Steps To Get a Legal Basement Apartment

Steps To Get a Legal Basement Apartment

For the past year and a half, we have seen a dramatic increase in the rental market all across North America. With interest rates rising cost of housing has gone up and the rental market is booming. As a result a lot of homeowners now want to finish their unused basements into legal rental basement apartments.

In this article, we will highlight the steps to get your legal rental basement apartment:

Step 1: Property Qualification –

Make sure that your property qualifies for a legal rental basement apartment, check with your local municipality and zoning laws to determine if your property qualifies for a legal rental basement apartment.

Step 2: Building Permit Application Approval –

Once you have determined your property qualifies for a legal rental basement apartment.

• Then you need to hire a qualified designer/ architect to draw your plans and drawings and submit to the city Municipality.
• Along with the plans and drawings you will need to attach a building permit application to obtain a building permit.
• This process should take around 1 to 3 months depending on the municipality or the city you are located in.

For example

a) The Town of Milton, Ontario takes about 3 months to grant a building permit.

b) The City of Brampton takes about 1 and a half to grant a building permit.

c) The City Of Kitchener takes about to 2 to 3 weeks to grant a building permit.

Step 3: Starting Construction & Handover –

• Hire Basement Construction Company:

Once you have the permit in hand you will need to hire a contractor or construction company to do construction according to the plans.

• Basement Construction Timeline:

The construction of a basement should take about 2 to 3 months from start to finish.

• Multiple City Building Inspection:

Property will have around 7 to 11 inspections from the City building inspectors such as framing, plumbing rough-ins, HVAC rough-ins, insulations, final plumbing, final building, etc., etc.

Each stage of inspection has to be passed to move onto the next stage.

• Electric Safety Authority Approval:

You will also need to have an inspection done by the electric safety authority of the electrical rough-ins and electrical finishes which will be done by a master-licensed electrician registered with the electric safety authority.

Once of you have passed all the inspections your Legal Basement Apartment will be ready to be rented out. 

In total it will take you 3-6 months to build your legal rental basement apartment from design to finish.

My Legal Basement LTD is currently doing projects in these municipalities and we are helping home owners to build their legal rental basement apartments to earn extra rental income.

• City Of Milton
• City Of Brampton
• City of Mississauga
• City Kitchener
• City Of Hamilton
• City Of Burlington
• Town Of Oakville
• Town Of Caledon
• City Of Vaughan
• City of Richmond Hill
• City Of Markham