Buyers' Market

Yesterday afternoon, over a dozen real estate and development experts were featured at the Residential Construction Council of Ontario's (RESCON) fifth annual Housing Summit, and talked candidly about the housing crisis and how to get residential construction back on track. This year's summit was aptly named "Embracing Transformation — Building Homes Faster" and was sponsored by LiUNA Local 183, Enbridge, Federation of Rental-housing Providers of Ontario, Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TTREB), and EBS Global.

Leading a wide array of discussions included big names like Ontario Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Rob Flack, TRREB's Chief Information Officer Jason Mercer, and they tackled everything from automation and robotics in construction to policy changes needed to support more rental housing development.

At Insolvency Insider's Distressed Real Estate Conference held this summer, panellists across the board agreed that the Canadian real estate landscape over the next two to three years will continue to be fraught with receiverships, CCAAs, and general distress. At the time, President of ELM Developments Elliot Steiner’s contribution to the conversation was that the focus should be on the ‘what comes next’ of it all. “The market is what it is,” he postulated.

Steiner spoke to attendees about ELM’s work on the Elevate Condos in Kitchener, a four-tower project that was placed under receivership in October 2023. ELM — through its construction arm ELM Forward, which is dedicated to third-party projects — was brought on to stabilize the project, but ended up teaming up with Genesis Mortgage Investment Corporation — the junior lender — and Dorr Capital Corporation to submit a bid, and the transaction was approved by the Ontario courts in October 2024.

It’s no secret that the real estate industry has been historically slow to change with the times. But, with today’s evolving end-user expectations, change is inevitable. This is even more true when it comes to the modern tenant experience – especially in our current purpose-built rental boom.

But on the flip side, there’s still something significant to be said about good old-fashioned customer service (and real human connection).

It may have been a steamy summer at times, but the Greater Toronto Area’s new condo market was anything but, and isn’t showing signs of warming up any time soon. In fact, Tuesday brought a new report from RBC Economist Robert Hogue describing “a deep freeze with pre-construction sales plummeting to levels not seen since the global financial crisis.” Hogue also spoke to a “long road to recovery” that will only come with an improvement in the economy and a sharp drop in supply.

With the region’s condo sector indefinitely stalled, there’s been increasing chatter around pivoting those projects to rental, and many developers have already taken the plunge. According to data provided to STOREYS by real estate analytics firm Urbanation, nine GTA projects that had been actively selling as condo have been converted to rental since the beginning of 2024. That translates to 1,778 individual units.