In addition to the recently proposed HST rebate for new homes, the federal government and the province of Ontario announced that they will be providing funding to help municipalities reduce their development charges by up to 50% over the next three years. And according to some estimates, these two measures will temporarily cut the cost of building a new home in Ontario by something in the range of 15-20%.
From what I have seen, most, if not all, of these savings are now going to the consumer. As Mike Moffatt points out in this recent Globe and Mail article, developers are passing them along because of competition, because they need to compete with lower-priced resale homes, and because, frankly, it's the only way to try and unstick this market.
What is not so clear, though, is whether this is enough. Moffatt argues that "now that new homes can be sold at prices that make them viable to build, more homes will be built, adding further downward pressure on resale prices." This is certainly one of the policy goals — to get more developers building again. But I don't think we're there quite yet. I guess we'll find out soon enough.
Cover photo by Jaipreet Singh on Unsplash
Miami is a popular place these days for a whole host of reasons, namely that it's sunny and warm, it doesn't have state income taxes, and the broader market doesn't seem to think that climate risk will pose an insurmountable challenge in the foreseeable future.
But beneath the surface, there are shifts taking place. HOA fees and insurance premiums are rising (some people have a different view of climate risk), and the city is becoming increasingly unaffordable for the middle class.
Between July 2024 and July 2025, Miami-Dade County lost an estimated 10,115 residents. This was the third-largest absolute population drop of all US counties last year, though it should be noted that this can be largely explained by changing immigration policies and a meaningful decrease in international migration.
There are still plenty of people moving to the city; they just tend to skew richer. According to data from 2023, the average inbound salary was $178,000, and the average outbound salary was $89,000. The net result (via the Miami Herald):
Higher earners are moving here, lower-wage workers are leaving and the population as a whole has started to shrink. That's not good for a community's long-term economic health.
Wealth is a good thing. But is it now too much of a good thing? At the very least, it demonstrates the fragility of finding the elusive equilibrium between being a successful city and remaining affordable and accessible to the middle class.
To paraphrase Jane Jacobs, "The more successful a city is, the more it is under pressure to be something else."
It is very common for jurisdictions to mandate the use of a licensed architect when building homes and buildings above a certain size. This is true in Ontario, and it's true in places like France, though the thresholds can vary widely and change over time. Currently, the threshold is 150 m2 in France. Okay, so what? Well, it turns out this simple rule has second-order consequences, as they often do.
Here's a fascinating research paper by Antoine Levy titled Regulating Housing Quality: Evidence from France. One of the things he looks at is the distribution of floor area in new housing units over time, from before there was an architect requirement threshold (ART), to the moments where this threshold was gradually lowered:
In addition to the recently proposed HST rebate for new homes, the federal government and the province of Ontario announced that they will be providing funding to help municipalities reduce their development charges by up to 50% over the next three years. And according to some estimates, these two measures will temporarily cut the cost of building a new home in Ontario by something in the range of 15-20%.
From what I have seen, most, if not all, of these savings are now going to the consumer. As Mike Moffatt points out in this recent Globe and Mail article, developers are passing them along because of competition, because they need to compete with lower-priced resale homes, and because, frankly, it's the only way to try and unstick this market.
What is not so clear, though, is whether this is enough. Moffatt argues that "now that new homes can be sold at prices that make them viable to build, more homes will be built, adding further downward pressure on resale prices." This is certainly one of the policy goals — to get more developers building again. But I don't think we're there quite yet. I guess we'll find out soon enough.
Cover photo by Jaipreet Singh on Unsplash
Miami is a popular place these days for a whole host of reasons, namely that it's sunny and warm, it doesn't have state income taxes, and the broader market doesn't seem to think that climate risk will pose an insurmountable challenge in the foreseeable future.
But beneath the surface, there are shifts taking place. HOA fees and insurance premiums are rising (some people have a different view of climate risk), and the city is becoming increasingly unaffordable for the middle class.
Between July 2024 and July 2025, Miami-Dade County lost an estimated 10,115 residents. This was the third-largest absolute population drop of all US counties last year, though it should be noted that this can be largely explained by changing immigration policies and a meaningful decrease in international migration.
