Secondary Suite Builders in Calgary

Calgary changed the rules. Since the city-wide rezoning of August 2024, most residential lots can hold a secondary suite — and many can hold both a basement suite and a backyard suite. Combine that with rents that make a legal suite one of the best-returning renovations in the city, and you get the construction wave now working through Calgary's neighbourhoods. Two clocks are ticking that homeowners should know about. The city's amnesty program waives development-permit and registration fees for legalizing existing suites until December 31, 2026 (a saving of roughly $680), and the Secondary Suite Incentive Program offers up to $10,000 toward the safety upgrades required to register a qualifying suite. If you own an unregistered suite, this is the cheapest legalization will ever be. The work itself is genuinely multi-trade: design and permits, egress windows, fire-rated separation, interconnected smoke and CO alarms, electrical, plumbing, HVAC — then two city inspections and an entry on Calgary's Secondary Suite Registry. A full basement-suite development typically runs $80,000–$150,000; legalizing an existing suite is usually far less, depending on what safety work it needs. Every company below carrying the green badge has had its licence, liability insurance and WCB coverage verified by us — and suite work is precisely the kind of project where an unlicensed bargain becomes a registry failure.