Build a house within a house

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The shift in production builder floor plans that we started seeing a few years ago has solidified into a trend: Ottawa home builders are making it easier to attract buyers who want a flexible home.

Whether it’s a multi-generational home, an income-producing property, or a rethink of the traditional townhouse or detached home, several options have recently been introduced to more effectively meet buyers’ needs and address affordability challenges.

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There are few statistics that follow the trend. Among them, the number of permits issued by the city for what it could identify as this type of housing has risen and fallen over the past four years, but consistently and significantly exceeded 2019, when 32 such permits were issued. In 2023, there were 87, an increase of 171 percent. What’s clear is that builders have received enough feedback from buyers to adapt.

Last year, for example:

• eQ Homes introduced its Duo Series of homes in February that come standard with a secondary living unit in the basement. For its regular singles, it has also split the included specifications into two tiers to offer a more affordable option to buyers.
• Glenview Homes opened a show home April 13 of its recently unveiled Prescott multigenerational home, which comes standard with a main-floor guest suite. The same day, it unveiled the Reveli floor plan, which has optional suites on the main floor and basement.
• Cardel Homes is about to launch a marketing initiative touting the flexibility of its homes, such as the recently introduced Paxon single, which has options for a main floor suite, a separate side entry, a basement suite and a second master suite upstairs (a model showing the basement suite will open in August).
• Minto Communities introduced a flurry of new floor plans last year that proved popular, including three-story single apartments with more square footage in a smaller space and two-story towns with six bedrooms, including a main-floor guest suite .
• And several builders now have floor plans that offer a main floor suite option.

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“Affordability is the driver of all of this,” says Tanya Buckley, senior vice president of Cardel’s Ontario Housing Division. “Builders are reviewing, revising or introducing new specifications… to try to reduce costs, while looking at the plans to say, ‘How can you maximize the value of your space?’ And that includes attracting more people or giving your home an additional use.”

Glenview introduced the Prescott (as well as the Reveli) because buyers were asking for it, says sales and marketing manager Kristy Brayton. “People want as many rooms as possible.” Glenview has sold 14 Prescott floor plans since its introduction last July, an impressive number in a difficult market.

Will and Annalize Ridley hope to move into their Prescott home in October. They bought it for its current flexibility and future potential. “We leave the door open to what happens in the future,” Annalize says. “We have an option in our house that might work.”

Similarly, eQ launched the Duo series due to feedback from buyers. All four plans feature a separate basement suite with side entry. Prospective buyers are “intrigued by the concept,” says Tobin Kardish, eQ’s director of marketing and product development, although he acknowledges that it is “an innovative housing solution…so it is taking time for the market to familiarize itself with the benefits of owning two houses under one roof.”

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Metric Homes was one of the first builders to introduce low-income housing in 2007. “At the time, there were no regulatory provisions that would allow that to happen, so after working with the city, we helped develop some of their regulations ” says co-owner and vice president of operations Shawn Bernier.

Metric calls its income floor plans Home Within a House and has sold about 15 over the years, two of them currently under construction. Unlike other builder options, Metric affordable homes are designed with above-ground housing units, each with its own basement. The homes have typically attracted multigenerational families, but now Metric is seeing interest in the option of finishing both basements as separate third and fourth units.

Phoenix Homes was an early adopter of secondary housing units and built its first Income Series home in 2018. All three homes in the series have a separate basement unit, and Phoenix is ​​developing two more floor plans to add to the briefcase.

“We launched it to provide flexibility,” says vice president of operations Rahul Kochar, who at the time lived in a multigenerational household. Phoenix currently has six of its Income Series homes under construction, all at Pathways at Findlay Creek, where it had a model home of one of the floor plans, the Klondike, until it sold last year.

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Real estate agent Pritpal Mahal bought the model partly because of the income pool. He sees three uses for it: as a separate unit for his parents, who currently live with him and his family in the main house, as space for guests, and as an income-generating property. “It will really depend on how life changes.”

Townhomes are also undergoing a shift, driven by affordability issues, to give towns more of a townhouse feel. Several builders have introduced an optional layout that adds a bedroom and full bath in the basement; semi-detached houses with double garages are becoming more common; and there are some options for adding a fourth bedroom upstairs in an interior unit, which commonly has three bedrooms due to space and egress limitations.

eQ Homes has taken the opposite route with its cities, finding ways to cut costs to lower prices, such as making the finished basement optional and changing some of the standard features to lower-priced options, such as laminate instead of hardwood.

While several builders are changing course to meet market demand, housing researcher Carolyn Whitzman, who takes a holistic approach to housing, feels more needs to be done. Whitzman is an adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa and author of the upcoming book. Home The truth: Solving Canada’s housing crisiswhich will be out in October.

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The 2021 census showed that almost one million of the approximately 15 million households in Canada were made up of multiple generations of one family or two or more census families, the fastest growing household type, with 45 per cent growth in the last 20 years, he points out. .

“So it’s nothing to sneeze at and it’s part of the demographic changes that have been going on for at least two generations, and I don’t think the housing stock has really responded well to that.”

Similarly, he believes government, at any level, needs to do more. “They are going in the right direction, but, frankly, not fast enough.”

The government has generally supported non-traditional or exclusionary zoning when it comes to housing, such as more units on a lot, but has not yet adopted other forms of non-traditional housing, whether shared housing, missing middle housing, family housing. cozy apartments or senior housing, he says.

“Housing is really complex, but at a basic level it’s really simple: Are we building the homes that people want, where they want them, at prices they can afford? And we’re not doing a very good job of that.”

To address some of these issues, area homebuilders associations will hold the Eastern Ontario Regional Housing Summit on May 28 as “a showcase of the need and how regional coordination can ensure sufficient housing supply that provide a variety of affordable housing options,” says Jason Burggraaf, executive director of the Home Builders Association of Greater Ottawa. “The answers to our housing problems are not limited to our city limits.”

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