Aerial view of Main Street Unionville © Brad Macdonald
If you are buying a property in York Region for what you plan to do with it, whether that is a second unit for family, a workshop, or a future severance, confirm the zoning with the municipality itself before your conditions come off. Three municipalities here have rewritten or are rewriting their zoning by-laws at more or less the same time, and the property databases that agents and lawyers pull from have not all kept pace. The acreage on the deed does not change; what you are permitted to build on it can.
Markham's rewrite is already finished
Council enacted a new comprehensive zoning by-law, By-law 2024-19, on January 31, 2024, and the Ontario Land Tribunal approved it on a city-wide basis on September 19, 2024, save for lands tied to remaining site-specific appeals (source: yourvoicemarkham.ca). What it replaced is remarkable when you see it written down: forty-six separate parent zoning by-laws, enacted between 1954 and 2004, each with its own definitions and standards. For most Markham homeowners this was overdue housekeeping and nothing more. But if you are working from an older listing, an older survey, or a report prepared before 2024, the zoning it names may simply no longer exist, and a small number of properties do still sit under the older rules. Some of the biggest changes occur to the commercial/industrial zoning around Markham’s inclusive industrial zone just east of McCowan road, by CF Markville, with the official plan designating some of this for ‘future redevelopment’ with very different zoning.
Georgina is partway through, and rural buyers should care most
Georgina's Countryside lands, meaning the rural and agricultural areas outside the settlement boundaries, now fall under Countryside Zoning By-law 600, while Keswick, Sutton, Jackson's Point, Pefferlaw and the hamlets remain under the older By-law 500. Phase two, which updates the settlement areas, began in 2025 and is expected to conclude in 2027 (source: Town of Georgina, Zoning By-law Update). For anyone shopping in cottage country the practical consequence is significant. A large rural parcel that once appeared simply as rural may now carry a combination of designations, with Environmental Protection applied to a portion of it. The land has not shrunk by a square foot, but where you may build, whether an additional dwelling unit is permitted, and what a severance might realistically look like can all have changed.
Stouffville is next
Whitchurch-Stouffville still operates under Comprehensive Zoning By-law 2010-001-ZO, consolidated as recently as July of this year, while its ReZone and ReDesign project works toward an updated by-law and new urban design guidelines (source: townofws.ca). Nothing has flipped yet, which makes this the right moment for anyone with plans for a Stouffville property to pay attention rather than to assume.
The part almost nobody checks
The property information services that agents and lawyers pull from, and the assessment records behind them, do not always reflect these transitions right away. You can look a property up in perfectly good faith and be handed a zoning designation that was superseded a year or more ago. Nobody is being careless about it. Municipal by-laws simply change faster than the databases that describe them, and there is no flag on the screen telling you that what you are reading is out of date.
So before zoning becomes the reason you are buying a property, confirm it at the source: the municipality's own current zoning map and by-law schedules, not a listing sheet, not an old report, and not the property's historical use. Look specifically for whether the parcel carries more than one designation, and for site-specific exceptions, which are common and easy to miss. If your plan depends on the answer, a call to the municipal planning department before the conditions come off is the cheapest insurance you will ever buy, and if the answer is still unclear, that is exactly what a properly drafted condition in your offer is for.
The bottom line
Zoning across York Region is in transition, and the record you look up may not be the record that governs the property. Confirm the current zoning with the municipality before you waive conditions on anything you are buying for its development potential, and treat rural and large-lot parcels as the highest risk. Over the years I have found that the expensive surprises are almost never about price; they are about what someone assumed they could do with a property and then could not.
If you are considering a rural or large-lot purchase anywhere in York Region this fall and want a second set of eyes on it before you commit, call me. I would far rather spend an afternoon on this with you than help you unwind it later.
