If you’re thinking about a second small home on your property in Courtenay, Comox, Cumberland or the rural Comox Valley, three things decide whether it happens: what your local bylaw allows, what the whole project costs once the site work is counted, and whether a factory-built unit or a site-built one suits your lot.
This page covers all three, with the current local numbers. I design detached suites from 400 to 1,000 sq ft across the Comox Valley and Vancouver Island — and I spent twelve years building before I designed full time, so the costs here are the real ones, not the brochure ones.
The same building has four different legal names in four adjacent jurisdictions. Using the wrong one at the counter slows everything down — and two of these bylaws were replaced in the first quarter of 2026, so most of what you’ll find online is out of date.
| Where | What the bylaw calls it | Governing bylaw |
|---|---|---|
| City of Courtenay | Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) | Zoning Bylaw No. 3203, consolidated May 2026 |
| Town of Comox | Coach House | Zoning Bylaw No. 2056, s.6.4 — adopted 18 Feb 2026 |
| Village of Cumberland | Additional Detached Dwelling Unit | Zoning Bylaw No. 1238, 2025 — adopted Feb 2026 |
| CVRD Electoral Areas A, B, C | Carriage House or Secondary Dwelling | Rural Zoning Bylaw No. 520, s.315 — consolidated 17 Apr 2026 |
Cumberland no longer uses “accessory dwelling unit” in its residential zones. Zoning Bylaw 1238 regulates additional detached dwelling units, and in the R-1 zone simply treats extra units as dwelling units. A “caretaker suite” is a different, separately defined use — and it is not a permitted use in R-1, R-2 or R-3. Any guide that tells you to ask for a caretaker suite on a normal Cumberland residential lot is wrong.
A CVRD “carriage house” is not a freestanding cottage. Bylaw 520 s.315(2) requires the residential use to sit on the second storey of a building accessory to the existing house, above non-residential space, and not at or below grade. If you want a single-storey detached suite at grade in Area A, B or C, the correct form is a secondary dwelling, not a carriage house.
CVRD Electoral Areas A, B & C
The practical cap is two dwelling units, not four — and not because of local politics. No electoral-area property currently has both community water and community sewer, which triggers the provincial servicing exemption. Generic “BC now allows four units” content will give you the wrong expectation out here.
Neither form can be strata-titled or subdivided (s.314). Full planning, building inspection, and septic and water approvals are part of the process. ALR properties are more restricted again.
City of Courtenay
Bylaw 3203 sets minimum unit sizes — 30 m² studio, 45 m² one-bed, 65 m² two-bed, 85 m² three-bed — but no maximum. The only size constraint is the definitional requirement that the unit be “subordinate in size and accessory to the primary residence,” plus lot coverage. Private amenity space: the bylaw says 15 m² per unit; the City’s own ADU web page says 20 m². Confirm with City of Courtenay.
On a lot without both community water and sewer, s.8.1.11(1) allows only one secondary suite or one ADU — not both. 5,649 properties were rezoned R-SSMUH in June 2024; check yours on the City’s zoning map. Development permit areas for small-scale multi-unit, farm protection, environmentally sensitive land and slopes over 20% can all apply.
Town of Comox
Coach house floor area is excluded from both the 1,000 m² principal-building cap and the 60 m² accessory-building cap — a genuinely useful quirk. Permitted as a secondary use in all four low-density residential zones and in RM-1; not in RM-2 or RM-3.
Check Map 9-1 first. Bylaw 2056 designates a Coach House Restriction Area where they are not permitted at all. The four-unit maximum also drops to two on lots over 4,050 m² or without both community water and sanitary service.