The era of the shoebox condo is over. How Canada can start building livable apartments - The Globe and Mail - "in most of Canada, building codes generally require two sets of exit stairs for apartment buildings of more than two storeys. The main concern is allowing people out in case of fire, especially if one exit becomes unviable. Yet with features such as sprinklers, smoke-sealed doors and more reliable fire alarm systems, mid-size apartment buildings can be just as safe, several studies have concluded. In other countries, single-stair apartment complexes are common. In Seattle, single stairways have been allowed for smaller buildings since the 1970s. Dual-stairway rules are just one example of a cacophony of provincial and municipal restrictions and requirements that have long made it hard in Canada to build livable apartments – the kind many people would consider suitable to be long-term homes in big cities... Creating larger apartments is easier and cheaper in multiplexes or small apartment buildings. Provinces and cities have started to undo the knot of rules and guidelines that have – often by design – inhibited or prohibited the construction of apartments in or near areas dominated by detached and semi-detached homes. But that push continues to meet political opposition. Toronto city council recently balked at the idea of allowing buildings of up to six units everywhere, restricting the change instead to parts of downtown and a single ward in suburban Scarborough. And even when smaller multiunit buildings are welcome on paper, a flurry of other bureaucratic obstacles makes it difficult to build them. The challenges include overly strict limits on size, requirements for exorbitantly large and expensive elevators, high taxes and permitting costs, and the dual exit-stair requirement that Mr. Speckert and others have been battling. Cities must reform how they build apartments, along with other medium-density housing, if they want to help secure their own economic viability, says Prof. Moffatt. “You can’t have all of the older, rich people living in Toronto, but all the nurses and personal support workers living in North Bay, right?,” he said. “You look at places like the San Francisco Bay Area, where the schools can’t find teachers, to see what happens when you reach that level of housing inequality.” For the better part of the past 15 years, “apartment” in Toronto and Vancouver became another word for condo unit in a glass tower. It also, increasingly, became synonym for tiny living space: often less than 640 sq. ft., sometimes under 300 sq. ft. – just enough to fit a pullout couch in front of the kitchen. It’s a sharp contrast with big cities elsewhere in the world, where apartment living is mainstream among middle-class and even upper-middle-class families. In locales as disparate as Bogota, Colombia; Vienna, Austria and Milan, Italy, it’s easy to find apartments of 1,300 sq. ft. or more, although even there, newly built apartments are often smaller than the older housing stock... why has Canada been building such tiny dwellings? One theory is that, for years, a heavy presence of real estate investors in the condo market has incentivized developers to build small... But a different set of housing statistics suggests condo investors are only one part of the story. Investor interest in condos began to falter in the spring of 2022, as rising interest rates started pushing up borrowing costs for homebuyers and builders... Many developers have pivoted to building purpose-built rental apartments, which are meant solely for long-term rental use and enjoy generous government subsidies such as cheap loans and tax incentives. Purpose-built rental construction also needs private capital, but the investor calculus is different. Rentals require significant upfront funding and promise returns that materialize only over the long term, as rents are collected. They typically attract investment from patient, deep-pocketed investors such as pension funds. Yet, Canada is still, by and large, building small apartments. Only 13 per cent of rental units completed in the GTHA in 2024 were three-bedroom apartments, according to real estate research firm Urbanation. And that share was in the single digits in the previous four years. For Prof. Moffatt, the numbers are proof that the problem of small apartments goes beyond condo investors. Three-bedroom apartments remain rare because they’re difficult to build in large buildings, he said. On a per-square-foot basis, three-bedroom units generally command lower rents compared to smaller apartments. As with condos, developers are better off building, say, a one-bedroom and a two-bedroom instead of a larger three-bedroom. Bigger apartments are also harder to rent because they are so expensive... It’s a similar dilemma for condos. Larger ones easily cost around $1.5-million. For that much money or less, buyers could purchase a townhouse further from the city core or a home in the suburbs, and many of them opt for the longer commute, he added... density caps are still too low given current land prices for single-lot multiplexes to be financially viable in large swaths of the city... In North America, elevators are larger to better accommodate people with disabilities or ambulance stretchers. But this has resulted in more residential buildings with no elevator at all, according to a report by the Center for Building in North America. Costs are also far bigger in North America, in part because standards far different from those used across much of the rest of the world have protected Canadian and U.S. elevator industries from foreign competition, according to the study. The price tag for installing a basic elevator in a mid-rise building in New York costs more than $200,000, the same research found. In countries such as South Korea and Switzerland, it is routinely done for less than $70,000... Even without the need for rezoning, the cost of permits and consulting fees easily adds tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of building a smaller multiunit building, depending on the complexity of the project... And then there are taxes... In Toronto, development charge rates have risen by almost 600 per cent between 2011 and 2023, far surpassing population growth rates... “Even if the land were free and we made no profit, just the pure cost of executing a project is higher than any traditional measure of affordability,” he said. “And right now, in many cases, it’s higher than what the market will bear.”... Even without lowering development charges, cities could lower building costs – and save thousands, if not tens of thousands, for homebuyers – by allowing payment at project completion, rather than before shovels hit the ground, reckons Prof. Moffatt. The change would exclude the fees from the upfront expenses developers typically must cover with loans, and would reduce a project’s overall financing costs. Added savings would come from the fact that a smaller pretax price is used to calculate the 5-per-cent federal sales tax that homebuyers must often pay on new housing, along with other provincial taxes."
