For Landlords & Property Managers in Calgary
A basement room without a compliant escape opening is not a bedroom, whatever the last tenant used it as. That costs you twice: the rent a legal bedroom would carry, and the exposure you are holding while it is occupied. This page is about closing both.
The room you cannot advertise
A below-grade room that fails egress is a den, storage or a flex room. Listing it as a bedroom is a description your insurer, your municipality and eventually a tenant can all take issue with. The difference in what the unit carries is usually the entire business case for the work.
What you are actually carrying
The exposure is not abstract. It is a person asleep in a below-grade room with one way out, and it is your name on the lease. We are not going to quantify that for you or dress it up — but it is the reason this work gets done, and it does not improve by waiting.
Measured room by room, so you can prioritise
Across a portfolio, some rooms already pass and some are a well away from passing while others need the wall cut. You get that broken out per room and per address, so you can sequence the spend instead of doing all of it at once.
Sequenced around a tenancy
This is external excavation, concrete cutting and a permit. It is disruptive and it is loud. We plan the sequence so the suite is out of service for as little of it as possible, and we tell you honestly at the quote what a tenant in place will experience.
Permitted under our file, documented for yours
Where a permit is required we confirm that with the authority having jurisdiction for the address and apply for it ourselves. What you keep afterwards is a permitted, inspected structural alteration on the property record — which is what a future buyer, insurer or lender is going to ask about.
We will tell you when the numbers do not work
On some houses the wall, the depth or the access make a compliant opening expensive enough that the rent will not repay it in any reasonable period. When that is the case we say so and you keep renting the room as what it is.
Typical situations
- A suite bought as legal that turns out never to have been permitted
- A bedroom that fails a City of Calgary suite inspection on egress
- A den being rented as a bedroom because the window is too small
- A single-family house being converted to add a legal suite
- A second escape route needed for a separate below-grade entrance
- A portfolio audit before a refinance or a sale
Get the rooms measured
Send the addresses. We will measure each below-grade room against the code figures and come back with what passes, what needs a well, and what needs the wall cut.