The next trend in luxury Canadian real estate? Multi-level 'iceberg' basements.

• By Shawna Connelly
• Posted Monday, Jan 24, 2022 10:23 am

The next trend in luxury Canadian real estate? Multi-level 'iceberg' basements.

Wealthy homeowners are digging deep, building underground karaoke lounges and golf simulators to get around building restrictions

In Hoggs Hollow, an upscale Toronto neighbourhood, people love their trees. In November, many lawns bore a sign reading, “Stop the Chop,” a campaign to save a 250-year-old sugar maple. The signs remain, but the plea failed. The massive tree had stood behind a house that a family bought with plans to demolish it and build a new home. The buyers ignored a city forestry report and cut down the maple to accommodate a two-level basement whose area is nearly twice the above-ground footprint of their planned new house. Drawings show the basement will feature a karaoke lounge, a card table, a billiard room, a golf simulator, a stage, a basketball court, a spa featuring a steam room and sauna, an exercise room, a five-car garage, a kids’ lounge, a mud room, two bathrooms and a nannys’ lounge, plus “Nanny Room #1” and “Nanny Room #2.”

Below-grade mansions are not new. In the mid-2000s, very wealthy residents of the London boroughs of Chelsea, Mayfair, Knightsbridge and Westminster pioneered deep basements to make houses much bigger than rules permitted. Locals dubbed them “iceberg houses,” but after hundreds of approvals, London councils restricted the size of these subterranean pleasure dens. So far, big Canadian cities have no rules...[READ MORE]