This week, Urban Toronto reported a record number of residential development applications submitted in the City of Toronto over the last quarter. A total of 25,598 residential homes were proposed across 12 condominium projects, 16 rental projects, and two projects that also include an office component.

The total area was around 20 million square feet. The total number of buildings was 66. The median height was somewhere around 23 storeys (~86 meters), with the tallest being 67 storeys. And the average parking ratio was around 0.3 spaces per home. (The below chart seems to suggest that parking minimums were previously constraining the market.)

This is, according to UT, the highest number of proposed new homes in a single quarter over the last five years:

So, should this be taken as some sort of leading indicator that the market is set to rebound? My view is no. It certainly shows some degree of optimism for the future of our market, but there are lots of reasons why a developer might submit a development application in a down market.

Developers could be seeking more density as a way to reduce their land basis. If you bought a site for $25 million and you have approval to build 250,000 sf, your land basis is $100 per buildable square foot. If you can now build 350,000 sf, you've just reduced your land basis to $71 pbsf. That effectively means it's cheaper, which is good; but importantly, it now means have more space to absorb. So there's a trade off.

Another reason could be that developers are reworking their sites for purpose-built rental (from for-sale condominiums). The figures provided by Urban Toronto show that the majority of the applications were for rental projects. I suspect that this could be a big driver. Converting a project from condominium to rental isn't as simple as just flipping the legal tenure.

Lastly, I will say that developers could be pulling the trigger on new development applications simply because they need or want to do something. We all have sites, and we're programmed to move and get stuff done. Sitting around doesn't accomplish anything and it frankly doesn't feel good. Question now becomes: who will be in a position to be patient once they get their approvals?

It's hard to pinpoint exactly what drove this surge, but it should not be assumed that it will translate into more new housing in the short term. The real indicator is market absorption. Without it, development density has very little value.

Cover photo by Bennie Bates on Unsplash

This morning I toured 1151 Queen East (here in Toronto). It is a new 47-suite apartment building that is being developed by Hullmark and that was designed by Superkül (the same architects as Junction House). It's not quite finished yet, but it is looking terrific. The interiors feel, to me, like Berlin meets classic Miami Beach (if you can picture whatever this means). So a big congrats to the entire team. I'm sure it will be well-loved once people start moving in this year.

At the same time, it's hard not to see small and beautiful infill projects like this and wonder, "why do we make it so difficult to build this kind of new housing? This is a 6-storey rental building that, according to Urban Toronto, was first proposed in 2018. It then had to go through the typical rezoning process, which, in this case, seems to have taken two years. Now we're in 2024. Uh, why?

We should be looking at this kind of infill housing and saying, "Yes! You should go ahead and build this right now. Let us help you with that." Instead, we erect barriers, which only force developers toward ever larger projects. If you're going to spend two years in rezoning, no matter the scale of the development, why not build 470 homes instead of 47? And this has only been exacerbated with higher interest rates, because now time costs you that much more.

I say all of this because this is an objectively great infill project. Our city would be a better place with a lot more of these.

The winners of this year's Architizer A+ Awards are out.

Now in its 11th year, the A+ Awards are intended to "honor the world's best architecture and spaces." And supposedly, it is also the world's largest (119 categories) and most democratic architectural awards program. I don't know, I read that here.

I went through the list of winners this evening (okay, I skimmed this Urban Toronto article), and I'm now excited to report that 13 Canadian projects/firms won an award -- either a Jury Award, a Popular Choice Award, or a Special Mention.

I'm also excited to announce that one of the winners is our One Delisle project. It is the Jury Winner for best unbuilt multi-unit housing project (over 10 floors). Awesome!

If you'd like to see the full list of winners, click here.