Old Ottawa South has no N1 lots, and 1 in 10 is in a flood plain

The August post covered tenants. This one covers the lot.

On August 26 I wrote that Old Ottawa South is two markets, with Carleton as the dividing line. That was about rooms, rents and cap rates. It skipped the question that decides what a house here is worth in ten years: what the City lets you build on it. So I matched every primary address in the neighbourhood to the zoning map.

What I measured

The City's Ottawa Neighbourhood Study boundary for Old Ottawa South holds 2,168 primary addresses in the municipal address file. Those are street addresses, not unit numbers. I placed each one inside the Zoning By-law 2026-50 map, then inside the Flood Plain Overlay, then measured its straight line distance to Carleton O-Train station.

This counts addresses, not lots. The City has no lot layer I can use, so I cannot tell you a single lot size, and I am not naming any house. The City's boundary may also differ from where you draw the neighbourhood.

There is no N1 here

N3 covers 1,345 addresses, or 62.0%. N4 covers 446 (20.6%). N2 has 147 (6.8%). The mainstreet and corridor zones, CM1 and MS1, have 207 together (9.5%). The last 23 (1.1%) are institutional, park and other zones.

N1, the lowest density neighbourhood zone, has zero. N3 and N4 together hold 1,791 of 2,168 addresses, or 82.6%. Citywide, N1 is about a fifth of neighbourhood zone land by my September count. That is a land measure and this is an address measure, so do not subtract one from the other. The point is that Old Ottawa South is almost entirely zoned for more than a single house on a lot.

What those letters say on paper

Table 801A in the by-law sets the unit maximums. N3 allows 2.5 units per 100 square metres of lot area, maximum 12 per building. That is one unit per 40 square metres. A 40 by 100 foot lot is 371.61 square metres, which gives 9.29, so 9 units. Twelve units takes 480 square metres. Height is 11 metres and three storeys. N4 prints "n/a" for units and allows 14.5 metres. I worked through the lot area math in the September 11 post.

Here is the catch. The unit row is printed in bold italic and tagged OLT-26-000364, which means it is under appeal. I re-read the table on the City's site this morning and the unit row is still flagged. The height row is not. Do not pay for nine units that the by-law does not yet guarantee.

Zoning gets denser as you walk toward Carleton

I used 800 metres, about a ten minute walk, to define the Carleton end. Only 321 addresses (14.8%) are inside it. None are within 400 metres, since the station sits on the neighbourhood's western edge.

Within 800 metres: N3 49.8%, N4 31.5%, mainstreet and corridor 15.9%, N2 0.9%.

From 800 to 1,500 metres (1,237 addresses): N3 59.3%, N4 24.2%, mainstreet and corridor 12.6%, N2 3.0%.

Beyond 1,500 metres (610 addresses): N3 74.1%, N4 7.5%, N2 17.5%, no mainstreet or corridor.

The end of the neighbourhood closest to the university is the end the City already zoned for the most building. That gives an owner there a second kind of buyer, one who wants the land and not the rent roll. Whether that buyer exists at your price is a question for a planner or a developer, not for a zoning map.

One in ten sits in the flood plain

224 of the 2,168 addresses (10.3%) are inside the Flood Plain Overlay. Citywide it was 2,317 of 293,620 primary addresses (0.79%) when I ran the flood plain count. That puts this neighbourhood at 13 times the city rate. It holds 0.74% of Ottawa's primary addresses and 9.7% of the ones in the overlay (224 divided by 2,317). The September post said 290 because it counted unit numbers too. A second query through the City's own server returned the same 224.

The overlay sits on top of the zone. In that earlier post I covered what it does: development is prohibited apart from a short list of exceptions, an addition is capped at 20 square metres or 20% of floor area, whichever is less, and one extra unit is allowed only above grade in a house that existed on June 25, 2008.

By zone: 63 of the 147 N2 addresses (42.9%), 119 of 1,345 N3 (8.8%), and 24 of 446 N4 (5.4%). So the zone that looks like it allows a dozen units does not, for a house inside the overlay.

The letter is not the whole story

1,432 of the 2,168 addresses (66.1%) sit in a zoning polygon that carries a numbered exception in square brackets, something like N3B[1475]. An exception can change what is permitted on that site. The letters on the map are the start of the answer, so ask for the exception text.

What I would do with this

If you are buying here for redevelopment, get the zone, the exception number and the overlay status in writing from a planner or the City before you price in any extra units. If the lot touches the overlay, order the conservation authority file search early, since staff ask for at least two weeks.

If you are selling near Carleton, outside the overlay, find out whether your buyer is paying for the house or the land, and price to that buyer. If you are inside the overlay, talk to your lawyer about disclosure before you list.

I will rerun this when the appeal resolves and the italics come off Table 801A. Until then the unit counts are a forecast of the by-law, not the by-law.

I sell houses. I do not give zoning, legal or tax advice, so confirm any of this with a planner or a lawyer before you act.

If you own in Old Ottawa South and want to know which zone, exception and overlay status your address sits in before you decide to list or hold, call me at 613-262-6545 or email fil@613realtor.ca. I will pull it up while we talk. You can also browse Old Ottawa South first.