There are still plenty of people moving to the city; they just tend to skew richer. According to data from 2023, the average inbound salary was $178,000, and the average outbound salary was $89,000. The net result (via the Miami Herald):
Higher earners are moving here, lower-wage workers are leaving and the population as a whole has started to shrink. That's not good for a community's long-term economic health.
Wealth is a good thing. But is it now too much of a good thing? At the very least, it demonstrates the fragility of finding the elusive equilibrium between being a successful city and remaining affordable and accessible to the middle class.
To paraphrase Jane Jacobs, "The more successful a city is, the more it is under pressure to be something else."
It is very common for jurisdictions to mandate the use of a licensed architect when building homes and buildings above a certain size. This is true in Ontario, and it's true in places like France, though the thresholds can vary widely and change over time. Currently, the threshold is 150 m2 in France. Okay, so what? Well, it turns out this simple rule has second-order consequences, as they often do.
Here's a fascinating research paper by Antoine Levy titled Regulating Housing Quality: Evidence from France. One of the things he looks at is the distribution of floor area in new housing units over time, from before there was an architect requirement threshold (ART), to the moments where this threshold was gradually lowered:
Prior to there being a threshold (1976), the chart shows a positive skew, but with a clustering of homes somewhere around 100 m2. Importantly, the distribution shows a smooth progression. But once an ART is implemented, the distribution then starts to show a clear spike right before the threshold, followed by a cliff and a "missing mass."
This, of course, makes sense. The market is pushing up against the glass to avoid having to use and pay for an architect. And the "missing mass" is the market shifting supply to below the threshold, or sufficiently beyond it. I mean, if you're going to surpass the threshold, you may as well do it confidently.
Now here's where things start to get more interesting. Levy finds that this threshold acts as a focal point that segments the market. Households above the threshold tend to have higher incomes, and homes just past the limit were on average 8-10% more expensive to build. This additional cost cannot be justified by the addition of the architect's fee alone.
On the other side of the threshold, the concentration of demand "up against the glass" was shown to create economies of scale through more standardized home design and production. In other words, the threshold incentivizes the market to get really good at designing and building a certain scale of home.
It was also shown to unintentionally promote greater housing density, because what the threshold does is create a soft cap on housing consumption for a large segment of the market. As you can see in the bottom right chart above, it effectively pulls supply back and under the threshold, away from larger homes and larger lots.
It may seem fairly innocuous to mandate that people use an architect above a certain scale, and I will forever be a proponent of great design, but as Thomas Sowell once said, "there are no solutions, only trade-offs."
Cover photo by Alex Tyson on Unsplash
Prior to there being a threshold (1976), the chart shows a positive skew, but with a clustering of homes somewhere around 100 m2. Importantly, the distribution shows a smooth progression. But once an ART is implemented, the distribution then starts to show a clear spike right before the threshold, followed by a cliff and a "missing mass."
This, of course, makes sense. The market is pushing up against the glass to avoid having to use and pay for an architect. And the "missing mass" is the market shifting supply to below the threshold, or sufficiently beyond it. I mean, if you're going to surpass the threshold, you may as well do it confidently.
Now here's where things start to get more interesting. Levy finds that this threshold acts as a focal point that segments the market. Households above the threshold tend to have higher incomes, and homes just past the limit were on average 8-10% more expensive to build. This additional cost cannot be justified by the addition of the architect's fee alone.
On the other side of the threshold, the concentration of demand "up against the glass" was shown to create economies of scale through more standardized home design and production. In other words, the threshold incentivizes the market to get really good at designing and building a certain scale of home.
It was also shown to unintentionally promote greater housing density, because what the threshold does is create a soft cap on housing consumption for a large segment of the market. As you can see in the bottom right chart above, it effectively pulls supply back and under the threshold, away from larger homes and larger lots.
It may seem fairly innocuous to mandate that people use an architect above a certain scale, and I will forever be a proponent of great design, but as Thomas Sowell once said, "there are no solutions, only trade-offs."
Cover photo by Alex Tyson on Unsplash
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