About
Built in Vancouver,
for Vancouver.
Van Permit Audit started from a simple frustration: permit compliance in the City of Vancouver is genuinely hard. The bylaws are dense, the PDFs are long, and a single overlooked setback, FSR miscalculation, or parking-requirement miss can mean months of delay and thousands of dollars in consultant time.
How this started
I grew up in Istanbul, in neighborhoods where the rules were mostly unwritten and getting anything built required knowing the right person. Moving to Vancouver was supposed to be the opposite: clear bylaws, public records, a city that publishes its zoning maps online for anyone to check. And it is, on paper.
In practice, the City of Vancouver Zoning and Development By-law is over 300 pages. The Building By-law adds another 500. Parking, noise, heritage, tree protection, laneway-specific rules: each has its own document. A homeowner trying to understand whether they can add a laneway house or convert their basement into a legal secondary suite is reading the equivalent of a legal textbook across four different files, cross-referencing three agencies, and hoping they did not miss a setback that invalidates their entire plan.
Someone close to me went through this last year. They spent two months and around $2,400 in consultant fees finding out their original plan was not going to fly because of one parking requirement they had missed when reading the bylaw. That experience is the reason Van Permit Audit exists.
I work a full-time day job at a Vancouver transit agency. Van Permit Audit is what I build after hours, along with other small software products under the Wolf Codes brand. The name comes from my Turkish heritage (my family name means "son of the wolf") and from a belief that the best way to navigate an unfamiliar system is to understand the terrain precisely, not to charge at it blindly.
What Van Permit Audit actually does
Upload a Vancouver permit document: architectural drawings, site plans, a renovation proposal. The tool reads the document the same way a careful City plan-checker would: extracting setbacks, Floor Space Ratio (FSR), building height, lot coverage, parking counts, secondary suite eligibility, heritage zone overlays, tree protection buffers, and more.
Each finding is cross-referenced to the exact section of the actual City of Vancouver bylaw it relates to, not a summary, not a plain-English interpretation. A finding of "front setback 4.5m, required minimum 6.0m" links directly to the Zoning and Development By-law section that sets the 6.0m minimum for your zoning district. That specificity is what separates a preliminary compliance check from a generic permit checklist.
The free analysis gives you the full breakdown: every check, every citation, every confidence score. The paid $49 permit-readiness review is there so you have a formal artifact to attach to your permit application, hand to your reviewer, or share with a lender doing due diligence.
Who Van Permit Audit is built for
Homeowners planning a renovation
You're adding a laneway house, converting your basement to a secondary suite, or doing a major addition. You want to know whether your architect's drawings will survive City of Vancouver's compliance check before you pay $800/hour for that confirmation.
First-time buyers in heritage zones
You're considering a property in Kitsilano, Dunbar, Shaughnessy, or Grandview, neighborhoods with specific heritage or character zoning overlays. You want a cheap pre-offer check to understand what you could and couldn't build there before you waive subjects.
Small-scale contractors
You take on 5 to 15 Vancouver residential permits a year. You already know the bylaws, but a second AI reviewer on every drawing set catches the 1-in-20 obvious miss: the extra FSR, the forgotten setback override, the parking requirement you'd forgotten changed last year.
Real-estate professionals
You're listing a property with renovation potential, or your buyer wants to verify a seller's claim about what's been approved. The QR-verified review gives you a shareable artifact that stands on its own.
What we believe
Citations, not opinions
Every finding links to the exact section of the Vancouver bylaw it came from. No vague warnings, no generic advice, no "consult a professional" hand-waving. You get the specific clause and the specific value from your drawing that conflicts with it.
Honest about limitations
When the AI cannot find enough evidence in your document to make a call, it says so, and tells you which additional document (site plan, survey, architectural) would resolve the ambiguity. It would rather flag uncertainty than fake confidence.
Professionals still matter
AI is good at reading and cross-referencing 300-page bylaws. It is not a substitute for a licensed P.Eng., Registered Architect, or Vancouver permit expediter's judgment on a real project. The readiness review makes your professional's review faster; it does not replace their sign-off.
Simple, one-time pricing
The full analysis is free. You pay once ($49) to download the readiness review PDF. No subscriptions, no seat limits, no recurring charges. If the review disappoints, you get refunded within 7 days.
Built for Vancouver first
Vancouver's zoning bylaws, FSR math, setback rules, laneway-house criteria, and heritage restrictions are different from every other city in Canada. Rather than shipping a generic permit tool, Van Permit Audit is tuned specifically to the City of Vancouver's regulations, because a tool that knows one city well beats a tool that knows ten cities poorly.
Data discipline
Your uploaded permit documents are processed and discarded within 24 hours. They are never sent to third-party AI providers for training. The only data retained is the extracted analysis result and certificate metadata needed to verify QR links.
Where this goes next
Vancouver first, then the rest of Metro Vancouver. Public roadmap: paid users vote on priority. The short version:
Q2 2026
- · Vancouver laneway house specialized flow
- · CoV Application Pre-Fill auto-populate
- · Heritage-zone overlay awareness
Q3 2026
- · Burnaby bylaw coverage
- · Richmond bylaw coverage
- · Multi-document upload (drawings + survey)
Q4 2026
- · North Vancouver + West Vancouver
- · Permit timeline prediction
- · Architect / P.Eng. collaboration workspace
See the full roadmap to vote on what ships next.
Why Vancouver-specific matters
A permit compliance tool that tries to serve every Canadian municipality ends up serving none of them well. Vancouver's FSR calculation rules are not Toronto's. Richmond's parking requirements are not Burnaby's. The City of Vancouver has specific overlays (CD-1 zoning districts, Heritage Conservation Areas, the Rental 100 Policy, laneway-house-specific setback relaxations) that do not exist in the same form anywhere else in the country.
Van Permit Audit covers Vancouver deeply, and will add each neighboring municipality one-at-a-time as the coverage can be made equally rigorous. It is slower than a "we support every city" approach. It is also the only approach that produces reports you can actually rely on.
Get in touch
Questions about a specific bylaw, feedback on a report, or partnership inquiries from Vancouver permit professionals, real-estate firms, or City of Vancouver stakeholders:
support@vanpermitaudit.ca