Parking an RV, Trailer or Boat in Your Toronto Driveway: What the Zoning By-law Allows

Toronto’s zoning by-law has one clause written for recreational vehicles on a house lot. It names two places to store them, caps the count, and leaves a few words undefined.

I’m Arthur Zhao with AZ Real Estate Partners. Picture a showing where the buyer gives the kitchen a polite glance, then walks straight back out to the driveway and paces it end to end. “This is why we’re here,” they say. “The fifth-wheel and the boat have been living at other people’s places. Here they finally get a home.”

Before a driveway becomes the reason to write an offer, it is worth reading the one regulation in Toronto’s zoning by-law that speaks to recreational vehicles on a house lot. It is short, it is specific about where a trailer may sit, and it says nothing at all about several things owners take for granted. Below I walk through it the way you would walk the lot: from the street, back to the rear lot line.

First, which by-law governs your lot

The rule for recreational vehicles is 10.5.80.10(8) in Chapter 10 of City-wide Zoning By-law 569-2013, the chapter for the Residential Zone category. According to the by-law’s own header, 569-2013 was enacted on May 9, 2013 and has been appealed under section 34(19) of the Planning Act; even so, the City’s Chief Building Official and the Committee of Adjustment apply it to applications filed after its enactment. The header itself tells readers to consult their advisors on whether the new by-law affects them.

569-2013 also defines a “former general zoning by-law”: the zoning by-laws of the former municipalities, such as By-law 438-86 of the former City of Toronto and By-law 7625 of the former City of North York, along with those of York, Etobicoke, East York and Scarborough. So before reading anything below, look your lot up on the City’s zoning map and confirm 569-2013 is the by-law in play.

Everything quoted here comes from the office consolidation with the Version Date of July 31, 2024, including City-wide Amendments up to April 30, 2026. Consolidations are updated, so check the current version on the City’s site when you read this.

Walking the lot from the street inward

The by-law divides a house lot into yards. The front yard is the area between the front lot line and the building’s front main walls; the rear yard is the area between the rear lot line and the building’s rear main walls (Chapter 800, definitions 285 and 650). Here is what Chapter 10 says at each stop, starting at the street.

Stop one: the driveway in the front yard

Regulation (3) says that in the Residential Zone category a parking space may not be in a front yard or in a side yard abutting a street, unless a front-yard parking space is permitted by the City under the City of Toronto Act, 2006, or its predecessor.

Regulation (4) is what lets the family car sit on the driveway: for a detached house, a semi-detached house, a duplex, or a townhouse unit whose private driveway leads directly to it, “vehicles may be parked on the private portion of the driveway leading to a parking space.”

Regulation (8) is the one written for recreational vehicles, and it lists where they are stored: in a building, or in a rear-yard parking space. The driveway in the front yard is not on that list. Regulation (4) uses the word “parked” and (8) uses “stored”; the text does not set any number of hours or days that separates the two.

Stop two: the side yard beside the house

A side yard that abuts a street is already ruled out as a parking space location by regulation (3). A side yard that does not abut a street is a different matter for ordinary parking on corner lots (see below), but for recreational vehicles the answer comes from (8), and (8) names only a building or a rear-yard parking space. A side yard of either kind is not one of those two.

Stop three: the rear yard

Regulation (8)(B)(ii) allows storage in “a parking space in the area of the rear yard which is not required for soft landscaping.” Chapter 800 defines a parking space as “an area used for the parking or storing of a vehicle.” The phrase that does the work is “not required for soft landscaping”, covered in its own section below.

Regulation (7) adds a cap that applies to every outdoor rear-yard space, cars included: on a lot with a detached house, a semi-detached house or a duplex, a maximum of 2 parking spaces may be located outside in the rear yard.

Stop four: inside a building

Regulation (8)(B)(i) allows storage in “a building.” Chapter 800 defines a building as “a wholly or partially enclosed structure with a roof supported by walls, columns, piers or other structural systems,” and adds that “a vehicle is not a building.” A garage fits that description. Putting up a new structure to hold a trailer brings in the by-law’s separate rules for ancillary buildings, which this article does not cover.

How many the clause allows

Regulation (8) caps recreational vehicle use at two parking spaces on a lot. Its condition (A) then reads, in full: “there is no more than one camper trailer or one boat trailer.”

That is the wording as enacted. If you own both a camper trailer and a boat trailer, the sentence does not spell out how it applies to that combination, and I am not going to choose a reading for you; ask the City how it applies the condition to your two vehicles. Remember too that on a detached, semi-detached or duplex lot, regulation (7) limits outdoor rear-yard parking spaces to 2 in total, whatever is parked in them.

The rear-yard share that has to stay soft

The “not required for soft landscaping” wording points to regulation 10.5.50.10(3). For a lot with a residential building other than an apartment building, it requires:

• at least 50% of the rear yard for soft landscaping if the lot frontage is greater than 6.0 metres; and
• at least 25% of the rear yard for soft landscaping if the lot frontage is 6.0 metres or less.

Soft landscaping is defined in Chapter 800 as landscaping excluding hard-surfaced areas such as decorative stonework, retaining walls and walkways. A rear-yard space for a trailer therefore has to sit in the part of the rear yard left over after that minimum. Your survey shows the lot frontage, which tells you which percentage applies.

What the clause states, and what it is silent on

If the trailer earns money

Regulations (9) and (10) deal with commercial vehicles, a term Chapter 800 does not define either. Under (9), a parking space in the Residential Zone category may be used for a commercial vehicle only if an owner or tenant of a dwelling unit on the lot is the owner or operator of the vehicle, and it is within a wholly enclosed building.

Under (10), a parking space outside a building may not be used for: commercially licensed vehicles; construction vehicles; dump trucks; agricultural vehicles; repair or towing vehicles; tracked vehicles; vehicles with a traction engine; vehicles designed to run only on rails; and vehicles equipped with more than six wheels, excluding spare wheels. If your trailer is licensed or used for a business, read these two regulations next to (8) and ask the City which one it applies.

If you are buying a house for its driveway

Three things are worth settling before an offer, not after closing. First, which zoning by-law governs the lot. Second, how the City classifies your specific vehicle: a fifth-wheel, for example, is not a term that appears in the clause. Third, whether a condominium declaration or rules, or other private rules attached to the property, add their own restrictions on top of zoning.

The listing’s description of parking is not the by-law’s answer. If the house only makes sense to you with the trailer at home, raise that with your real estate lawyer before you sign, so the right questions get asked in time. I lay out the rule; the decision on how much weight to put on it is yours.

Before the trailer comes home