Left wing logic: developers will just charge as much as they can, so lowering development fees and taxes won't reduce prices. They can't imagine a dynamic world, only a static one
Construction starts on Western Canada's tallest rental housing tower in Brentwood : r/canadahousing - "And all 1 bdrm, 650 sqft apartments I bet."
"Okay? It's not like we dont need units like that too."
"Somebody on this subreddit told me the other day that such developments were useless because people like him would prefer to live in single-family homes with yards. Yeah, me too, in the middle of downtown as well."
"I guess the millions of people who live in apartments are wrong and dont need more homes?"
Randall Denley: The apartment-tenant lobby scares Ontario away from desperately needed rental reforms - "Just days ago, Ontario’s Ford government suggested an idea so unspeakable that it can’t even be discussed. So shocking was the government’s proposal that it was retracted within days. Even to mention it here risks mass hysteria. The issue is a tenant’s right to live in an apartment indefinitely on a monthly basis, even after the lease has expired. Premier Doug Ford’s government suggested a consultation on giving landlords more flexibility to change tenants. As it is now, even if the landlord finds the tenant is harassing the other tenants, is overly loud or damages the property, the landlord is obliged to either keep renting to the person or try to get them evicted through a slow and bureaucratic process at the Landlord and Tenant Board. “We’ve heard from stakeholders that these evergreen leases that just go on with no end in sight may not be appropriate,” Attorney General Doug Downey said last Thursday in introducing Bill 60, the legislation that might have led to change. He argued that rebalancing the relationship between landlords and tenants would encourage new landlords and add thousands of units to the rental market. The predictable howling quickly ensued . Opposition parties and tenant activists competed to see who could concoct the worst doomsday scenario that would inevitably flow from any new approach. The housing-activist group ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) flooded MPPs and cabinet ministers with 23,000 emails protesting the potential change. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, a good friend of Ford’s when he has a cheque in his hand, said new eviction rules would be “catastrophic” for Toronto. The Ontario NDP’s Catherine McKenney said, “Thousands of workers and families across the province are already on the brink, and Bill 60 will be devastating. This will lead to mass evictions.” Not to be outdone, Liberal MPP Adil Shamji criticized the government for a move he said would end rent control during an affordability crisis. The reaction was entirely predictable. Most politicians are quick to pander to an identifiable group of voters and those on the left are prone to believe that government should protect everyone from reality. The Ford government must have known that Thursday. But by Sunday, its tiny drop of political courage had evaporated... Naturally, the people who enjoy rent protection like the system. Why wouldn’t they? It’s an entitlement others don’t have. That doesn’t make it a good idea."
