Building Scheme on Your BC Title: What It Stops You Doing

A statutory building scheme is a set of restrictions that the original developer of a subdivision registered against the title of every lot in it. If one sits on the title of the house you are buying, it binds you from the day the transfer registers. Your municipality did not write it, does not enforce it and cannot lift it. And British Columbia’s new rules requiring municipalities to allow three to six homes on lots that used to allow one did not cancel it — the Province says so in its own policy manual, in writing.

This article is about the practical side: where the restriction appears on a title search, what the title search will not show you, what it costs to find out, and what can actually be done about it. Everything below is taken from the legislation, the regulation, the Province’s manual, the land title registry’s own pages and the regulator’s own guidance, each opened on 30 October 2026.

The short version

A building scheme is registered as a charge on title. Its restrictions run with the land and bind every later owner, purchaser and tenant without anything further being registered.
Your title search names the charge and gives it a number. It does not print the restrictions. Those are in a separate document you order and pay for.
You cannot search a BC title by street address. You need the parcel identifier, and getting it is free.
The Province’s own manual says a valid building scheme limiting a lot to one dwelling unit “will take precedence over the unit densities prescribed through zoning updates made in accordance with the SSMUH legislation”.
Zoning is permission from the city. A building scheme is a promise to the other owners in the subdivision. A building permit is not permission from your neighbours.
Registration in the land title office is not a ruling that the restriction is valid or enforceable. The statute says so.
There are three ways a building scheme can be changed or removed, and only one of them involves a judge.
The original developer going out of existence does not cancel the scheme. It can, however, make a plan-approval clause unworkable, and a court has cut those clauses out while leaving the rest standing.
Owners who built anyway have been ordered to take the building down or redesign it within 120 days.

What a building scheme actually is

The land title registry’s own glossary puts it plainly. A building scheme “is a set of restrictions or requirements that are imposed on the owner or leaser of a property, usually to enhance the value of the property” (Land Title and Survey Authority glossary).

The legal machinery is section 220 of the Land Title Act. Where an owner intends to sell or lease two or more parcels “and to impose restrictions consistent with a general scheme of development”, that owner may register a Declaration of Creation of Building Scheme as a charge against the land the declaration defines. The registrar endorses it on the register.

Then comes the subsection that matters to a buyer. From the date of that endorsement, the restrictions “run with and bind all the land affected and every part of it without further registration”, and they bind the owner, “each purchaser, lessee and sublessee of all or part of the land”, and “each successor in title, future purchaser, lessee and sublessee of the land”. That is section 220 (3). Nobody has to re-register anything for it to catch you.

Two more points from the same section are worth knowing. Under section 220 (8), since 30 October 1979 a building scheme cannot be created any other way — no other instrument creating one is registrable, unless the registrar allows it to avoid hardship or economic loss. And section 220 (7) says a declaration registered this way “may be referred to as a statutory building or a statutory letting scheme”, which is why the charge on your title may read as a statutory building scheme rather than anything with the word “covenant” in it.

The restrictions themselves are not in the statute. They are whatever the developer wrote. Typical ones, in the Province’s own words, “deal with building sizes, styles, finishes or colours, but can also restrict the use of buildings”. On the North Shore the common ones are building height, roof pitch, materials, where on the lot you may build, and how many dwellings a lot may carry.

How a building scheme differs from the other restrictions on a BC title

Buyers are often told “there is a covenant on it” when what is really there is one of three different things, with three different sets of rules about who can enforce them and how they come off.

Restriction	Who holds it	Who can enforce it	How it comes off
Statutory building scheme Land Title Act s. 220	No single holder. It is reciprocal — each lot’s restrictions are imposed for the benefit of the other lots	The owners of the other lots in the scheme	Consent of the owners for the time being under s. 220 (4), or a court order under Property Law Act s. 35
Section 219 covenant Land Title Act s. 219	Only the Crown, a Crown corporation or agency, a municipality, a regional district, the South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority, a local trust committee under the Islands Trust Act, or a person the minister designates	The covenantee named in it	Modified by the holder and the owner, or discharged by the holder, under s. 219 (9) — no court needed
Ordinary restrictive covenant	The owner of the benefited land	The owner of the benefited land	Agreement with the benefited owner, or a court order under Property Law Act s. 35

The Province’s own manual confirms the first column of that table: “Covenants under section 219 of the LTA can only be registered by local governments, Islands Trust, a Crown corporation or agency, and the Crown.” So if the restriction on your title is a building scheme, the city is almost certainly not the one holding it. The manual is just as blunt about that: “Local governments are not generally party to, or responsible for the administration of the building scheme.”

