Back in 2017, Portland, Oregon enacted new inclusionary zoning policies mandating that all new residential projects with 20 or more units must deliver a specified amount of affordable housing. Early accounts, by people like Joe Cortright of City Observatory, suggested that the market was reacting to this new requirement as you might expect. Developers rushed to get new applications onto the books and then there was a drop off in new housing supply.
Now that it's been a couple more years, it is perhaps worth checking in on Portland. Cortright did that in the fall of last year and the housing numbers are continuing to fall. From 2019 to 2020, new multi-unit housing permits in Portland fell by more than 60%. I really don't know the Portland market and so it's hard for me to comment on whether it is solely the fault of IZ, but there was a peak in 2017 and now housing permits are down significantly. However, they were also down significantly during the financial crisis. It'll of course be interesting to see how this plays out over a longer time horizon.
Back in 2017, Portland, Oregon enacted new inclusionary zoning policies mandating that all new residential projects with 20 or more units must deliver a specified amount of affordable housing. Early accounts, by people like Joe Cortright of City Observatory, suggested that the market was reacting to this new requirement as you might expect. Developers rushed to get new applications onto the books and then there was a drop off in new housing supply.
Now that it's been a couple more years, it is perhaps worth checking in on Portland. Cortright did that in the fall of last year and the housing numbers are continuing to fall. From 2019 to 2020, new multi-unit housing permits in Portland fell by more than 60%. I really don't know the Portland market and so it's hard for me to comment on whether it is solely the fault of IZ, but there was a peak in 2017 and now housing permits are down significantly. However, they were also down significantly during the financial crisis. It'll of course be interesting to see how this plays out over a longer time horizon.
That said, a similar market response was recently
reported
in another Portland -- Portland, Maine. In 2020, the city implemented a "Green New Deal" that stipulated, among other things, that all new residential developments with 10+ units would be subject to their new IZ policies. It has only been just over a year, but according to the city's planning department, there were 756 new housing units on the books in 2020 prior to the new IZ policies. And since then, that figure has dropped to 139 new housing units. This is admittedly a small market and a relatively short time horizon, but it is still a data point.
As many of you know, I struggle with inclusionary zoning. Maybe it's confirmation bias, but I just haven't been able to find much data suggesting that it can meaningfully increase overall housing supply and the supply of new affordable units. So if any of you are aware of some good case studies outlining successful examples, please share them in the comment section below.
So 2021 was a pretty good year for condominiums here in the Greater Toronto Area. According to the latest data (Q4-2021) from Urbanation, this is what happened last year:
30,844 new condominium sales. This is a 69% increase compared to 2020, which saw 18,282 new unit sales.
Fourth quarter alone saw 8,361 unit sales, which is the best quarter on record according to Urbanation.
Unsold inventory dropped 26% year-over-year because sales exceeded the number of new project launches by over 4,000 units.
Average price for an unsold condominium unit in Q4-2021 reached $1,322 psf, which is an 18% increase compared to the year before.
Resale condominiums also did exceptionally well with 29,880 unit sales -- a 49% annual increase.
All in all, some 60,000 condominium units were purchased last year in the GTA. Of course, some were ready to be lived in and some were future homes.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) recently published its latest data on housing starts, housing under construction, and housing completions. Here are a few of the highlights:
Canada saw 271k housing starts last year (2021). This includes single-detached housing and multiples, which captures semi-detached housing, row housing, and apartments (and other unit types). This is the highest number of annual housing starts that we have seen over the last five years. The range for the prior years has been between roughly 209-220k.
Ontario saw 100k (~37% of the country), Quebec saw 68k (~25% of the country), and British Columbia saw 48k (~18% of the country).
What I was curious about when I first saw these numbers was the split across the various housing types. Single-family homes, for instance, came in at 82k for all of Canada. So that's about 30% of total housing starts. If you add in semi-detached and row, which I believe would also be all grade-related, you get to 124k or 46% of all housing starts.
Apartments and other unit types make up the balance at about 147k or 54% of all housing starts. This is kind of interesting because they now represent a majority.
Looking at Ontario, the percentage of apartments actually drops to 50%. But the numbers are much higher in both Quebec and BC at 69% and 63%, respectively. Again, this is kind of interesting.
Despite all of our deference to single-family housing, the numbers suggest that we are actually in the midst of building a different kind of country -- one that entails people living in "apartments and other unit types." Maybe it's time we got more granular with this line item.
Note: CMHC defines "apartment and other unit types" to include not just apartments, but also stacked towns, duplexes, triplexes, double duplexes (whatever this is), and row duplexes. A number of these will, of course, be grade-related. But they still represent more intense forms of land use.
reported
in another Portland -- Portland, Maine. In 2020, the city implemented a "Green New Deal" that stipulated, among other things, that all new residential developments with 10+ units would be subject to their new IZ policies. It has only been just over a year, but according to the city's planning department, there were 756 new housing units on the books in 2020 prior to the new IZ policies. And since then, that figure has dropped to 139 new housing units. This is admittedly a small market and a relatively short time horizon, but it is still a data point.
As many of you know, I struggle with inclusionary zoning. Maybe it's confirmation bias, but I just haven't been able to find much data suggesting that it can meaningfully increase overall housing supply and the supply of new affordable units. So if any of you are aware of some good case studies outlining successful examples, please share them in the comment section below.
So 2021 was a pretty good year for condominiums here in the Greater Toronto Area. According to the latest data (Q4-2021) from Urbanation, this is what happened last year:
30,844 new condominium sales. This is a 69% increase compared to 2020, which saw 18,282 new unit sales.
Fourth quarter alone saw 8,361 unit sales, which is the best quarter on record according to Urbanation.
Unsold inventory dropped 26% year-over-year because sales exceeded the number of new project launches by over 4,000 units.
Average price for an unsold condominium unit in Q4-2021 reached $1,322 psf, which is an 18% increase compared to the year before.
Resale condominiums also did exceptionally well with 29,880 unit sales -- a 49% annual increase.
All in all, some 60,000 condominium units were purchased last year in the GTA. Of course, some were ready to be lived in and some were future homes.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) recently published its latest data on housing starts, housing under construction, and housing completions. Here are a few of the highlights:
Canada saw 271k housing starts last year (2021). This includes single-detached housing and multiples, which captures semi-detached housing, row housing, and apartments (and other unit types). This is the highest number of annual housing starts that we have seen over the last five years. The range for the prior years has been between roughly 209-220k.
Ontario saw 100k (~37% of the country), Quebec saw 68k (~25% of the country), and British Columbia saw 48k (~18% of the country).
What I was curious about when I first saw these numbers was the split across the various housing types. Single-family homes, for instance, came in at 82k for all of Canada. So that's about 30% of total housing starts. If you add in semi-detached and row, which I believe would also be all grade-related, you get to 124k or 46% of all housing starts.
Apartments and other unit types make up the balance at about 147k or 54% of all housing starts. This is kind of interesting because they now represent a majority.
Looking at Ontario, the percentage of apartments actually drops to 50%. But the numbers are much higher in both Quebec and BC at 69% and 63%, respectively. Again, this is kind of interesting.
Despite all of our deference to single-family housing, the numbers suggest that we are actually in the midst of building a different kind of country -- one that entails people living in "apartments and other unit types." Maybe it's time we got more granular with this line item.
Note: CMHC defines "apartment and other unit types" to include not just apartments, but also stacked towns, duplexes, triplexes, double duplexes (whatever this is), and row duplexes. A number of these will, of course, be grade-related. But they still represent more intense forms of land use.
