Can someone build out your view?

On the North Shore the view is often the most expensive thing you are buying. It is also the thing with the least protection behind it.

Here is the short answer, and it surprises most people: a view is not something you own. Nothing about looking at the water for twenty years converts that into a right. British Columbia’s Land Title Act settles it in one sentence — all methods of acquiring a right over land by long use are abolished, and the section names the old English doctrine of “ancient lights” among them. Whatever your windows have looked at, they have not earned anything.

The City of North Vancouver puts it plainly in its own Official Community Plan. When it talks about allowing extra building height, it says view impacts will be considered — and then adds: “The City does not guarantee that any view will be preserved.”

So the real question is not whether you have a right. It is what actually stands between your window and the lot below you. There are four things, and they are worth knowing before you pay the premium, not after.

What happened when a West Vancouver owner tested this

A homeowner near Horseshoe Bay went to court over the house going up next door. The District had approved a development permit and later extended it; he argued the build would cost him sunlight and privacy, and that the planning director had no authority to grant the extension.

He lost in the BC Supreme Court, and lost again at the Court of Appeal. As reported, the court’s view was that his interests were subordinate to those of the neighbours — who by then had spent more than $900,000 on approvals and site preparation — and that on the extension decision he had no statutory right to be heard at all.

That is the baseline. A lawful build that takes your outlook is not a wrong the courts will fix.

The one thing that genuinely protects a view

A restrictive covenant registered on title. Not a handshake, not a neighbourhood understanding, not “everyone here keeps their trees down” — a document registered against the land, which binds whoever owns it next.

The North Shore has a live example. In the British Properties, a covenant written by the developer and in place since 2011 caps tree height at the roofline. One owner has sued a neighbour over trees said to exceed it by twenty feet, and the case is in the BC Supreme Court. Whatever the outcome, the point stands: with a covenant you have something to argue. Without one you have a feeling.

Three cautions, though, because a covenant is protection rather than a guarantee:

You have to read the actual document. A title search shows a charge number. The charge number tells you nothing. You have to order the registered instrument and read what it says.
It can be lost by inaction. The BC Real Estate Association has warned for years that owners in a building scheme must be vigilant about enforcing these, and that buyers cannot assume they will get the benefit of one that has been ignored.
A court can cancel or modify it. The Property Law Act allows that where the covenant has become obsolete because the neighbourhood has changed, or where it blocks reasonable use without practical benefit to anyone.

Worth knowing too: some covenants require a third party to approve your building plans before you can build. The BCREA has described that kind of covenant as neither minor nor insubstantial — it is a real constraint on what you can do with your own lot, and it turns up on title in exactly the neighbourhoods where views are expensive.

Then there is the zoning — and how height is measured matters more than the number

Vancouver protects certain public views with mapped view cones. The North Shore has no equivalent for private views. What limits the house below you is ordinary zoning: how tall it can be, and how far back it has to sit.

Two people can read the same height number and get very different buildings. And there are three sets of rules to read, because North Vancouver is two municipalities — the City and the District — and West Vancouver is a third, separate one. All three measure height differently, and on ground this steep the method is worth metres.

West Vancouver uses a “highest building face envelope.” It starts from the lower of natural or finished grade, rises vertically to the zone’s limit, then leans inward at 45 degrees. In most of its single-family zones that limit is 7.62 m (25 ft); one zone allows 8 m.
The District of North Vancouver builds a “building height base line” by averaging two datum points at the front of the lot and two at the rear, again at the lesser of natural or finished grade. It then adds a steep-slope allowance — extra height where the front grade falls away sharply from the street, which describes a great deal of the District.
The City of North Vancouver works from a “reference grade” that is interpolated, not measured: the slope of the site multiplied by a factor to estimate the grade at forty percent of the lot’s depth.

The one thing they agree on is the useful one. West Vancouver and the District both measure from the lower of natural or finished grade, which is the anti-fill rule: a builder cannot truck in soil, raise the ground and take the extra height with it.

Do not rely on a height number you read anywhere, including here. The province’s small-scale multi-unit housing legislation has been rewriting these zones, and what a lot could hold two years ago is not necessarily what it can hold now. Get the current limit for the specific lot from the municipality, in writing.

How the house below you gets to go higher anyway

Two routes, and they work differently.

A Development Variance Permit. Council can grant one by resolution, and no public hearing is required. There is a hard limit on it — a variance cannot change the use or the density of a lot, so it can raise a roof but it cannot add units. Owners within a set distance must be given at least ten days’ notice.