One trap worth naming. Under Property Law Act section 18 (8), “Common ownership and possession of the burdened and the benefited land does not extinguish a restrictive covenant.” Buying the neighbouring lot does not make the restriction go away.

Where it shows up on a title search, and what the title will not tell you

A British Columbia title search print has two separate blocks of encumbrances: Legal Notations and Charges, Liens and Interests. A building scheme is registered as a charge, so it appears in the second block. The registry’s glossary lists restrictive covenants among the “two types of covenants which are noted as charges on a Land Title”, and section 220 (1) itself says the declaration is registered “as a charge”.

Each charge line on a title print carries a short set of fields: the nature of the charge, its registration number, the date and time it was registered, who holds it where there is a holder, and remarks. That is all. The wording of the restrictions is not on the title.

What the title search gives you	What it does not give you
That a building scheme exists on this parcel	What the restrictions say
The nature of the charge, as the registry words it	Whether the house already breaches them
The registration number you need to order the document	Whether anyone has ever enforced them
The date it was registered	Whether the restriction is still enforceable
Remarks, which sometimes point you to a further document number	Who to ask for consent, if the scheme requires it

So the useful sentence is this: a title search tells you there is something to read, and the registration number tells you what to order. Reading it is a second, separate step. The registry’s own ordering page says you need “the identifying number for that record”, and that “you can typically find the document or plan number listed on title”.

The regulator expects your agent to do exactly this. The British Columbia Financial Services Authority’s guidance on land title information says “Obtaining and reviewing a title search is often the first step in the due diligence process”, and then, without qualification: “Restrictive covenants must always be reviewed due to their inherent nature of imposing restrictions on the use of the land.” The same page lists statutory building schemes as charges that “may be registered against two or more parcels to impose restrictions consistent with a general scheme of development” (BCFSA, Land Title and Survey Authority information).

What it costs to check, and the order to do it in

You cannot search a BC title by street address. The registry says so outright: “A civic or street address cannot be used to search for a title.” The key is the nine-digit parcel identifier, and the registry points you at free sources to find it, including BC Assessment (LTSA, Search for a title, and BC Assessment).

The registry also will not do the reading for you. Its page states that it “cannot process title searches by telephone or email, answer questions about the information contained on a title or conduct research on your behalf”. The self-serve account for a member of the public is called an Explorer account — “a single-user account”.

Step	Where	Fee
Find the parcel identifier from the address	BC Assessment, or the registry’s own parcel map	Free
Title search — tells you a building scheme is there and gives its number	Land Title and Survey Authority	$11.06
Document or plan order — the building scheme itself, in full	Land Title and Survey Authority	$17.78
Certification, for example a State of Title Certificate	Land Title and Survey Authority	$16.76

Those are the registry’s published customer fees “as at April 1, 2026”, read on the LTSA fees page on 30 October 2026. Fees change, so check the page rather than this article. Note also that a charge’s remarks can refer you on to another document, so one document order is not always enough.

The honest summary: the thing standing between you and knowing what you are allowed to build is a few dollars and about ten minutes, and a surprising number of buyers never spend either.

Did BC’s new three-to-six-homes rules cancel it? No, and the Province says so

This is the question that brings most people to this page. British Columbia now requires municipalities to zone most former single-family lots for several homes. The minimum numbers are set by regulation: the Local Government Zoning Bylaw Regulation, B.C. Reg. 262/2023 (O.C. 673/2023, deposited 7 December 2023), prescribes a minimum of three homes on the smallest lots, four on larger ones, and six where a lot is close enough to frequent bus service and large enough to qualify.

None of that touches a building scheme. The Province’s Small-Scale Multi-Unit Housing Provincial Policy Manual, Version 5, dated 20 January 2026, deals with the point head-on in its Land Title Act section, on pages 25 and 26.

The question	What the Province’s manual says, in its own words
Do the new density rules override an existing section 219 covenant?	“Existing section 219 covenants are not affected by the SSMUH legislation.”
Can a private restriction get in the way of the new densities?	“Covenants registered against the title of a property could affect the ability to achieve the densities prescribed under the SSMUH legislation.”
Does a building scheme bind a future owner?	“Restrictions imposed by the building scheme run with the land and bind future owners/renters in the subdivision.”
Which wins — the new zoning, or the building scheme?	“Provided the building scheme is valid, an existing statutory building scheme registered on title that limits the use of a property to one dwelling unit will take precedence over the unit densities prescribed through zoning updates made in accordance with the SSMUH legislation.”
So can the city still zone the land for more?	“This does not prevent a local government from zoning land subject to a statutory building scheme for a higher density, but the first responsibility of the owner(s) of that land is to uphold the terms of the building scheme.”
Is the city involved in the scheme at all?	“Local governments are not generally party to, or responsible for the administration of the building scheme.”

