Photo: City of Toronto
In a week when new data confirmed Toronto home values fell 7% over the past year, the City quietly did the one thing almost everyone agrees is the way out: it made building homes easier. On Friday, Toronto unveiled free pre-approved designs for modern fourplexes and sixplexes, ready to download and take to the permit counter.
The new plans, created by an architectural firm chosen through a competitive process, are designed for both wide and narrow lots and come loaded with the details Toronto's neighbourhoods care about: accessibility, climate resilience, bike parking, waste storage, even sustainable features. They meet the Ontario Building Code, build on the city's existing pre-approved laneway and garden suite program, and — here's the part that actually matters — they slot into the multiplex zoning the city has already expanded. Fourplexes are now permitted citywide, and a qualifying project can go straight to a building permit application without a trip to the Committee of Adjustment. Owners still need to hire a qualified design professional to handle site-specific drawings, but the head start is real. (City of Toronto)
What's striking is the timing. Just a day earlier, the Toronto Region Board of Trade declared Ontario's 1.5-million-homes-by-2031 target effectively unachievable and called for exactly this kind of thing: baseline housing types like multiplexes that can proceed without special approval, and an end to the patchwork of building rules that makes standardizing construction so expensive. City Hall, it turns out, was already building it. The initiative also complements the CMHC's national Housing Design Catalogue, so this isn't a one-off — it's a slow, deliberate shift toward making the missing middle something an ordinary homeowner can actually build.
And the city needs it, because the numbers on the existing housing stock keep getting uglier. The latest RPS-Wahi House Price Index, covering August, shows national home values down 3% year over year — and Toronto and Hamilton leading the retreat at minus 7% each, the steepest declines of any major market in the country. Multi-family housing took the worst of it: row and townhouse values dropped 7% nationally and condo prices fell 6%, while detached and semis slid a more contained 3%. The condo segment has been the GTA's persistent headache all year, with oversupply and softening rental demand weighing on investor-held units, and the August numbers show the correction is now spreading well beyond southern Ontario and B.C. into Alberta and beyond.
"Economic uncertainty helped stall the Canadian housing market's recovery this summer, but not all markets are affected equally. Some property types continue to prove more resilient than others as well."
— Ryan McLaughlin, economist, RPS and Wahi
That line about property types is doing a lot of work. Detached homes holding at minus 3% while condos sink twice as fast tells you where the overhang really lives, and one mortgage industry voice isn't mincing words about when it ends. Dan Eisner, founder and CEO of True North Mortgage, told Canadian Mortgage Professional earlier this year that he saw no near-term resolution to the glut: "I don't see a bottom yet." (Rory C Real Estate, via Canadian Mortgage Professional)
Put the two threads together and the picture is almost poetic: the part of the market that's drowning — investor-held condos nobody wants — and the part of the market the city is betting on — small multiplexes a homeowner can build with free plans. Nobody thinks a fourplex blueprint fixes a 7% slide overnight, and even the Board of Trade concedes that zoning reform takes years to turn into actual homes. But direction matters. For buyers, the message from the data hasn't changed: condos are a negotiator's market and likely to stay that way for a while. For sellers sitting on a condo, the clock Eisner is watching is the one to respect. And for anyone who's ever looked at their lot and wondered if it could hold more than one front door, the City of Toronto just handed you the drawings. The plans are live at toronto.ca/PreApprovedPlans, and the next thing to watch is the Bank of Canada's October 28 decision, which will say a lot about whether this fall brings any relief on the financing side.
That's the market as it stands — we'll be back tomorrow evening with the next round of headlines.
Compiled by the HomesFound team from the reporting linked above.
