Custom Home Builder Wasaga Beach

Wasaga Beach grew faster than almost anywhere in Canada between the last two censuses. Statistics Canada counted 20,675 people in the Wasaga Beach census agglomeration in 2016 and 24,862 in 2021, a 20.3% jump that ranked second among every census agglomeration in the country. If you are talking to a custom home builder Wasaga Beach families have used, much of that conversation is about who the house is for. Increasingly the honest answer is more than one household: a parent moving closer, an adult child saving to buy, a couple planning to stay put for thirty years.

The Town’s zoning has an answer for that, and it is more specific than most people expect. This page walks through what it allows, what it rules out, and how that changes a custom design in Wasaga Beach before anyone picks a floor plan.

The Town of Wasaga Beach Zoning By-law 2003-60 (the 2025 office consolidation is the version on the Town’s website) lists two residential uses for the Residential Type 1, or R1, zone: a single detached dwelling, and one attached accessory dwelling unit inside it. The same one-suite allowance runs through the R2 and R3 zones.

An attached accessory dwelling unit is a second, self-contained home under the same roof, with its own kitchen, bath and sleeping space. Most people call it an in-law suite. In Wasaga Beach it is a permitted use as of right in those zones, which means no rezoning application, as long as the house and lot meet the conditions in section 3.28 of the by-law.

Those conditions are where a custom design either works or quietly does not. Some are about the lot and cannot be designed around. Others are about the building and are easy to satisfy on paper and expensive to fix after framing.

If the lot clears those four, section 3.28.2 sets the proportions. The suite needs at least 37 square metres of floor area. It cannot be larger than 45% of the gross floor area of the main house, and the main house must keep at least 93 square metres for itself. One extra parking space is required, tandem parking is allowed, and every space has to be on the lot rather than on the street.

Two rules reach into the front yard. With a suite, the driveway can take no more than 55% of the lot frontage, and at least 45% of the front yard has to stay landscaped open space. On a narrow Wasaga Beach lot, that pair decides where a garage door can go and how wide it can be, and it is worth drawing before the house is.

Search for home builders Wasaga Beach residents recommend and two different kinds of business come back under the same words. Some of the new home builders in Wasaga Beach sell a house and lot together, from a set of models. A custom builder works on a lot you already own or are buying, from a plan made for that lot.

The suite question sorts the two quickly. If you want a second household designed into the house, with its own entrance placed where the by-law wants it and parking laid out for both, that is a custom brief. The question to put to Wasaga Beach new home builders is whether a model can be redrawn to carry a suite at all, and anyone scrolling new home builders Wasaga Beach Ontario listings should ask it before falling for a floor plan.

We are the custom kind. A&R Design Build has built more than 1,500 homes and cottages since 1973, has been a Tarion registered builder since 1983, and is licensed by Ontario’s Home Construction Regulatory Authority as licence B46716. Among custom home builders Wasaga Beach families can compare, we are not local: our base is in Innisfil, and Wasaga Beach sits in Simcoe County, one of the regions we serve. If you are choosing between Wasaga Beach home builders, a fair question to ask each one is whether they can show you a finished house you can walk through. Ours is The Carlyle, a 3,174 square foot Panoramics model home in Innisfil.

Calling any firm a dream home builder Wasaga Beach families can trust is easy to do in an ad. A better test is whether people come back.