Plan on 12 to 18 months of construction, and add roughly three to nine months ahead of that for design and permitting. Two years from first coffee to keys is realistic for most Vancouver lots. Anyone quoting you dramatically less has not accounted for the city’s review times.

It depends where you are starting from. If you already have plans, we move straight into the consultation and begin working through costs and budget against your drawings. If you do not, bring the address, your title and any survey you have, plus anything you have sketched or saved. We will pull the zoning ourselves and tell you what we see. Either way it begins with a conversation and a walk of the lot.

A quick review of the zoning bylaw will tell us most of it: floor space ratio, setbacks, height, and whether you can add a laneway home or a suite. Heritage and character restrictions apply in some neighbourhoods on top of that. We are happy to run that review for you, and so is your architect or designer if you already have one. It costs you nothing, and most owners are surprised in one direction or the other.

Your drawings will come from an architect or a designer, and we work alongside whoever you choose. Bring us what they have produced, even at an early stage, and we will price it and tell you where the cost is sitting. The cheapest changes to a house are always the ones made on paper.

We do. Every new build needs a building permit from the city or your municipality, and the process runs through inspections to a final occupancy approval. We prepare the applications, carry them through review, and handle the revisions that almost always come back. You are not the one sitting on hold with the permit desk.

If you are building on undeveloped land, near a slope, or anywhere in a known peat zone, a geotechnical report is not optional. Some lots also need an environmental assessment because of water proximity or what the land was used for historically. Skipping this is the most expensive mistake we see people make.

Peat is deep, spongy, organic soil with very poor load bearing capacity, and it runs under parts of East Vancouver, Marpole and South Vancouver. Build on it without planning for it and you get cracking, shifting and drainage problems. Plan for it and it is entirely buildable: piles or caissons, a raft slab, gravel preloading, better drainage. We have done it. If your lot is in one of those areas, ask us before you do anything else.

A demolition permit, hazardous material abatement if there is asbestos or lead, waste recycling compliance, and a tree protection and lot grading plan. We coordinate all of it, including the environmental consultants and the city inspectors. It is more paperwork than most people expect, and it is entirely routine for us.

Many single family zones in Vancouver allow one or both, within size and design limits. It is worth modelling early, because rental income can change what you are able to afford to build, and adding the idea late is expensive. We will run those numbers with you at the consultation.

The Vancouver Building Bylaw is strict and it drives real cost: high efficiency windows, an airtight envelope, heat pumps or high performance HVAC, and Step Code compliance depending on what you build. It is enforced at inspection, so it is not a corner worth cutting. It is also what makes the house cheap to run for the next thirty years.

A small team, and the same one from start to finish. Mizan runs deliberately lean, which means the people who walk your lot at the beginning are the people coordinating your trades and standing on your site later on. You will not be handed off to an account manager you have never met, and you will not be explaining your project again to somebody new every few months.