Legal Basement Suites in Langley

Every secondary suite in the Township of Langley needs a building permit, and a house can have one suite. The Township's Guide to Secondary Suites caps a suite at 120 m² (1,291 sq ft) of finished living area, not counting shared laundry or shared exits.

You do not have to live in the house. The Township removed the owner-occupancy requirement in 2024, and the suite definition in its Zoning Bylaw carries no such condition. Parking is one space per dwelling unit, with at least two on the lot.

The City of Langley adopted Zoning Bylaw No. 3300 on March 9, 2026, and under it the registered owner must live on the lot. The suite can be no larger than 100 m² of gross floor area or 40% of the building's gross floor area, and it needs one off-street parking space on top of the two the house requires.

The suite must meet the BC Building Code, be inspected under a building permit and be recorded in the City's secondary suites registry.

The BC Building Code applies in both municipalities, so the construction rules for a suite are the same in each. The City of Langley's suite guide spells them out: a fire separation of at least 30 minutes between the suite and the main house; interconnected smoke alarms in each bedroom and hallway of the suite, plus an interconnected photoelectric alarm in both units; CO alarms where there is a fuel-fired appliance or a garage; bedroom windows with at least 0.35 m² of clear opening and no side under 380 mm; a ceiling height of at least 2.0 m (6 ft 6 in); and heating that can hold 22°C. The Township asks for the same fire separations, alarm locations and exit sizes on the permit drawings, plus the dampers and duct smoke detectors where both units share one forced-air system.

If you are converting an existing basement, those are the items to measure first. A ceiling under 2.0 m, bedroom windows below the egress size or one furnace serving both units each adds work to the scope.

In the Township, a house built before 1990 may need a hazardous materials survey for asbestos before the basement is opened up. In the City, where the house is over 30 years old or the work is valued at more than $100,000, the Engineering Department decides whether the existing utilities need upgrading.

On a septic property in the Township, the suite drawings need a floor plan and referral form from a Registered Onsite Wastewater Practitioner, and a net increase in bedrooms is one of the triggers on the Township's septic referral form. On ALR land, the Agricultural Land Commission allows one secondary suite, and it must sit inside the principal residence.

Since 2025, every Township of Langley property with a suite pays an Annual Secondary Suite Infrastructure Fee with its property taxes, plus amounts equal to 30% of the flat water and sewer rates where they apply. The Township's 2026 utility rates set the suite's flat charges at $214.94 a year for sewer and $233.99 for water.

In the City of Langley, the building permit is priced on the construction value of the work under the City's permit fee schedule, with a $200 application fee for alterations and renovations to a single-family house. The permit fee doubles if work starts before the permit is issued.

A family suite needs the same building permit as a rental, and under provincial rules it stays part of the house. A secondary suite cannot be stratified or legally divided from it.

If the suite is for a parent, we can build it step-free from the start, with zero-step entries, wider doorways and a curbless shower. It is the same work as our aging-in-place renovations, and we are a CHBA Qualified Adaptiv Home Specialist.