Does this look like a farmhouse to you?

Up until now you could build something like ths as long as it was in the ALR (Agriculture Land Reserve). The ALR was set up to in 1973 to protect valuable agricultural land which was in danger of being lost to urban development.  In recent years it was decided that golf courses qualified as "agricultural land".  Removing land from the ALR has always been very difficult and requires a cabinet order by the ruling provincial government.

Recently some have bought ALR land because there are little restrictions on the size of the house you can build. As an added bonus the property is taxed at a much lower rate. One mega-mansion was even rented out as a hotel. Richmond has been the focus of much of this activity.

A Richmond designer made fun of 12,000 square feet mansions built on farmland with this T-shirt design. But the provincial government wants to bring all this to an end with a ban on mega-mansions on the province’s Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR).

New legislation will limit new house sizes to 5,400 square feet province wide. The change will have the biggest impact in Richmond where last spring the city reduced the maximum size of a house on agricultural land to 10,700 square feet. Read More