Development Potential in Sooke

There is no six unit tier. In the District's own words, Sooke does not have any bus stops meeting the legislation's definition of a prescribed bus stop.

A Sooke lot qualifies only if it clears all five:

It sits inside the Community Growth Area from the Official Community Plan, which Sooke applies as its containment boundary for these rules. It is connected to community water and community sewer, both. It sits in a zone whose minimum subdivision lot size is under 4,050 square metres. It is under 4,050 square metres itself. And it is outside the agricultural land reserve.

Sooke's own analysis found 68 lots required to permit 3 or more units and 2,890 required to permit 4 or more, with 2,215 limited to suites or accessory units.

Sooke kept 1.5 parking spaces per unit and 1 per suite, justified to the Minister on limited, low frequency transit and narrow road rights of way.

Height is 11 metres and 3 storeys for a principal building and 8 metres and 2 storeys for accessory buildings.

Section 3.28 of the zoning bylaw prohibits small suites on properties under 1 hectare that are not serviced by community sewer.

This is the clearest example in the region of title beating zoning.

At Sun River Estates, in the CD2 zone, 651 properties meet every small scale multi unit criterion and not one of them can add a unit. A registered covenant caps the development at 715 units, and that figure has already been reached.

The provincial policy manual says existing section 219 covenants are not affected by the legislation, and the District's own staff report says the same: those covenants remain in force, even though the lots subject to them still have to be zoned to allow the new density.

Elsewhere the numbers are just as narrow for other reasons. In the RU2 zone, 1 of 484 properties qualifies. In RU4, 17 of 1,314 do.

Order a title search on the PID before you price density into an offer.

There is a full post on what a covenant or building scheme does to your density.