You can read it yourself: the manual is published as a PDF by the Province (Small-Scale Multi-Unit Housing Provincial Policy Manual). The section was read twice, independently, on 30 October 2026, and the wording above is as printed.

I also went looking for the opposite answer, in case the Province’s manual was behind the law. There is none. The Land Title Act sections that create covenants and building schemes — sections 219, 220, 221 and 222 — read, in the consolidation current to 27 October 2026, with no provision voiding a restriction on density grounds. The only voiding provision in that Part is section 222, and it is about discrimination, not density. The Property Law Act sections on modifying and cancelling charges are likewise unchanged.

Zoning is permission from the city. A building scheme is a promise to your neighbours

These are two separate systems, and this is the sentence to hold onto: a building permit is permission from the municipality to build, not permission from the other owners in your subdivision to break a promise registered against your title.

There is a neat illustration of how separate they are. In a case reported by the British Columbia Real Estate Association, an owner argued that a basement should not count as a storey under a building scheme, because of the way “basement” was defined in a zoning bylaw. The court rejected it. The zoning bylaw’s definition did not control what the building scheme’s words meant.

The practical consequence for a buyer: a planner at the counter can tell you what the zoning allows. No planner can tell you what your title allows. Those are different questions and they go to different places.

The original developer is long gone. Does the scheme die with it?

No. This is the single most common mistaken belief about old restrictions, and it costs people money.

There is a provision about a dead or dissolved holder, and it is worth understanding exactly how narrow it is. Land Title Act section 219 (11) says that “On the death or dissolution of an owner of a covenant registrable under subsection (3) (c), the covenant ceases to be enforceable by any person, including the Crown”, except by another covenantee named in the instrument or an assignee approved in writing by the minister. Subsection (3) (c) means a person the minister has designated. It does not reach the Crown, a Crown corporation, a municipality, a regional district or a local trust committee — and it has nothing at all to say about a building scheme, which has no single holder to begin with.

What the developer’s disappearance can do is break a clause. Many schemes require the developer’s approval of building plans before you build. The British Columbia Real Estate Association reports a case where contractors found the developers’ corporate registrations had been cancelled; the scheme gave the developers a right to appoint somebody else to approve plans and that had never been done. The court deleted the three plan-approval paragraphs, and, in the Association’s words, “The remainder of the building scheme remained intact” (BCREA, Legally Speaking #375, by Gerry Neely, September 2004).

So the rule is narrower than the hope: a defunct developer may make the approval step impossible, and a court can remove that step. It does not wipe out the height limit, the materials, or the one-house restriction.

What happens when somebody builds anyway

The same Association article sets out two outcomes, and neither is a fine.

In the first, a building scheme registered in 1954 prohibited buildings more than one storey high on certain lots, to preserve neighbours’ ocean views. An owner demolished a one-storey house and built a one-storey house with a basement. At lock-up it became clear the new house would be higher than the old one. Neighbours petitioned, and the owner was given 120 days to remove the structure, modify the design to comply, or get the residents’ approval.

In the second, a waterfront scheme required the developer to approve plans. An owner built a garage without approval, was told about the requirement while construction was under way, and told the builder to finish anyway. The owner asked the court to award damages instead of ordering removal. The judge weighed the cost of the building, the cost of removal and the circumstances, and refused: the neighbours’ obstructed views, the relatively low value of the garage and the owner’s decision to build knowing about the covenant could not be compensated with money. Removal or rebuilding was ordered, again within 120 days.

Both of those are reported by the Association rather than read by me in the judgments themselves — see the honesty section near the end. But the shape of the risk is clear enough: the remedy for breaching a building scheme is often an order to undo the building, not a cheque.

A registration is not a ruling that the restriction is enforceable

This one almost nobody mentions, and it cuts both ways.

Land Title Act section 221 (1) says the registrar must not register a restrictive covenant unless the obligation it creates is, in the registrar’s opinion, negative or restrictive, the benefited and burdened land are both satisfactorily described, and the title to the land affected is registered under the Act. Then section 221 (2): “The registration of a restrictive covenant is not a determination by the registrar of its essential nature or enforceability.“

And section 220 (5) applies section 221 to a declaration of building scheme. So the fact that a 1950s restriction sits on your title is not a statement by anybody that it would hold up. Equally, do not assume it would not. That is a legal question about the particular wording and the particular history of the subdivision, and it is a question for a lawyer, not for a search result.

