About
A Canadian permit-data company.
Started in BC.
Van Permit Audit does two things. It runs a national permit-data observatory that tracks 3,114,538 building permits across 32 cities in 7 provinces, so anyone can see how permits move by city. And it runs an AI permit-readiness audit that reads your application against the actual municipal bylaws before you submit. The audit started in British Columbia, where the bylaws are dense and a single missed setback or FSR miscalculation can cost months of delay and thousands in consultant time. That is still where its bylaw coverage is deepest.
How this started
I'm Adam Kurtoglu, the founder of Van Permit Audit.
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.
Building the readiness audit meant gathering permit data to test it against. That data turned out to be useful on its own, so it grew into the national permit-data observatory the company now runs alongside the audit.
Press: Adam Kurtoglu, Founder, Wolf Codes Inc. adam@wolfcodes.ca
What Van Permit Audit actually does
The permit-data observatory. We pull building-permit records from open-data portals across the country and put them in one place: 3,114,538 permits across 32 cities in 7 provinces. You can look up permit volume, declared value, and how long permits take, by city. This part is national and free to browse.
The readiness audit. Pick your municipality and upload a permit document: architectural drawings, site plans, a renovation proposal. The tool reads it the way a careful plan-checker would, extracting setbacks, Floor Space Ratio (FSR), building height, lot coverage, parking counts, secondary suite eligibility, heritage overlays, tree protection buffers, and more.
Each finding is cross-referenced to the exact section of the actual 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. Bylaw coverage is deepest in British Columbia today (38 municipalities) and expands as each new city's bylaws are added at the same rigor.
The free analysis gives you the full breakdown: every check, every citation, every confidence score. The paid $149 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 ($149) to download the readiness review PDF. No subscriptions, no seat limits, no recurring charges. If the review disappoints, you get refunded within 7 days.
National data, city-deep audits
The permit-data observatory is national: it tracks millions of building permits across Canada so anyone can see permit volume, cost, and timing by city. The AI readiness audit is deliberately narrower. It reads your drawings against the actual bylaws of the municipality you pick, because a check that knows one city's FSR math, setbacks, and overlays well beats a check that knows ten cities poorly. We add each new municipality only when we can make its audit that rigorous.
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
The data observatory keeps widening across Canada. The readiness audit deepens municipality by municipality, starting in BC. 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 the data is national but the audit started in BC
Permit data is the same shape everywhere: a record, a value, a date, a status. So the observatory can be national from day one, and it is: 3,114,538 permits across 32 cities in 7 provinces, all in one place.
Reading a permit against a city's bylaws is the opposite. A tool that tries to audit every Canadian municipality ends up auditing none of them well. Vancouver's FSR calculation rules are not Toronto's. Richmond's parking requirements are not Burnaby's. Each city has overlays (CD-1 districts, Heritage Conservation Areas, laneway-house setback relaxations) that do not exist in the same form anywhere else. So the audit started where we could get it right first, in British Columbia, and adds each new municipality one at a time as the coverage can be made equally rigorous. It is slower than a "we support every city" claim. 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, data-access inquiries about the permit observatory, or partnership inquiries from permit professionals, real-estate firms, or municipal stakeholders:
support@vanpermitaudit.ca