Affordable homes require less immigration, not new industry - "From 1980 to 2022, Canada’s population increased 1.1 per cent a year on average. Then in 2023 and 2024, it rose 2.9 and 3.0 per cent, respectively — almost three times that rate. Not surprisingly, this sudden and dramatic increase exceeded the economy’s capacity to supply the housing needed by the added residents, 93 per cent of whom were immigrants. To deal with the resulting spike in house prices, Ottawa has created a new agency — “Build Canada Homes” — and charged it with doubling construction of new homes from today’s 250,000 a year to 500,000. The creation of BCH violates an important economic principle: “Deal with economic problems by eliminating their causes, not by creating new problems and market distortions.” BCH will badly distort a homebuilding industry that in general has served Canadians well through centuries of ups and downs in demand, interest rates, building costs, consumer tastes, technologies and immigration rates. No government bureaucracy can juggle all these variables as well as private firms and entrepreneurs can. By any reasonable estimate the 500,000 target is utopian. Land and capital aren’t such a big problem but there is a serious shortage of qualified construction workers. And it can’t be solved by increased immigration, not in the short run, at least. New immigrants can help build houses but that takes time and they need somewhere to live as soon as they arrive. Belief that somehow prefabricated home construction will solve the labour shortage is equally utopian. Pre-fab technology has been around for a long time. Private entrepreneurs don’t use it because it is too difficult and expensive. Government agencies like BCH have poor records as producers of services. They are always unionized, which means their labour costs are higher than in the private sector. And political forces that influence the location of production facilities, the technologies used, who gets hired, the choice of building materials and so on decrease the efficiency of their operations. Is anyone willing to bet on when the first BCH house will be sold, what it will cost and when the agency will suffer its first scandal? Folk wisdom says that “if you are in a hole and want to get out, first stop digging.” The federal budget announced that the 2026-2028 immigration plan will stabilize permanent resident admission targets at 380,000 per year for three years, down from 395,000 in 2025. It will also reduce the target for new temporary admissions from 673,650 in 2025 to 385,000 next year and 370,000 in 2027 and 2028. That’s still too high. In the past, house prices were stable when immigrants numbered 250,000 annually. We’re a bigger country now. Perhaps the sustainable number today is 300,000, but the scheduled number is three times that. To solve the housing affordability crisis quickly and at low cost, Ottawa should cut immigration a good deal more than it has planned and for as long as it takes for housing to become affordable again. After that, immigration can safely return to its normal level."
Time for more regulation, and to blame "capitalism" and "greed" when that fails
Details on Canada's new housing agency add clarity, expose 'troubling limitations': Expert - "Newly released details about the federal government’s Build Canada Homes (BCH) agency reveal “troubling limitations,” with key housing shortages and regulatory barriers remaining unaddressed, according to a housing policy think tank. A document outlining the government’s priorities and criteria for the program to address Canada’s housing crisis does offer “one of the clearest income-based affordability definitions in federal housing policy,” wrote Mike Moffatt, founding director of the University of Ottawa’s Missing Middle Initiative (MMI). But in other areas, the program falls short, and “still lacks clear federal objectives,” Moffatt says, increasing the chances that the funds will be spent without adequate focus... A potentially major flaw in the framework, Moffatt argues, is the prioritization of “small, low-density homes,” with the document trumpeting standardized building designs featured in the CMHC’s catalogue — which consists almost entirely of one- to three-storey buildings... Ottawa has frequently stated that it will encourage innovation and modern methods of construction (MMC), such as factory-built housing. But the framework is short on detail in some areas, Moffatt says, and what detail there is suggests gaps that will limit any program’s effectiveness. In the early stages, innovation tends to come at a cost premium... “For BCH, that means the more they focus on innovation, the fewer units they can acquire per million dollars,” Moffatt wrote. “It is still unclear how BCH will navigate this trade-off.” The framework also highlights procurement as a key lever for MMC, explicitly excludes funding for business development or R&D — a set-up that Moffatt argues “condemns new technologies and companies to a ‘valley of death.’” Furthermore, the federal framework doesn’t address the fact “that zoning and building codes often make the most promising innovations illegal to build,” he writes... Moffatt notes that BCH is explicitly designed for social housing and is not intended to solve many of the housing problems faced by the middle class. “It is not a program designed to directly accelerate market-rate rental construction or ownership opportunities for middle-class families, though it may have some positive indirect effects on those markets by accelerating the use of new technologies.”"
Only 54 condos were sold in Toronto last month as group warns of looming ‘industry-wide shutdown’ : r/toronto - "How about sell them at reasonable prices then people will buy?"