Three ways a building scheme can be modified or discharged

Most of what is written about building schemes says the only way out is a court application. That is not right, and the mistake matters, because the cheapest route is the one that gets left out.

Route	Authority	Who decides	What it needs
The owners agree	Land Title Act s. 220 (4)	The owners for the time being of the land defined in the declaration	Their consent, an application, and evidence satisfactory to the registrar, who “must amend the records accordingly”
The registrar cancels a void discriminatory covenant	Land Title Act s. 222 (2) and (3)	The registrar of land titles	An application, for a covenant registered before 31 October 1979 — or the registrar may act “on the registrar’s own initiative” on notice that a covenant is void
A court order	Property Law Act s. 35	The Supreme Court of British Columbia	An application by “a person interested in land”, on one of the five grounds below

The first route is the one to ask about first. Section 220 (4) says the owners for the time being of the land in the scheme “may consent to a modification or discharge of all or part of the registration”. In a small subdivision where everybody gets along and everybody wants the same change, that is a conversation and a filing, not a petition.

It also has an obvious limit. In a scheme covering dozens of lots, getting every current owner to sign is often harder than going to court. Which route is realistic depends entirely on how many lots the declaration defines — another reason to read the document rather than guess at it. There is one more hurdle in section 220 (6): where the land is subject to a charge, a modification or discharge is not registrable unless the chargeholder consents and grants priority, or the registrar orders that consent is not required.

The five grounds a court can act on

Section 35 (1) of the Property Law Act lets “a person interested in land” apply to the Supreme Court to modify or cancel a list of charges, and the list expressly includes “a statutory building or statutory letting scheme” and “a restrictive or other covenant burdening the land or the owner”. Section 220 (9) of the Land Title Act points the same way.

Section 35 (2) then requires the court to be satisfied that the application “is not premature in the circumstances”, and that one of the following is true.

Ground	The Act’s own words
(a) Obsolete	“because of changes in the character of the land, the neighbourhood or other circumstances the court considers material, the registered charge or interest is obsolete”
(b) Impedes reasonable use with no benefit to others	“the reasonable use of the land will be impeded, without practical benefit to others, if the registered charge or interest is not modified or cancelled”
(c) The beneficiaries have agreed	“the persons who are or have been entitled to the benefit of the registered charge or interest have expressly or impliedly agreed to it being modified or cancelled”
(d) No injury	“modification or cancellation will not injure the person entitled to the benefit of the registered charge or interest”
(e) Invalid, unenforceable or expired	“the registered instrument is invalid, unenforceable or has expired, and its registration should be cancelled”

Three things about that process are easy to miss. The court may require the applicant to pay compensation to a person who suffers damage as a result (section 35 (3)). Before making an order the court must direct inquiries to a municipality or other public authority, and notices to the people who appear entitled to the benefit (section 35 (4)). And the order “binds all persons, whether or not parties to the proceedings or served with notice” (section 35 (5)), with the registrar amending the records on production of the order (section 35 (6)).

What none of this gives you is a timetable or a price. It is a Supreme Court petition. If you are buying a house on the assumption that the restriction can be lifted before you build, that assumption needs a lawyer’s opinion behind it, not an article’s.

Old schemes and discriminatory clauses

Restrictions written in the 1920s to the 1950s sometimes contain clauses that no registry would accept today. Land Title Act section 222 (1) deals with them directly: a covenant that, directly or indirectly, restricts the sale, ownership, occupation or use of land on the grounds listed below, “however created, whether before or after the coming into force of this section, is void and of no effect”.

It is void by operation of the statute. No court order is needed to make it void. Sections 222 (2) and (3) only deal with clearing it off the register.

Grounds section 222 names	Grounds it does not name
Sex	Disability
Race	Age
Creed	Family status
Colour	Marital status
Nationality	Sexual orientation
Ancestry	Gender identity or expression
Place of origin	Source of income

The right-hand column is not a list of restrictions that are fine. It is a list of grounds that this particular section does not cover, which means a complaint about one of them runs under human rights law rather than under section 222. That is a distinction a lot of commentary blurs, and it changes where you would take the problem.

Who to ask on the North Shore

Three different questions, three different places. Anything municipal is subject to change, so call or email and ask rather than relying on a page — including this one.

