OREA’S Plan to Bring Affordability Home

Since Confederation, home ownership has been a cornerstone of a prosperous Ontario – creating stable communities, supporting families, and creating economic activity. 

But Ontario has reached a breaking point when it comes to housing affordability. With recent increases in prices, driven by pandemic escalated demand for more space and restrictive rules and regulations, supply continues to lag well behind demand. As recently as 2009, the average price of a detached home in Toronto was under $500,000. In just over a decade that number has increased to more than $1.75 million.

In fact, the GTA features only 360 homes per 1,000 people – lower than the Canadian and G7 average. Recent studies show that Ontario will need 79,300 homes each year between 2021 and 2031 in the GTHA alone to keep up with demand. Given undeveloped land is hard to find in these areas, that means adding density.

Ontario REALTORS® have a plan to restore the dream of homeownership through the implementation of innovative policies that will increase new housing supply and mitigate some of the current challenges for Ontarians looking to enter the market.

OREA RECOMMENDATIONS: 

Lower Costs for First-Time Home Buyers

• Increase the first-time home buyer’s land transfer tax (LTT) rebate from $4,000 to $8,000.

Introduce the Save the Canadian Dream Act, 2021

• Bring forward a new housing supply-related bill – the Save the Canadian Dream Act, 2021 that would build on the successful Housing Supply Action Plan and More Homes, More Choice legislation that would target the following areas:

End Exclusionary Single-Family Zoning

• Create more housing choice through minimum zoning requirements in Ontario’s largest urban neighbourhoods to allow for the development of gentle density including duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes without unnecessary case-by-case approvals.
• Create a municipal challenge fund to support timely zoning updates and reduce zoning approval times in suburban and rural Ontario.

Efficiency Improvements

• Promote more efficient housing development by making existing surplus government land and underused commercial properties available for development. 
• Create a taskforce to review current building and development approval processes to see where duplicative efforts can be eliminated.  
• Reduce development charges for infill projects and develop a program to incentivize the re-development of brownfield sites.
• Reduce the minimum parking requirements imposed by municipalities.
• Create a building innovation fund to encourage innovation in construction and design and lower the overall cost to build homes.
• Improve housing data collection and transmission to better meet the future housing needs of Ontarians.
• Adjust the methods used by municipalities to account for past housing needs when planning for future growth to reduce issues related to undersupply in forecasting.

Consistent Standards, Definitions and Allowable Builds

• Allow second front doors as-of-right across Ontario to encourage more Ontarians to create secondary suites in their homes.
• Create a common definition of plan of subdivision to create consistency in development in suburban and rural Ontario.
• Create a consistent definition of significant woodland areas for planning purposes, especially in rural Ontario.
• Streamline the process surrounding the building and driveway permit approvals process.
• Give the Minister the power to make decisions surrounding development in heritage conservation districts to ensure that this tool is not used as a wholesale block of needed development.

Permit Innovative Housing Solutions

• Create an Ontario-made shared-equity or Rent-to-Own model as an alternative to traditional homeownership by reducing legislative barriers to this form of housing.

Get Dirty Money out of Real Estate

• Stop money laundering in the real estate market by creating a provincial publicly searchable Beneficial Ownership Registry to ensure that criminals who are laundering money through real estate can no longer remain anonymous.