"Not really possible given the cost to build at the moment. If building costs + a reasonable profit (10%) is less than the price people are willing to buy then nothing will get build. Hence, practically nothing is getting built recently. We still have tons (maybe a few years) of inventory left, but once all new builds have come onto the market... be prepared for another housing crisis. Supply and demand will come into balance... eventually, and we may not be happy with where it ends up."
Only 54 condos were sold in Toronto last month as group warns of looming ‘industry-wide shutdown’ : r/toronto - "Have they considered building things people want to live in and selling them at a price point those people can afford?"
"the things people want cannot be sold at the price people can afford. developers aren't in the business of losing money"
"Why can't they sell 900sqft condo for 180k or at least 200k anymore? That's how much I paid for my 2 bedroom 900sqft unit in 2016"
"For starters, the city wants over $80k in development charges for that 2 bedroom condo now."
Left wingers hate profit, so they rather socialise the higher costs of the public sector and "tax the 'rich'" to pay for it
Nova Scotia hasn’t built public housing in 30 years. Why that was a ‘huge mistake' : r/canada - "Canada did everywhere, this article could just say our entire country."
"... British Columbia has spent BILLIONS on building social housing just in the last few years, so what are you talking about? Canada is currently spending $90 billion on housing half-way through a 10-year program and funds for assisted housing surpassed $6 billion in 2022 – the highest in at least 15 years – according to the office of the parliamentary budget office. Ottawa added $20 billion to the housing file last year and the finance minister pledged to “top up” spending in the 2023 budget, expected March 28. Planned federal spending targeted at housing the homeless increased 240% last year, to $420 million annually."
"Why don’t they use crown corps to build public housing like they used to? They’re just giving developers billions and there’s still not enough housing."
"The money is overwhelming given to non-profit organizations or crown agencies like BC Housing, and they DO use it to build public housing, to the tune of THOUSANDS of new units in the last year alone (this includes buying hotels and converting them into affordable housing, as well as building new transitional housing, subsidized housing, and emergency shelters) So, again, what the hell are you talking about?"
Ontario housing starts tumble, developers warn situation will ‘get worse before it gets better’ : r/ontario - "Why produce it if you can't sell it? Stats Can residential construction cost index is up around 60% since 2020. What would have cost you $300,000 to build in 2019 now costs you close to $500,000. Now interest rates are up, so not only do consumers have to eat a staggering increase in build costs they need to pay increased borrowing costs on top of it. Housing is a complete mess in this country. Contrary to popular belief declines in prices are not beneficial, in fact they are detrimental to new supply, unless build costs also decline. If costs remain at current levels and prices decline more and more projects become unviable. We need substantial decreases in build costs and a corresponding decline in sale prices."
"This isn't "I can't make ANY profit!", it's "I can't make MORE profit!". The private sector is a bad-faith actor in all things utility/public needs. From hydro, to gas, groceries to healthcare, the private sector entities want to see forever-growth in profits and are upset they can't gouge as much as they had been due to them and their peers having bled most everyone dry already."
"A good net margin for a builder is around 10%, and a lot of them don't even make that. Those net margins are a little bit above passive level returns. Builders need investors to finance their projects. If a builder is getting net margins around or below passive level returns there is no incentive for investors to put up the money to finance the project. I personally don't find a business putting ten cents on the dollar in their pockets to be obscene. If you do however, the good news is that you too can take on a ton of risk, stress, and work and put that sweet, sweet dime in your own pocket."
"These geniuses also think a 3 to 4% margin for grocery stores is gouging. They are not serious people and should be ignored, just like we don't take naive children seriously."
"The real "naive" genius here is you. If you don't think the large grocers directly or indirectly own the entire supply chain, and how the "costs" from those operations aren't manipulated to maintain the facade of a "3-4% margin" at the grocer level, you need to think critically a little more and become more well informed, rather than spouting insults and company talking points with blind faith."
"Their financial statements are public. Are you saying they are lying to investors? That would be serious fraud. where is your evidence?"
Left wingers hate profit. But they keep demanding higher wages. Clearly evil companies need to work for no money, but workers need to earn as much money as possible
Ontario housing starts tumble, developers warn situation will ‘get worse before it gets better’ : r/ontario - "Good. I hope developers lose a lot of money like regular people have. They don’t give a fuck if people have housing."
