How one Vancouver family plans to live under three roofs on one property

Globe and Mail

08-08-2025

Alison Lee's parents own a big house in Shaughnessy, a neighbourhood in Vancouver, where she and her siblings grew up. Ms. Lee lives in a bungalow in Oakridge with her husband and kids, and her brother lives downtown in a condo with his kids. The family plans to sell off their properties and converge in a multiunit strata property they are planning to build on a large lot they purchased in Kerrisdale. The Lee family decided a side-by-side duplex and a coach house will suit their needs, but they are still in the design stage. They will apply to the city to build the three legally separate units as a multiple conversion dwelling (MCD), so that Ms. Lee, her parents and her brother have their own homes but a shared outdoor courtyard where the family will gather.
'My brother is in a condo. My parents are in a house that's much too large for them. And my husband and I are in quite a small house that's a bit too small for our family,' said Ms. Lee.
'The reason we are doing this is because everything is so unaffordable, but I'm hoping we can make lemonade out of lemons and design a space comfortable for us and for my parents as they age, and that allows us to take care of our kids, and our parents when that time comes. Just to be able to make sure they are okay, to be around if they need help, it makes a lot of sense.'
Across Vancouver, the low-density strata building, where multiple individuals own units within a single property, is gaining in popularity as boomers get older and their millennial kids look for better housing options.
High-rise living doesn't suit their ground-oriented lifestyle, and the detached house is too pricey or too big. And it's taking hold in neighbourhoods where it was at one time, not so long ago, unthinkable to redevelop or convert a big house into a multiunit residence.
Ideally, Ms. Lee's family would live in houses near each other, but that wasn't financially possible in pricey Kerrisdale, she says. So, she came up with the idea of a multiunit strata that would allow her family around 2,500 square feet, and her parents and brother 2,000 square feet each. They also want a lot big enough to allow for off-street parking.
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Their builder, Suraj Jhuty, said applying for a conversion is preferable to tearing down and building new, because starting from scratch would have meant being required to build four units on the 50-foot lot. The Lee family doesn't need the fourth unit, so they are applying as an MCD and retaining the façade of the character house.
Applications for the multiunit strata model have been increasing in Vancouver neighbourhoods since the city prezoned single-family house neighbourhoods two years ago to allow three, four or six legally separate units. The building type is popular with small developers who have traditionally built duplexes. Mr. Jhuty is one of many builders developing their own properties to sell on the market or on behalf of clients such as Ms. Lee.
Last month, city council approved a motion for staff to review extending the multiplex zoning to lots without lane access, or smaller lots. The review would also look at streamlining the approval process and perhaps follow Burnaby's example, which allows four floors, three above-grade.
David Eger, real estate appraiser and vice-president of Western Canada for Altus Group Ltd., did the math on a fourplex on the west side of Vancouver, for a standard 50- by 120-foot lot. If the purchase price was $2.75-million, a builder could expect to earn a profit of around $173,000 per unit, he said. That would be based on a sale price of around $2-million per unit. He added that it would be difficult to find a west-side property below $3-million.
He said in an e-mail: 'It may not be a grand slam, homerun in terms of making excessive profits, but it would create attractive and well-built homes for family members wishing to downsize and remain in the neighbourhood.'
Mr. Eger, a long-time adviser to the development industry, said the multiplex isn't a panacea to the housing affordability crisis, but it does have its place, because of the high cost of construction and the complexity involved.
'I think the potential for building multiplexes on single-family lots should be more focused as an estate planning, family planning, early inheritance option, as opposed to a solution for creating a number of new affordable homes within the community,' he said, in an e-mail.
If affordability is the goal, he advised assembling three single-family lots and constructing 40 to 50 multi-unit rental units with secured underground parking.
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Real estate consultant Sam Sharma said that the lack of parking is one of the problems with the current multiplex zoning. He counts 1,691 strata multiplex units in process with the city right now, and of those, he said 790 do not have parking spaces. But the applications to construct the building type are across the city, with a few dozen in west side neighbourhoods Kerrisdale, Kitsilano, Dunbar, Shaughnessy and West Point Grey, and many more on the east side, in Hastings Sunrise, Kensington Cedar Cottage and Victoria Fraserview.
Mr. Sharma's Amira Realty Consulting is helping his builder clients find properties. He specializes in small-scale developments in areas with a lot of demand and believes the new multiunit strata buildings will open up a housing market that was closed off because the properties were restricted to big, detached houses that few could afford. And the alternative ground-oriented duplex had become increasingly expensive, he said, because so few of them were getting built. The demand for ground-oriented small-scale strata is the fuel behind the multiplex, with 75 under construction right now, he said.
The two demographics driving the trend are the downsizers who are living in oversized houses, and the young families in need of yard space and storage.
'I always tell my builders, 'Don't do anything less than 1,400 or 1,500 square feet. Three bedrooms, two levels, if possible. And if you can, build a garage. A garage is storage. They want yards.'
'With the multiplex, you will get young families and animation on the streets, and that's what the west side is missing.'
Ms. Lee, who is new to building a home, has advice for those homeowners who might be looking to transfer their equity into a multigenerational strata project.
'You need a very good relationship with all your family members, otherwise there is a lot of opportunities where there can be conflict,' she advised. 'Everyone has to be on the same page, and want to do this, because again, it is a lot of work, a lot of unknowns, and a lot of added stress, compared to something already built, where you don't have to make all the nitty gritty decisions.'
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As for the affordability of it, and whether it will be a good move for future resale, she said that remains an unknown.
'The numbers haven't shaken out yet. Our hope is that it will, and it should be, more affordable to do it this way – by how much, I'm not sure.'
She wouldn't advise homeowners to take on such a complex project for an investment. It works better as a long-term family project.
'We would like for this place to be the home we stay at for a long time. We are not building this to develop and sell.'