The things people askbefore they call.

Coastline Homes builds custom homes across the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, from Abbotsford and Mission out through Surrey, Coquitlam and Burnaby to Vancouver. We have been building since 2005, we work from an office in Abbotsford, and we take on a small number of houses at a time so that the person you meet at the start is still the person answering the phone at the end.

There is no honest single number, and a builder who gives you one before seeing your lot is guessing. The cost of a custom home in British Columbia is driven by the site before the finishes: how far the ground has to be engineered, how much of a slope has to be retained, how long the servicing runs are, and what the municipality requires along the way. Two houses of identical size on lots ten minutes apart can differ by a great deal. We would rather look at the parcel, tell you what it is going to demand, and price the real house than quote a per-square-foot figure that changes the moment the geotechnical report lands.

Plan for the permit to take as long as the construction. The build itself is the part with a schedule you can hold; the approvals before it are the part that varies, and in the municipalities with steep-slope or servicing review that stage can run from a few months to the better part of a year depending on the city and the parcel. The single largest thing you can do to shorten the whole programme is to start the municipal conversation before the design is finalised rather than after.

Not always, but you need someone whose job is the drawings. Many houses in British Columbia are designed by a residential designer rather than a registered architect, and for a straightforward parcel that works well. The steeper, tighter and more regulated the site, the more the design fee earns back — a plan that has already answered the city's questions is the cheapest part of a difficult lot. We work with whoever you bring, and we are glad to be in the room from the first sketch.

Yes, and it is worth designing in from the beginning rather than adding later. A lower floor planned from the start around a legal suite — separate entry, separate services, the ceiling heights and egress the code wants — costs a fraction of one converted afterwards, and it is most of the reason our recent houses carry two self-contained suites rather than a basement. Several of the municipalities we build in now treat it as the normal shape of a family house.

Yes — on a slope the retaining, the drainage and the permitted grade change are the design, and the house follows them. Most of what we have built in Coquitlam is on Burke Mountain, which is steep enough that how much of the hill you are allowed to move gets settled before a floor plan is drawn. Done in that order a slope is an asset: it is where the outlook and the daylight in the lower floor come from. Done in the other order it is a cost overrun.

Coastline Homes is a licensed residential builder in British Columbia and carries the home warranty insurance the Province requires on a new home. [CONFIRM: BC Housing licence number, warranty provider and liability coverage belong on this page as facts — a reader who asks this question is checking.]

Abbotsford, Mission, Chilliwack, Langley, Maple Ridge, Surrey, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Burnaby and Vancouver. That is one region rather than a list of outposts — the office is in Abbotsford and the work runs west along the valley. If your lot is just outside it, ask anyway; we travel for the right project.

Start with the lot and one conversation. Send us the address and whatever you have — a survey, a sketch, a list of what the house has to do. What comes back is a plain reading of what that parcel is going to demand before any design is committed to, which is the most useful hour in the whole project. Call 604-300-3107 or use the enquiry form and it reaches Tanvir Bhangal directly.

We build a small number of houses at a time, in one region, and we are still the people you started with when you finish. That is the whole of it. Building here is mostly a long argument with water, soil and eleven municipalities that each read their own bylaws their own way, and knowing which question each one is going to ask is worth more than it sounds — usually the difference between a permit in months and a permit in a year.