Mr. Litman built a laneway house on top of a detached garage on his property in Ottawa, without severing it, and claimed the new housing rebate. In finding that this qualified under s. 256(2)(a) as the construction of a residential complex which was a single unit residential complex (defined in s. 256(1) to include a multiple unit residential complex containing two units) for use as the primary place of residence of a relation (his mother), St-Hilaire J stated (at para. 25) that:
The laneway house is detached from the main house and it forms a new residential complex where, prior to its construction, there was none. In addition, I see nothing in the definition of residential complex that requires that the laneway house be held under separate title to meet the requirements of that definition.
Regarding the FMV requirement in s. 256(2)(c), St-Hilaire J accepted that Mr. Litman could not obtain an appraisal for the laneway house given that it could not be sold separately, and accepted his estimate of the FMV as being equal to his construction costs of $255,608 plus a portion (which he valued at $100,000) of the property’s land.
St-Hilaire J rejected Mr. Litman’s argument in the alternative that the laneway house qualified as a substantially renovated residential complex: the pre-existing garage alone was not a residential complex; and if the whole property was the pre-existing residential complex for these purposes, then the meaning of “substantially renovate” under the jurisprudence was not satisfied.