Almost every renovation worth doing on an older Toronto home needs a building permit. Anything that touches the structure, the building envelope, or the systems running through the house — and that covers most of what we get called for.
People generally know that part. What catches them out is where the time actually goes. In our experience, the delay on a Toronto permit is rarely the City sitting on a decision. It is almost always the package that went in — incomplete, on the wrong form, missing a document nobody mentioned — coming back to be done again. The clock does not pause while you fix it. It restarts.
So this is the honest version of the process, current as of 2026, from the chair of the people who prepare the drawings and then build what is on them.
It is all digital now — and the form changed in February 2026
Applications go through the City’s online submission system (Toronto Building Online Services), with everything — drawings, reports, forms — provided as PDFs. You can also submit a package by email, but the online route is the main road now.
The detail that is quietly catching people out: as of February 16, 2026, every building permit application must use the updated Application for a Permit to Construct or Demolish form. Older versions of the form get rejected at intake. Not reviewed and returned with comments — rejected before anyone looks at your project. If you are working from a template a contractor sent you last year, or a copy saved on your desktop, check it against the City’s current Forms Index before you send anything.
The drawings are where projects actually stall
The City is not asking for artwork. It is asking for a package it can check against the zoning by-law and the Building Code without guessing. For a typical residential job that means a site plan referenced to a current survey — property lines, easements, setbacks, lot coverage, grades — fully dimensioned floor plans for every level, cross sections showing wall, floor and roof assemblies plus footing and foundation details, and construction details and notes.
Two things trip up homeowners here. First, the drawings have to be signed and sealed by someone qualified to take responsibility for them — a BCIN-qualified designer, an architect, or an engineer — with their registration number on the sheets. Second, if any part of your drawings carries an engineer’s seal, the engineer has to file an Assumption of Responsibility for Engineering Content form alongside it. Miss that and the package is incomplete.
One small thing worth knowing: keep personal information off the plans. Permit drawings are disclosable under provincial freedom-of-information law. Your name and phone number do not need to be on them.
The form nobody tells you about: the Rental Renovation Licence Screening Form
This one is new enough that most of what you will read online does not mention it at all.
The City now requires a Rental Renovation Licence Screening Form to be submitted with all permits related to the repair or renovation of a residential unit. It comes out of the renoviction by-law (Toronto Municipal Code Chapter 662), and its job is to determine whether your project also requires a Rental Renovation Licence — which applies where renovation work requires a tenant to vacate.
Read that scope again, because it is broader than people assume. This is not only a landlord’s problem. If there is a rental unit in the house — a basement apartment, a rented second unit, a tenant upstairs — the screening form is part of your permit package. And if the work genuinely requires vacant possession, the licence brings its own requirements: an application within a set window of issuing notice, a professional’s report confirming the work truly requires the unit to be empty, a fee, and obligations to the tenant.
It is entirely possible to have your drawings perfect and your project stopped at intake over a form you had never heard of.
What a permit costs in 2026
Toronto’s permit fees are calculated per square metre of proposed work, using a service index, plus fixed fees for certain items. Effective January 1, 2026, interior alterations for residential work are charged at $11.53 per square metre, and there is a Residential Unit Fee of $56.33 for each new residential unit in the application.
That unit fee is worth pausing on if you are converting a house into multiple units. A single-home-to-fourplex conversion is three new units. A conversion to six is five. It is not a large number on its own — but it is a reminder that “development charges are waived on the first six units” does not mean the City charges you nothing. Mechanical (HVAC), plumbing and drain permits carry their own fees on top.
Fees change. Check the City’s Building Permit Fees page before you budget, rather than trusting a figure in a blog post — including this one.
Where the process quietly sends you to the Committee of Adjustment
Here is the thing almost no permit guide explains. Your building permit application triggers a zoning review — and the zoning review does not look only at what you are proposing. It looks at the whole house.
Which means an existing condition that has stood untouched for eighty years — a side-yard setback, an old addition, a parking arrangement — can be pulled into the review and treated as something that needs to be legalized, whether or not you were touching it. That is how a straightforward permit turns into a Committee of Adjustment application, with a hearing, City fees, and several months added to the schedule.
We have written about this at length, because it is the single most common way a Toronto renovation timeline blows up.
What we actually do here
We are a design-build firm, which in this context means the person preparing your permit drawings is the person who has to build them. That changes what gets drawn. We are not producing a set to get through review and then handing you a set of problems on site.
Practically: we assess the zoning and the existing conditions before anything is drawn, so nobody is surprised at review. We prepare and seal the drawings. We assemble the package — the current forms, the screening form, the engineering documents. We submit, we respond to the examiner’s comments, and if the project gets pulled to the Committee of Adjustment, we prepare that too.
None of it is glamorous. But a clean, complete first submission is the cheapest time you will ever buy on a renovation.
Woodsmith Insight
The fastest permit is not the one that gets rushed. It is the one that goes in complete the first time. Every resubmission costs weeks, and the City does not owe you back the time you lost — the clock simply starts again.
Frequently asked questions
If the work affects the structure, the building envelope, or the building systems, yes. That covers most gut kitchens and bathrooms with new plumbing or electrical, finishing a basement with new walls or a bathroom, removing or altering interior walls, adding or enlarging windows and doors, new HVAC, and creating a secondary suite. Cosmetic work — paint, flooring, cabinets in place — generally does not.
Digitally, through the City’s Toronto Building Online Services, with all drawings, reports and forms as PDFs. Email submission is also available. As of February 16, 2026 you must use the current version of the Application for a Permit to Construct or Demolish form — older versions are rejected at intake.
A form the City now requires with all permits related to the repair or renovation of a residential unit. It determines whether your project also needs a Rental Renovation Licence under Toronto Municipal Code Chapter 662 — which applies where the work requires a tenant to move out. If there is a rental unit in your house, this form is part of your package.
Fees are calculated per square metre of proposed work. Effective January 1, 2026, residential interior alterations are $11.53 per square metre, plus a Residential Unit Fee of $56.33 for each new residential unit. Mechanical, plumbing and drain permits carry separate fees. Always check the City’s current fee schedule before budgeting.
Because a building permit triggers a zoning review, and that review examines the whole property — not just the part you are changing. Existing conditions that do not conform to the current by-law can be pulled in and treated as variances to be legalized, even if you were not touching them. It is the most common cause of a blown-out Toronto renovation timeline.
A qualified designer under the Ontario Building Code (with a BCIN registration number on the drawings), an architect, or an engineer. Their name, registration and seal must appear on the sheets, and they take responsibility for the design. Where an engineer’s seal appears, an Assumption of Responsibility for Engineering Content form must also be filed.
Less time than most people fear, if the package is complete — and far longer if it is not. The real driver is resubmission: an incomplete or non-compliant package comes back, and the review effectively starts over. A clean first submission is the single biggest thing you control.