The Board of Variance. A separate body, and a much narrower door. The test is undue hardship, and the City of North Vancouver spells out what that does and does not mean: the hardship has to come from the site itself rather than from anything personal to the owner, and financial hardship or the loss of an amenity is unlikely on its own to be enough. The board’s decision is final.

What actually decides these is less legal than people expect. In one District hearing in 2024 a set of six variances, including extra roof and eave height, was refused, with a notified neighbour in the room. In another, height variances went through carrying eleven letters of support from neighbours, including every property facing and adjacent. Neighbour letters are the currency. If you care, write one — and if you are the person applying, collect them.

The change nobody sent homeowners a letter about

This is the part of the article most likely to be new to you.

Under the provincial housing legislation, a local government cannot hold a public hearing on a rezoning that is consistent with its own Official Community Plan. The District of North Vancouver states the consequence in its own words: it can no longer hold public hearings for residential development applications that meet the requirements under the new rules.

Read that again if you have ever comforted yourself with the thought that you would get a chance to speak. For a qualifying small-scale multi-unit project, there may be no hearing at all. The forum where neighbours used to turn up and object simply is not convened.

Will you even find out?

Provincial law requires notice to owners within a distance — and then leaves each municipality to set that distance itself. So the answer depends on which side of a boundary you live on:

West Vancouver notifies owners and residents within 50 metres of the subject property for a development variance permit.
The City of North Vancouver notifies owners within a 40-metre radius for a Board of Variance hearing.
The District of North Vancouver publishes no distance in its variance procedure material — it says notice goes to adjacent owners and occupants and to the nearest community association, which then has fourteen days to comment.

If your view crosses three lots to reach the water, none of these radii necessarily reaches the lot that matters. The house that takes your view may be built by someone you were never told about.

Trees: what you can and cannot make a neighbour do

This is where people are most often wrong, so here is the line precisely.

You cannot make a neighbour remove a healthy tree because it blocks your view. Not through the municipality and not through the courts. Across all three North Shore tree bylaws, blocked view is not a ground for a removal permit anywhere.

Pruning is a different question, and the three differ. West Vancouver’s tree bylaw recognises “vista pruning” — selective pruning to maintain a view — as an acceptable method. The District’s bylaw allows reasonable view access as a discretionary basis for minor pruning. The City’s bylaw does not mention view at all; its grounds are dead, dying or hazardous trees, and interference with utilities or drainage.

Branches over your side, you may cut — carefully. You can cut back overhanging branches to the property line without asking permission, and you cannot step onto your neighbour’s land to do it. But that common-law right does not override the tree bylaw: if the tree is protected, you may still need a permit to cut the part on your own side. People have been ordered to pay serious damages for getting this wrong.

What to check before you write the offer

Pull title and read the charges — then order the documents. Look for restrictive covenants and building schemes. A charge number is not information; the registered instrument is.
Identify every lot in the sightline, not just the one immediately below. Then get each one’s current zoning and height limit from the municipality, in writing.
Ask whether those lots are now multiplex-eligible under the provincial housing rules. This is the step most buyers skip and it is now the one that matters most.
Ask for active and recent applications on those lots — variance permits, board of variance files, development permits, rezonings.
Ask whether the downhill lot sits in a development permit area for slope hazard, streamside protection or wildfire. Those constrain what can be built there, and they work in your favour.
Ask what the notification distance is in that municipality, so you know whether you would even be told.

I can do most of that — pull the title, read the zoning, call the planning department, check what is in the queue on the lots below. What I cannot do is tell you whether a covenant is enforceable. That is legal advice and it belongs to a lawyer, and given that covenants can be cancelled by a court and lost through years of non-enforcement, it is not a close call.

If the view is a six-figure part of the price, buy the protection rather than assuming it: a subject clause for review of the title charges, and a lawyer’s eyes on them before you remove subjects.

The short version

There is no right to a view in BC, and no amount of time creates one.
A registered covenant is the only real protection — and you have to read the document, not the charge number.
Zoning is what actually limits the house below you, and all three municipalities measure height differently on a slope.
A variance can raise a roof but cannot add units. Neighbour letters decide these more than law does.
For qualifying projects there may now be no public hearing at all.
Nobody has to cut a healthy tree for your view. Pruning is sometimes possible; removal is not.

A protected view is worth paying for. An unprotected one is worth paying less for. The whole job before you remove subjects is working out which one you are looking at.

این مقاله را به فارسی بخوانید — read this article in Farsi.