Your question	Who to ask	How
What does the zoning allow on this lot?	City of North Vancouver	604-985-7761, planning 604-983-7357, planning@cnv.org, 141 West 14th Street, V7M 1H9 — cnv.org
Same question, District side	District of North Vancouver	604-990-2311, planning 604-990-2387, planning@dnv.org, District Hall, 355 West Queens Road, V7N 4N5 — dnv.org
Same question, West Vancouver	District of West Vancouver	604-925-7000, Planning 604-925-7055, Municipal Hall, 750 17th Street, V7V 3T3 — westvancouver.ca
What is actually registered against this title?	Land Title and Survey Authority	Order the title search and the document yourself — ltsa.ca. It will not answer questions about what a title means
Does this restriction bind me, and can it be changed?	A BC real estate lawyer	Before your subject removal date, with the document in hand

What to do before your subject removal date

Get the title search. Read the Charges, Liens and Interests block line by line, not just the mortgage line.
If a building scheme or a restrictive covenant is there, order the document and read the actual words. The title will not tell you what they are.
Check whether the house you are buying already complies. An existing breach becomes your problem, not the seller’s.
Count the lots the declaration covers. That number decides whether the consent route under section 220 (4) is realistic.
Look for a plan-approval clause, and ask who is supposed to give that approval and whether they still exist.
If your plan for the property depends on the restriction being lifted or ignored, get a lawyer’s written opinion before you remove subjects — not after.
Ask the municipality what the zoning allows, and treat that as a separate answer from what your title allows.

What I could not confirm

Writing this honestly means saying where the record runs out.

The court decisions. British Columbia Supreme Court judgments were not reachable from here when this was written. The outcomes described above are reported by the British Columbia Real Estate Association, and a 2025 decision cancelling an obsolete scheme is reported in published legal commentary as Smith v. Clearwater Park GP Inc., 2025 BCSC 1239. I have not read any of those judgments, so nothing here relies on the courts’ reasoning — only on the Association’s account and on the statutes themselves.
The exact wording your title will print. I can tell you a building scheme appears as a charge rather than a legal notation, and what fields a charge line carries. I could not find a published registry sample showing the precise words in the “nature” field, and an older registration may cite the section number that was in force when it was registered. Read your own title; do not pattern-match against mine.
Whether a court order is needed to see the restrictions. No source states in words that the restrictions are never on the title print. It is the consistent practice and it follows from the registry’s own ordering pages, but I am describing practice there, not quoting a rule.
Anything tabled but not yet law. The statutes above are quoted from the consolidation current to 27 October 2026. A bill introduced and not yet in force would not appear in it. If you are relying on a change, check the current consolidation.

Questions people ask

Does a building scheme expire?

Nothing in section 220 puts a time limit on one. The only date in that section is 30 October 1979, and it limits how a scheme may be created, not how long it lasts. A scheme registered in 1954 can still be enforced by the other owners today, which is exactly what happened in the view case above.

Can the city remove it for me?

No. In the Province’s words, local governments “are not generally party to, or responsible for the administration of the building scheme”. A municipality can change its zoning. It cannot discharge a private restriction it does not hold.

If my neighbours have all broken it, does that mean I can?

Not by itself, and do not act on it without advice. A long history of unchallenged breaches is the kind of fact that goes to a court under section 35 (2) (a) or (c), but it is evidence in an application, not a free pass. Building first and arguing afterwards is how the owners in both cases above ended up with a 120-day order.

Does the seller have to take it off title before completion?

No. Financial charges such as a mortgage get paid out and discharged on closing. A building scheme is not a financial charge — it is a restriction that stays, and your contract will normally list it as an encumbrance you accept. Read that list.

Will title insurance deal with it?

Treat that as a question for the policy and for your lawyer, not an assumption. A restriction that is registered and disclosed on the title is a known encumbrance, and known encumbrances are the sort of thing a policy is most likely to exclude. There is more on how those policies are built in the title insurance article linked below.

Is this the same thing as strata bylaws?

No. Strata bylaws are made and changed by a strata corporation under the Strata Property Act, and the owners can vote to amend them. A building scheme is a charge on each lot’s own title, with no corporation behind it and no vote that changes it. A bare land strata can have both, which is worth knowing before you buy one.

Thinking about buying or selling on the North Shore?

Leave your name and number and I will come back to you, usually the same day. Tell me the address if you have one and I will pull the sale history and the documents that matter before we talk. No charge, no obligation.

Prefer to talk now? Call or text 778-903-7306.

What a Building Scheme on Your Title Means When You Buy a BC Home