, when I went to check why, I noticed the listing shows that it has an unlicensed basement apartment, which probably explains why the seller had to drop the price from their original expectations, and why it's sat on the market for a great deal of time. I imagine from a buyer's perspective having that basement apartment, but not having all the proper approvals is a big deterrent. You have no idea what you're getting, and how much work and money you need to put into it to make it official.

I think you can get away with building a basement appartment as long as it is called an inlaw suite. A friend of mine moved his elderly parents into the house but to give them some "privacy" they had a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom all built and like an earlier post mentioned, a door was added on the landing of the staris to main floor so it had its own entrance.

They said the approvals were nothing to get done. As long as they weren't renting it to anybody it was all legal.

I have seen several houses on the market with an "In law suite" in the basement. I guess thats code for unlicenced appartment, unless you really want your in laws down there...