How much does a laneway or garden suite cost in Toronto?

Toronto's laneway and garden suite permits, with the declared construction value of each — the clearest public price signal for ADUs.

1,154 permits with a declared value, trailing 36 months. Medians and quartiles only — one outlier can't move them.

We publish a per-square-foot rate only where floor area is what the price actually scales with. For this work the correlation between area and declared value is 0.12 — too weak for a rate to predict your project. Multiplying your floor area by a published $/SF number would produce a confident-looking figure that the underlying permits do not support, so we show the value distribution instead.

• Floor area and storeys — most are 500–1,200 SF over one or two levels.
• Servicing: a new water and sanitary connection to the main house or street is often the single largest line.
• Fire access and separation distances, which can force upgraded cladding and windows.
• Foundation type and tree protection — a protected tree can dictate the whole structural approach.

Declared construction values on City of Toronto building permits (tier C), trailing 36 months, minimum 12 permits before a guide is published. A declared value is what the applicant stated the work is worth — it can sit below final hard cost, which is exactly why GROUND also publishes awarded contract prices.

Garden suites (rear yard, no laneway required) were legalized citywide in 2022; the mix in this data has shifted toward them since.

Data: Open Government Licence — Toronto. Recomputed automatically as new permits land; the figures above are current as of October 07, 2026.

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