"They won't lose money. If the government wants housing, then force these companies to continue building houses regardless of their profit. Nothing should stop or "trickle". Fuck these corporations."
"No, they they should be forced to sell their inventory by taxing them for unsold inventory. And if they go bankrupt because of it, that's perfectly OK. Someone else will take their place."
Clearly, if developers lose money and go bankrupt, they will build more housing
Developers in Canada say they’re hurting. Cue the tiny violins | With measures such as foreign buyers’ taxes, prices began to decline, despite the supply falling. This ran counter to everything the development industry had insisted for years – that only greater supply would bring prices down : r/TorontoRealEstate
Left wingers don't understand demand
Weird. We're told that ending the financialisation of housing is the only way to bring down prices
Amazingly, the article claims that foreign buyers caused prices to rise and taxes on foreign buyers caused prices to fall (when prices still soared after they came in) and doesn't mention immigration. And the claim that condominium prices fell 10% doesn't seem to be true
ELECTION YEAR REMINDER: HOUSING IS NOT A PRIMARY FEDERAL RESPONSIBILITY!!!! : r/toRANTo - "Eh the trudeau govt ran in 2015, 2019, 2021 saying they gonna bring more affordable housing. It got worse and mostly it started to come down due to population growth slowding recently which they have direct control over. Feds have control on housing demand with immigration and banking regulations. Furthermkre they took the responsibility on to themselves with campaign pledges to drastically expand housing supply which they didnt really deliver on .. then liberal party supporters go "why people got so upset about housing with trudeau? It not his job" eh you guys promised it ? Anyways ancient history now... I do agree supply side local and provincial govts have control."
Development charges and property taxes are rising much faster than inflation to fund social agendas rather than municipal duties : r/ilovebc - "Canada has become incredibly inefficient as welfare funding meant to help the poor is now being channeled to a massive bureaucracy of managers, supervisors, and special projects. Tax revenues are more than enough to properly care for every Canadian, Federally we will spend $586 billion ($14192 per person), Ontario will spend $274 billion ($6570 per person), and Toronto will spend 18.8B+5.96B avg for capital spending ($7503 per person) for a total of $28265 per person. Yet a disabled person receives far less than the average spending per person in support. People seem to think homeowners/developers aren't paying enough for infrastructure but nothing could be further from the truth. Property taxes+dev fees have risen much faster than inflation despite economies of scale and sunk fixed investments meaning that what's needed to maintain current infrastructure gets lower per person as cities get bigger. Cities are taking on a lot of "optional" duties that are technically provincial/federal duties. For instance Ottawa spends 272.7 mil on Childrens services, 257.6 mil on employment/social services, 275.9 mil on housing/homelessness, 35 million on gender and race equity, while only spending 45.8 mil on parks. They only collected 170.5 mil in development charges. Canadian cities generally all make more than enough for infrastructure, just politicians tend to raid city coffers to pursue their own social agendas rather than focus on making sure the water supply is stable or cleaning sewage which is supposed to be what cities take care of/collect property taxes for. Social welfare is supposed to be provincial/federal. There's a reason cities that are richie rich like Toronto/Vancouver raise property taxes far faster than inflation despite spending per person declining with economies of scale. Canada's housing issues largely revolve around the fact that homeowners/renters are being used to subsidize social welfare spending. There's a reason government spending in Canada has risen to 50% of private GDP, Canadians truly do not understand just how much we are taxed or paying out as welfare. I think a prime example is that the BC NDP refuse to disclose how much they paid for indigenous reconciliation to build a Skytrain down Broadway in Vancouver, because obviously they were violating First Nation tribal lands in the middle of the city down a major street. the sum is incomplete because the costs for Indigenous relations and legal were censored The sheer massive amount of welfare being handed out in Canada is enormous. The social welfare industry is a large chunk of our GDP. Every level of government has gotten into it despite the responsibility for several of those duties not being part of that level. Cities have no right to be touching social housing, that's provincial. And obviously there is a lot of inefficiency with having 3 separate social housing ministries in a city, one for each level of government. I have used Ottawa as an example despite Toronto/Vancouver being worse because their budgets are so convoluted that it's difficult to break down exactly where the money is going."
