City of Nanaimo

Home renovations in Nanaimo

Inside the city boundary the City of Nanaimo issues your building permit and inspects the work. Outside it, the Regional District does.

Mid-Island Renovation Group renovates homes in Nanaimo, where the City of Nanaimo is your building authority and Building Inspections at 411 Dunsmuir Street issues the permit and carries out the inspections. The City requires a permit for changes to an existing unit, including partition walls, ceilings and plumbing alterations, and publishes both a Fees and Charges Bylaw and an online permit fee calculator, so the permit figure goes into your budget before we file. Whole-home renovations here typically run $250,000 to $400,000 and a full gut takes 7 to 14 months from the start of design. If your address is in Cedar, Nanoose Bay or another electoral area, the Regional District of Nanaimo governs it instead — that one distinction is the most common and most expensive assumption on the corridor.

Nanaimo covers a wide range of housing: 1950s and 1960s stock in the Old City and Harewood, 1970s and 1980s subdivisions through Departure Bay and North Nanaimo, and newer construction toward the north end. What that means for your budget is settled behind the walls, not on the front of the house, so we measure and draw your home as it actually stands before anyone quotes a number.

Whole-home renovation $250,000 to $400,000. Ground-floor addition $150,000 to $280,000. Second storey $250,000 to $450,000. Basement $60,000 to $140,000. Kitchen $65,000 to $100,000 and up.

Which authority governs your address

Inside the city boundary the City of Nanaimo issues the building permit and inspects the work. Properties in Cedar and South Wellington sit in Electoral Area A, and Nanoose Bay in Electoral Area E, where the Regional District of Nanaimo is the building authority instead. A Nanaimo mailing address does not settle it. We confirm the authority against the actual parcel before any application is prepared, because one sent to the wrong office simply comes back and costs you weeks of a schedule booked months ahead.

What needs a permit, and what the City charges

The City requires a building permit for changes to an existing unit, including partition walls, ceilings and plumbing work, for structural alterations, for detached buildings over 10 square metres, and for retaining walls over 1.2 metres. Fees are set in the City's Fees and Charges Bylaw, and the City publishes a permit fee calculator that gives a main permit fee from the value of construction. Connection fees, plumbing fixture fees and sprinkler fees sit outside that number, so we build the full permit line from the bylaw rather than from the calculator alone.

Older stock, and what it costs to bring up

On Nanaimo's mid-century stock the recurring items are the same four: original wiring with no grounding, galvanized or poly-B supply lines, wall assemblies with little or no insulation, and an electrical service too small for a modern kitchen and heat pump. Anything built before 1990 also needs a hazardous materials inspection by a qualified person under section 20.112 of the BC Occupational Health and Safety Regulation before demolition starts, and since 1 January 2024 abatement employers must be licensed and their workers certified. We file that survey as a written report before the permit application, and price whatever it finds as a named line in the design budget.

Basements, suites and ceiling height

A large share of Nanaimo houses have a lower floor that was never finished properly, and the constraint is usually height and egress rather than finishes. Existing ceiling height, window size and location, and how water is currently kept out of the floor slab decide what is possible down there, and all three get measured at design rather than assumed. Where a secondary suite is part of the scope, separation, ventilation and parking requirements shape the drawings from the start.

How your Nanaimo project is sequenced

Structure first, then mechanical, then insulation, then finishes, with each stage clearing its inspection before the next one begins. Nothing gets closed in ahead of the inspection covering it. A full gut runs 7 to 14 months from the start of design to move-in, and design and permitting take 8 to 20 weeks of that. Two things stall a project this size and neither is construction: an incomplete permit application, and cabinets, tile or fixtures ordered too late. We put lead times against your selections at the contract stage and give you the date each one has to land by.

Payments, holdback and change orders

Payments follow completed stages rather than dates on a calendar, and our signing deposit is 10 percent. The Builders Lien Act requires you as the owner to retain a 10 percent holdback, releasable 55 days after the certificate of completion is issued, and gives lien claimants 45 days to file. Anything outside the written scope becomes a change order — priced, documented and signed by you before we carry it out, never reconciled at the end.

Tell us the address and the scope and we will confirm the authority, the permit position and a cost range. The questionnaire takes about two minutes.

More about what we do and where we work

Project inquiry

Tell us about the project

Five questions covering scope, budget, timeline and property. Enough for us to tell whether we are a fit for your project before either of us books a site visit.

Planning a major renovation?

Start with the project questionnaire — five questions covering scope, budget, timeline, and property. That tells us whether we're a fit for your project before either of us books a visit.

Start a project inquiry — NanaimoCall TextText or Call(236) 362-4638