New Custom Homes in Barrie

A building permit with architectural, structural, mechanical and energy-compliance drawings and a grading and servicing plan, plus any minor variance or conservation permit the lot triggers. The City of Barrie Building Services issues the building permit and, at the end, the occupancy permit, and inspects the build in between. Barrie has its own site alteration by-law, and we ask the City of Barrie Building Services early whether the earthworks around the new house need a permit under it.

If the lot is inside the regulated area of the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority (LSRCA), yes. The west of the city is under the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority. We check which authority maps the lot before anything else. Under Ontario’s Conservation Authorities Act, building a house or grading a site in hazardous lands, wetlands, river or stream valleys or shorelines at risk of flooding or erosion needs the authority’s permit, because O. Reg. 41/24 counts both as development. The authority has to publish maps of its regulated areas and review them at least once a year. We check the lot against the current map. Whichever authority’s permit the lot needs comes first, then the Barrie building permit.

Yes. We take on new custom homes across Barrie, including Allandale and Painswick, within an hour of our Richmond Hill office. The first consultation is free, by phone or on site.

Three things to start: lot address and a survey, if you have one; your sketch, brief or a plan from another designer; and whether the lot is serviced or needs a well and septic. Send those and we tell you what the City of Barrie Building Services will ask for before we quote.

Your zone’s limits on height, setbacks and coverage, found in Comprehensive Zoning By-law 2009-141 across most of Barrie and in the Community Planning Permit System inside the Allandale Major Transit Station Area. Ontario also shortens each minimum setback to 90 per cent of the written distance on urban residential land beyond the Greenbelt Area, so we confirm whether your lot qualifies before drawing the footprint. The City of Barrie Building Services then checks the house against the same limits.

We do, alongside the application for the new house. Taking a house down needs its own permit under Ontario’s Building Code Act, issued by the City of Barrie Building Services, and nothing can be demolished before it is. Clearing the lot and backfilling the old basement move a lot of soil, so we check that work against Barrie’s site alteration by-law at the same time.

Yes. Barrie allows the main home plus up to three additional units on a residential lot, inside the house, attached to it or in a coach house or garage, so a new house can be drawn with a basement unit and a detached one already in the plan. Building them in from the start is simpler than a retrofit: the ceiling height, separate entrances and fire separations are built once, and the water service and heating are sized for every household. The City of Barrie Building Services reviews each unit against the zone’s standards, so we check those first.

On a typical house lot, no, because By-law 2014-115 covers only trees in a woodlot of half an acre or more. A larger lot can contain a woodlot of that size, and a build tied to a development application brings the by-law in as well, so in either case we check the trees with the City before placing the house. Trees near the work still go on the site plan for the City of Barrie Building Services, since their roots limit where the foundation and the service trench can go.

Yes. Once we file the set, APLI shows where it stands with the City of Barrie Building Services and emails you each time it changes. A new house puts more in front of the examiner than a renovation does, with architectural, structural, mechanical, energy and grading sheets all reviewed, and we answer every comment and replace the sheets in that same application.

Check whether the LSRCA, or the NVCA in the west of the city, regulates any part of it, and whether its trees belong to a woodlot of half an acre or more, since either can move the house on the lot. The zoning matters too, because some land Barrie took in from Innisfil, Springwater or Oro-Medonte still follows that municipality’s by-law. We can look into all of it before your offer is firm.