New Custom Homes in Burlington

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 Burlington Building Department issues the building permit and, at the end, the occupancy permit, and inspects the build in between. Burlington’s Site Alteration By-law 064-2014 can require a permit on a residential lot for a pool, regrading or infilling the yard, a patio or a retaining wall. A new house regrades its yard and may need a retaining wall at a walkout. We check both against the by-law and file any permit it needs beside the building permit.

If the lot is inside the regulated area of Conservation Halton, yes. 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. Beside a valley with stable slopes, the regulated area runs to the stable top of the bank plus 15 metres, which can decide where on the lot the house goes. The Conservation Halton permit comes first, then the Burlington building permit.

That depends on the rules of the Burlington Avenue-Ontario Street district. The first step is to check the lot against its boundary. Burlington’s Burlington Avenue-Ontario Street Heritage Conservation District was designated under Part V of the Ontario Heritage Act by By-law 08-2026, which City Council passed on March 2, 2026. Because the district is recent, a plan drawn before it was designated is checked against it again. For a lot inside it, we confirm with the City of Burlington Building Department what the district asks of a new house before the design is fixed.

Yes. We take on new custom homes across Burlington, including Aldershot and Downtown Burlington, 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 Burlington Building Department will ask for before we quote.

We start from the by-law that zones the lot, which for most houses is the Residential Zoning By-law 09-2026 and elsewhere Zoning By-law 2020, and read its height, coverage and setback limits against your survey. Those limits give the outline the design has to fit, and where it needs slightly more room, a minor variance from Burlington’s Committee of Adjustment comes first, since the City of Burlington Building Department cannot issue the permit until it is granted.

They can. Demolition, the basement dig and the service trench all reach into the soil where roots are, and inside the Urban Planning Area Burlington’s Private Tree By-law, 040-2022 as amended by 100-2025, needs a permit before a private tree 20 cm or more in diameter at 1.37 m is injured, with heritage trees and species at risk protected too. Each of those trees, yours and the neighbours’ along the lot lines, goes on the survey before we place the footprint, and any tree permit is applied for while the City of Burlington Building Department reviews the set.

As an email to buildingpermits@burlington.ca, since Burlington has no online portal for building permit applications, carrying the architectural, structural, mechanical and energy sheets and the grading plan. Status is checked by phone, because the City’s myfiles tool only follows Pre-Building Approval files, and if one round of comments touches several disciplines, we revise those sheets together and send back one complete resubmission, so every sheet the City of Burlington Building Department holds matches.

Yes. Ontario’s Building Code Act bars demolishing a building without a permit, just as it bars building one, so we email the demolition application to buildingpermits@burlington.ca with the new house’s set, or ahead of it if the lot needs clearing first. Once the demolition permit is issued, the old house can come down while the City of Burlington Building Department is still reviewing the new one.

The Niagara Escarpment Commission does. Properties in the NEC’s area take their zoning from the NEC rather than from By-law 09-2026 or Zoning By-law 2020, so we confirm with the NEC what applies to your lot before the house is massed. The Private Tree By-law covers trees inside the Urban Planning Area Boundary only, so on an escarpment lot we also check which side of that line it falls on, and the building permit itself is still issued by the City of Burlington Building Department.

Yes, and it helps most before the design is fixed. Our director is broker of record at our sister company, Fine Homes Real Estate, and he compares the house you have in mind with what has recently sold around the lot, whether that is in Aldershot, Millcroft, Alton Village or Downtown Burlington. With the city’s housing mostly single-detached, those sales are usually detached houses too, and what they fetched can decide how large a house is worth building, alongside what the zoning permits.