Yellowknife (Feb 21/03) - John Laycock says he was furious when he saw a house that was built down South but installed on a Niven Lake lot.

The Yellowknife developer said that he had to abide by more stringent rules when he built homes in the subdivision and warned that relaxed building regulations will drive property values down.

"This has a considerable financial effect on a lot of people," he said.

"People are spending their life savings on what they consider their dream home and then the city is allowing other people to throw modulars in there. It does affect the market."

Last March, the city amended the Niven Lake Housing Scheme to allow modular homes into the subdivision.

Laycock, who built homes under the previous, stricter regulations considered it an affront.

"They told me that there was no way that they were going to allow anything that you bring in with a crane and just hoist into place," he said.

Laycock said it makes it difficult for developers to do business in Yellowknife.

"The city is making me live by guidelines then changing them," he said.

"It makes it hard for us to sell regular homes."

City planner Dave Jones said the development plan was set up in 1995 and originally mandated that all housing should be constructed on site.

"For the first two phases that are developed there the initial development scheme applied and you'll see that all the homes built there are stick-built homes."

Jones said the change provides "an alternative to people and can be a lot cheaper to bring on site."

Modular houses are brought to the site in two or three pieces, put onto a regular foundation, drywalled and finished to look like stick-built, said Jones.

"These houses are coming up from Alberta, and I could probably challenge many people that when they're built on a site to really tell me which one is a modular home. We don't allow single-wide mobile homes in Niven lake -- never have and still don't."