Bylaw Variance

Builders in the Greater Toronto Area sold 820 new low-rise homes in September, 17% above the 10-year average for the month. It’s the sixth month in a row low-rise sales have cleared that bar, which covers every month since the HST rebate program launched.

High-rise went the other way. Just 129 new high-rise units sold in September, according to new figures from the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) and Altus Group, BILD’s official source for new home market data. That’s the lowest September on record for the segment, down 40% from September 2025 and 90% below the 10-year average. (BILD’s high-rise category includes units in low-, medium- and high-rise buildings, plus stacked townhouses.)

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) counted 143,929 homes in September that have approved building permits and no construction started.

That count, reported alongside CMHC’s figures for centres of 50,000 or more, rose 1.1% from August.

On October 13, the Urban Development Institute (UDI), BC Non-Profit Housing Association (BCNPHA), Aboriginal Housing Management Association (AHMA), and Co-operative Housing Federation of BC (CHFBC) — the latter three of which are together known as Housing Central — published a joint news release “calling on every party in the provincial election to commit to bringing down the cost of building homes” as Election Day nears.

UDI is the group that lobbies on behalf of private developers while the Housing Central partners represent the non-profits, Indigenous housing providers, and co-ops in the community housing sector.