Posts by lifewd

Building a custom home in the Lower Mainland means meeting taxes at four points in the project, not just one. You will see federal GST at 5% on a new home, BC provincial sales tax of 7% built into your materials, Property Transfer Tax if the land changes hands, vacancy-tax rules while the house sits…

No, the BC Building Code does not require a soils test on every new house, and that is exactly where owners get hurt. For most houses the code lets a designer size footings from a table of presumed bearing values, with no drilling on the lot at all. On flat, low-lying Lower Mainland ground, that…

Building a custom home on a teardown lot means buying or using a property with an existing older house, removing that structure, and building a new home around the lot, budget, and municipal rules. It can be a smart way to live in an established Lower Mainland neighbourhood, but the lot needs to be checked…

A spec home is a new home a builder starts before a specific buyer is committed, so the layout, finishes, and many construction choices are already set. A custom home is designed and built around your land, lifestyle, budget, and priorities from the beginning. The simple difference is speed versus control: a spec home can…

A $2M custom home budget can buy very different outcomes in the Lower Mainland depending on one first question: are you talking about construction only, or a broader project budget excluding land? In real projects, that money usually gets split across the house itself, site work and servicing, soft costs, municipal and regional charges, and…

If you are planning a custom home in the Lower Mainland, higher BC Energy Step Code targets usually change three things first: the enclosure and airtightness strategy, the ventilation and mechanical plan, and the amount of modelling, testing, and documentation required earlier in design. The Province treats the BC Energy Step Code as a performance-based…

If you are budgeting for a custom home in the Lower Mainland, the honest answer is not one blanket square-foot number. A realistic budget usually combines house construction, site work and servicing, soft costs, municipal and regional charges, and contingency or financing, which is why it helps to start with a clear scope and an…

Planning a new custom home in Vancouver means planning around a permit process measured in months, not weeks. The City of Vancouver’s current page for new duplexes, single detached houses, and laneway houses shows a March 2026 median elapsed time of 22.0 weeks for New Build – Low Density Housing, and the City says timelines…

A custom home builder, an architect, and a designer each solve a different problem. Builders deliver the home (people, schedule, site, and quality), architects design and document the home (often including permit drawings and consultant coordination), and designers shape the interior experience (layout function, finishes, and selections). The best projects in the Lower Mainland work…

A construction loan for a custom home in BC (often called a progress-draw mortgage) funds your build in stages, not all at once. Your lender releases money after specific milestones are verified, you typically pay interest based on what has been advanced, and the financing often converts to a standard mortgage once the home is…