Ottawa killed parking minimums. Your suite already had none

The claim, and what the by-law actually says

Since the spring I have had four different people tell me some version of the same thing. Ottawa got rid of parking minimums, so you can build units now without providing a single space.

The first half is close to true. The second half is where people are going to lose money.

Zoning By-law 2026-50 was enacted on March 11, 2026. Open Part 6, which handles parking, and read the section headings in order. Section 602 is Maximum Parking Space Rates. There is no section anywhere in Part 6 that sets a minimum rate for the urban area. The only minimum left standing is Section 614, Minimum Parking Rates in Village Residential Zones.

So the new by-law does not tell you how much parking to build. It tells you how much you are allowed to build. That is a real reversal, it is in force today, and it was not caught up in the 25 appeals that froze other parts of the by-law.

Now the part that matters to most people reading this.

If you are adding a suite, you already had zero

Pull up the old by-law, 2008-250, Table 101. It is titled Minimum Parking Space Rates and it runs about a hundred rows. Find these three.

Row R2, coach house. None, in every schedule area. Row R24, additional dwelling unit inside a detached, linked-detached, semi-detached or townhouse dwelling. None, in every schedule area. Row R25, additional dwelling unit inside a duplex. None again.

Zero, already. That R24 line was put there by by-law 2024-563, so it has been sitting in the old by-law since 2024.

If your project is a basement suite, a garage conversion or a coach house on a lot that already has a house on it, the new zoning by-law changed nothing about your parking obligation, because your parking obligation was already nothing. I went through the money on that build in the secondary suite math, and none of it moves on this.

I am spending a whole section on this because the "parking minimums are gone" line is being used to sell a benefit to the exact group of people who already had it.

Where the change is real

It bites on purpose-built small multi-residential.

Under the old Table 101, a three-unit dwelling needed 0.5 spaces per unit in schedule Areas X, Y and B, 1.2 per unit in Area C, and 1 per unit in Area D. A low-rise apartment building carried the same rates. On a nine-unit low-rise sitting in Area C, that is eleven spaces you had to find, pave, drain and surrender land for.

Under 2026-50 that requirement is zero. If you are building small-scale multi-residential in suburban Ottawa, this is the single largest thing the new by-law does for your pro forma. Bigger than the height change. Bigger than the setbacks.

The transition rule almost nobody quotes

Here is the sentence that belongs in every one of these conversations and is in almost none of them. It is sitting on the City's own by-law page right now.

Building permit applications deemed complete on March 11, 2026 or after must comply with both Zoning By-law 2008-250 and the new Zoning By-law 2026-50, with the most restrictive provisions from both by-laws applying.

Both by-laws. Most restrictive provision.

The old by-law puts a floor under your parking. The new one puts a ceiling on it. Think about what that does to a project in Area C if both are live at the same time. The floor in 2008-250 does not disappear because 2026-50 stopped asking, and you now have a cap you did not have before.

I am not going to tell you how the City will apply that to your specific file. That is the planner's call and it turns on your address and your zone. What I am telling you is that it is the first question to ask, in writing, before you underwrite a building with no parking in it. Ask at the pre-application stage. Not after you own the land.

Same reflex as the four-unit story, where the provision everyone is pricing land on is still sitting at the Tribunal. I wrote that up in July and nothing has resolved since.

Bicycle parking did not go anywhere

Section 613 of the new by-law is Bicycle Parking Rates and Provisions. It is a rate section, which means it asks something of you. Several of its subsections are on the not-in-force list in the City's July 7 memo, including rows of Table 613B, so the exact numbers are still moving.

Storage rooms, racks and the floor area they consume are a real line item on a small building. Budget them.

A repealed minimum does not produce a tenant

This is the part I actually care about, and it has nothing to do with zoning.

The City removing a parking mandate is a statement about regulation. It is not a statement about demand. Your tenant in Kanata still owns a car. Your tenant in Barrhaven owns two. A one-bedroom with no space, in a neighbourhood where every household drives, does not rent for the same number as the identical unit with a space, and in a slow leasing market it does not rent as quickly either.

Ottawa's leasing market is slow right now. Asking rents have come off their peak by about 4 per cent and vacancy in newer purpose-built stock is running near 6.7 per cent, which I worked through in the 2027 rent guideline post. That is not the market in which to test a no-parking product for the first time.

Where zero parking genuinely works in Ottawa is in the transit-served core, on a mainstreet, near an LRT station, leasing to households that already decided not to own a car. Those addresses mostly had parking relief under the old by-law too. That is not a coincidence. It is the City having already zoned for the places where the math works.

What I would actually do

Underwrite the parking you need to lease the unit, not the parking the by-law requires. Those are two different numbers and only one of them pays you.

If they land in the same place, good, build to it. If the by-law lets you go to zero and your market says one space, build the space. That is not being conservative. That is pricing the tenant you are actually going to get.

And get the transition question answered by the City in writing before your offer goes firm, not after.

If you are looking at a small multi-unit project in Ottawa and want the zoning and the leasing side pressure-tested before you commit, call me at 613-262-6545 or email fil@613realtor.ca. Fifteen minutes now costs less than finding out at permit stage. If you are still building a shortlist, have a look at what is listed while we talk.