SSMUH After Bill 25: What Your Lot Actually Allows in 2026

The June 30, 2026 deadline has come and gone. Every local government in BC that was captured by Bill 25 was supposed to have a compliant zoning bylaw adopted by that date. Some do. Some applied for extensions. Some are quietly still working on it.

If you own land in BC, or you are trying to buy land to build on, this matters more than most people realize. The rules changed twice in three years, and the second change was specifically designed to close the gaps municipalities used to avoid the first one.

Here is where things actually stand.

A quick recap of how we got here

In the fall of 2023, the Province passed Bill 44, the Small-Scale Multi-Unit Housing legislation. The idea was simple: stop letting zoning bylaws restrict huge swaths of BC to a single detached house on a lot. Municipalities had until June 30, 2024 to update their bylaws to permit between three and six units on lots that had previously been zoned for single-detached or duplex housing.

Then the Province looked at how implementation was going and found that it wasn’t going particularly well. Municipalities were interpreting “restricted zone” narrowly. If a zone already permitted a house plus a secondary suite plus a coach house, some argued it was already at three units and therefore not restricted at all. That reading kept a lot of land out of the legislation’s reach.

Bill 25, the Housing and Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendment Act, passed in November 2025 and closed that door.

What Bill 25 actually changed

Two changes matter most:

• The definition of a “restricted zone” got wider. A zone now counts as restricted if any parcel in it is limited to a single detached home and/or a duplex. It also now explicitly includes zones that permit a single detached home with a secondary suite and a detached accessory dwelling unit. That was the loophole, and it is gone.
• The Province gave itself more regulatory power. Bill 25 expanded the Province’s authority to make regulations governing the form of SSMUH buildings (duplex, triplex, townhouse, rowhouse, and how many buildings), the density (floor space ratio, gross floor area), and off-street parking for SSMUH projects under six units. Nothing has been imposed yet. But the authority now exists, which means municipalities that write restrictive form-and-character rules to blunt the legislation are on notice.

Local governments affected by the change had to adopt a compliant zoning bylaw by June 30, 2026, notify the Minister in writing, and align their Official Community Plan by June 30, 2027.

How many units does your lot allow?

The legislation sets minimums. Municipalities can permit more; they cannot permit less. The baseline works like this:

Lot	Minimum units
280 m² (roughly 3,014 sq ft) or smaller	3 units
Larger than 280 m²	4 units
Larger than 280 m² and within 400 m of a frequent transit stop	6 units

This applies to residential lots in restricted zones that fall inside an urban containment boundary, or, where no such boundary exists, in a municipality with a population over 5,000.

In Chilliwack, that means three to four units as-of-right on single-detached and duplex-zoned lots inside the Urban Growth Boundary, subject to building code, servicing capacity, and the City’s design guidelines.

The exemptions people forget to check

Not every lot qualifies. Before you build a pro forma around four units, confirm your parcel isn’t caught by one of these:

• Parcels larger than 4,050 m², or lots in a zone where the minimum subdividable lot size is 4,050 m².
• Lots not connected to both municipal water and sewer. Both. One is not enough.
• Heritage-protected land, including land under a heritage revitalization agreement or in the process of heritage designation.
• Land subject to a hazardous condition where a qualified professional has certified that added density would meaningfully increase the risk and the risk cannot practically be mitigated.
• Land inside a designated Transit-Oriented Area, which is governed by a separate framework with its own, usually higher, density permissions.

And separately from exemptions, municipalities could apply for extensions where infrastructure upgrades are underway or where added density would create a genuine health, safety, or environmental risk. Granted extensions can run as late as December 31, 2030. So “the deadline passed” does not automatically mean “your neighbourhood is compliant.” It is worth confirming directly with your municipality.

Where SSMUH projects actually get stuck

The zoning is the easy part. What we see slowing projects down is everything downstream of it:

Servicing capacity. Zoning may permit four units. The water and sewer laterals serving that lot were sized for one. Upgrading a service connection can be a five-figure line item and a multi-week schedule hit, and you generally do not find out the real number until you ask the City’s engineering department.

Form and siting bylaws. SSMUH removed the density barrier. It did not remove setbacks, height limits, lot coverage, or FSR. A lot can permit four units on paper and still be nearly impossible to fit four livable units onto once you apply the siting rules. This is the single most common gap between what a listing advertises and what a site plan can deliver.

Parking and access. Even where minimum parking has been relaxed near frequent transit, you still have to physically resolve access, manoeuvring, garbage, and fire department turnaround on a lot that was designed around one driveway.

The building code. Four units is not four times one unit. Party wall assemblies, fire separations, sound transmission, egress, and Step Code energy compliance all change the drawing set and the construction cost per square foot.

These are the same forces that quietly eat the margin on a fourplex, and they are all decided on paper long before anyone breaks ground.

What this means if you are buying land

Treat “SSMUH-eligible” in a listing as a hypothesis, not a fact. Before you remove subjects, we would want to see:

1. The lot area, and whether it clears 280 m².
2. Whether it is within 400 m of a frequent transit stop, confirmed with the transit agency rather than guessed from a map.
3. The current zoning and the municipality’s post-Bill-25 bylaw status.
4. Servicing capacity, confirmed with the City.
5. A test-fit site plan applying the actual setbacks, height, and coverage rules.

That fifth item is the one people skip, and it is the one that decides whether the deal works.

Where we come in

Rexford is an architectural drafting and design studio in Chilliwack. We produce permit-ready drawing sets for small-scale multi-unit projects across the Fraser Valley, the rest of BC, and Alberta, and we do the test-fit work before clients commit. A one-week feasibility sketch that tells you a lot supports three units instead of four is considerably cheaper than finding out after you have closed.

Once you know what the lot holds, the next question is what to put on it, and that is a design problem. We have written about designing a fourplex people actually want to live in.

If you are evaluating a site and want to know what it will actually hold, send us the address and the zoning. We will tell you straight.