* In the first five months of 2025, housing starts are down 58% in the City of Toronto and 29% in the rest of the GTA compared to 2024.
* This decline is part of a trend, as the number of starts fell by 10% in the City of Toronto, 22% in the rest of the GTA, and 26% in Ontario’s metropolitan areas outside the GTA between 2022 and 2024.
* New home sales paint an even more bleak picture, with the sale of new single-family homes in the GTA down 73% from ten-year averages and new condo sales down 90%.
* An Altus Group report presents a scenario analysis that assumes further trends will continue. In that scenario, new single-family home sales in the GTA could decline from 10,000 to 3,000 units per year, and new condo apartment sales could decrease from 22,000 to 2,000 units per year. Under such a scenario, 41,000 jobs would be lost in the GTA.
* The unemployment rate in the GTA is already at 9.7% (up from 8.3% a year ago), and Ontario has shed nearly 12,000 construction jobs over the last 12 months.
* A rough back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that under the Altus scenario, the combined fiscal impact on all three levels of government, through reduced tax revenue, would be approximately $6.5 billion per year.
* While governments consider the fiscal cost of housing policy actions, such as revising HST New Housing Rebates, they should also consider the fiscal cost of inaction.
ping Can&YIMBY
WifeGuy-Menelaus on
A lot of hot air from City Hall, QP, and Ottawa would make a casual observer think we’re turning a corner but they’re all still largely asleep at the wheel, once you look into the details
The Mayor is a fair-weather friend more concerned with social housing she doesnt build, Council is intractable NIMBY as always, Ford and Co. only really care about one very particular kind of housing as a graft opportunity and is otherwise a strong ideological NIMBY himself, and the Feds are clinging to the perennial establishment obsession of never harm housing prices but also achieve affordability
2 Comments
* In the first five months of 2025, housing starts are down 58% in the City of Toronto and 29% in the rest of the GTA compared to 2024.
* This decline is part of a trend, as the number of starts fell by 10% in the City of Toronto, 22% in the rest of the GTA, and 26% in Ontario’s metropolitan areas outside the GTA between 2022 and 2024.
* New home sales paint an even more bleak picture, with the sale of new single-family homes in the GTA down 73% from ten-year averages and new condo sales down 90%.
* An Altus Group report presents a scenario analysis that assumes further trends will continue. In that scenario, new single-family home sales in the GTA could decline from 10,000 to 3,000 units per year, and new condo apartment sales could decrease from 22,000 to 2,000 units per year. Under such a scenario, 41,000 jobs would be lost in the GTA.
* The unemployment rate in the GTA is already at 9.7% (up from 8.3% a year ago), and Ontario has shed nearly 12,000 construction jobs over the last 12 months.
* A rough back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that under the Altus scenario, the combined fiscal impact on all three levels of government, through reduced tax revenue, would be approximately $6.5 billion per year.
* While governments consider the fiscal cost of housing policy actions, such as revising HST New Housing Rebates, they should also consider the fiscal cost of inaction.
ping Can&YIMBY
A lot of hot air from City Hall, QP, and Ottawa would make a casual observer think we’re turning a corner but they’re all still largely asleep at the wheel, once you look into the details
The Mayor is a fair-weather friend more concerned with social housing she doesnt build, Council is intractable NIMBY as always, Ford and Co. only really care about one very particular kind of housing as a graft opportunity and is otherwise a strong ideological NIMBY himself, and the Feds are clinging to the perennial establishment obsession of never harm housing prices but also achieve affordability