A new report from the PLACE Centre at the University of Ottawa’s Smart Prosperity Institute has shed light on the significant disparities in housing construction across Canada’s 100 largest cities and towns, with Ontario shown to be severely underperforming. The study analyzed housing starts from 1 July 2018 to 30 June 2024, offering crucial insights into the ongoing housing crisis through the relatively large and extremely relevant dataset.
While the report looked at cities across Canada, showing smaller cities as frontrunners in housing development, the data revealed certain key things for Ontario. The first of these is that it shows Ontario communities lagging behind in homebuilding compared to other provinces. Windsor, Ontario for example, ranked 88th out of the 100 cities studied, having constructed only 15.2 homes per 100 people over the entire six year period. Further, despite being the most populous province and home to the largest city, Ontario ranked 8th nationally with just 28.6 units per 100 persons.
This underperformance suggests various systemic issues in Ontario’s approach to housing development and urban planning. Additionally, the severe underperformance of the province could add to the province’s ongoing housing crisis and may necessitate a comprehensive review of provincial housing policies which could include reassessing zoning laws, streamlining approval processes and reconsidering development charges.
However, while looking at this data alone seems to show a problem, the reality is that this data is not a cause for concern anymore. Toronto’s condo market is experiencing a significant downturn with a decrease in sales and an oversupply on units driven by high borrowing costs (which will most likely not go away very soon), a growing surplus in inventory, evolving investor sentiment and the broader implications of current policies. Further, overall in Canada there is a surge in housing starts, with data from October 2024 showing an 8% uptick (which was outside the purview of this study). Further, new policies have been introduced to empower homeowners to create secondary suites, which is a unique way of addressing the housing issue that the study failed to take into account.
Taking all of this into account, the study by the PLACE Centre shows severe shortcomings, and so while the data itself seems to show that there might be an issue with Ontario falling behind in meeting housing needs, Ontario might actually just be doing fine.
The real estate marketplace is really competitive and always continuously evolving. Thus, the decision to buy or sell real estate should always take into careful consideration all such factors. In this vein, it is crucial to carefully evaluate your financial situation, long-term goals and local market conditions before making a decision.
As a real estate professional with over 20+ years of experience in the industry, I have first-hand witnessed the housing affordability crisis and worked with both buyers and sellers in this market in my every-day practice. If you need expert guidance for your buying and selling needs, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.
SP Singh Ahluwalia 