Data · extracted 24 September 2026
Vancouver laneway house permits, 2017 to 2026
The City of Vancouver issued 4,147 building permits for new laneway houses between January 2017 and early September 2026, according to the city’s own open data. Permitting peaked at 730 in 2018, bottomed near 296 in 2021 and 2023, and the five busiest neighbourhoods are all on the East Side. Approval times have halved since 2023, and in 2025 multiplex-category permits passed laneway permits for the first time.
These numbers are free to reuse with a link to this page. The full methodology, including the exact query definition, is at the bottom.
01 — Permits by year
| Year issued | New laneway house permits |
|---|---|
| 2017 | 589 |
| 2018 | 730 |
| 2019 | 472 |
| 2020 | 382 |
| 2021 | 299 |
| 2022 | 437 |
| 2023 | 296 |
| 2024 | 399 |
| 2025 | 365 |
| 2026 (to 22 Sep) | 178 |
2018 is the busiest year on record; 2021 and 2023 are the slowest. 2026 is a partial year, extracted 11 September.
02 — Where they get built
| Neighbourhood | Permits, 2017 to 2026 |
|---|---|
| Sunset | 585 |
| Victoria-Fraserview | 513 |
| Renfrew-Collingwood | 460 |
| Hastings-Sunrise | 405 |
| Kensington-Cedar Cottage | 402 |
| Dunbar-Southlands | 288 |
| Killarney | 271 |
| Riley Park | 215 |
| West Point Grey | 197 |
| Arbutus Ridge | 157 |
| Oakridge | 142 |
| Marpole | 134 |
Sunset, Victoria-Fraserview, Renfrew-Collingwood, Hastings-Sunrise, and Kensington-Cedar Cottage lead the city. Dunbar-Southlands is the busiest West Side neighbourhood.
03 — Declared project values
| Year issued | Average declared value |
|---|---|
| 2017 | $190,175 |
| 2018 | $195,664 |
| 2019 | $192,947 |
| 2020 | $193,508 |
| 2021 | $193,050 |
| 2022 | $191,239 |
| 2023 | $200,125 |
| 2024 | $315,248 |
| 2025 | $367,801 |
| 2026 (to 22 Sep) | $378,738 |
The average declared value sat between $190,000 and $200,000 for seven straight years, then rose to $315,248 in 2024. Read the series with care. Declared value is a permit-fee reference figure, not a construction cost: it is set at $250 a square foot of floor area, a rate the City applied for years before the Building By-law made it formal in October 2023. The jump coincides with two changes the data cannot separate, the October 2023 rezoning that roughly doubled the permitted laneway size, and a change in how the City records the figure after a January 2023 audit of permit fees. Nothing in this column says what a laneway house costs to build.
04 — How long approval takes
| Year issued | Average days, application to issue |
|---|---|
| 2017 | 253 |
| 2018 | 221 |
| 2019 | 154 |
| 2020 | 183 |
| 2021 | 166 |
| 2022 | 241 |
| 2023 | 279 |
| 2024 | 143 |
| 2025 | 149 |
| 2026 (to 22 Sep) | 133 |
Approval time peaked at an average of 279 days in 2023 and has run under 150 days every year since: 143 in 2024, 149 in 2025, and 133 so far in 2026. Whatever else is said about Vancouver permitting, laneway approvals have halved from their peak.
05 — The multiplex era
| Year issued | Multiple Dwelling | Laneway House |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 159 | 437 |
| 2023 | 114 | 296 |
| 2024 | 153 | 399 |
| 2025 | 376 | 365 |
| 2026 (to 22 Sep) | 218 | 178 |
Permits in the city’s Multiple Dwelling category, the bucket the new multiplexes fall under, ran between 67 and 150 a year from 2017 through 2024, then hit 376 in 2025: the first year that category passed laneway houses in the dataset. The jump follows the multiplex zoning change the city adopted in late 2023. In 2026 to date the gap has widened, 218 to 178.
06 — Methodology
Source: the City of Vancouver Open Data Portal, issued-building-permits dataset, extracted 24 September 2026. The dataset begins in 2017 and covers the City of Vancouver only, not the wider region.
Definition: permits where the type of work is New Building and the specific use category includes Laneway House. A permit covering a new main house and a laneway house together counts once. Value figures average the declared project value across permits reporting a value above zero. Approval time averages the dataset’s elapsed-days field, the days between the permit application being created and the permit being issued. The Multiple Dwelling comparison uses the same New Building filter on that category; the category predates and is broader than the 2023 multiplex zoning change.
The exact query, so anyone can reproduce this: typeofwork="New Building" AND specificusecategory LIKE "Laneway House" against the portal’s Explore API.
One caveat that matters if you cite a single year: this is a static extract, not a live feed, and the city revises earlier years. Between our 11 September and 24 September 2026 extracts, 2021 rose by two permits and 2022 fell by two.
Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence, Vancouver. Questions about the numbers: ask us directly.
Download the data
Both files carry every figure on this page, by year and by neighbourhood, with the definition and the extract date in the header. Released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence: use them anywhere, including commercially, with a credit.
Suggested credit: KYRAX Homes, Vancouver Laneway Permit Tracker, extracted 24 September 2026, from City of Vancouver open data.
If you want a cut we have not published, by year, by neighbourhood or by declared value band, ask and we will run it. We refresh this page and both files quarterly.
Thinking about your own backyard?
We check your lot’s rules before you sign anything. 30 minutes, no obligation.