SiteSummit 2026 — presented by SiteNews and EllisDon — leaned into its "Summer School" theme, packing its Toronto program with sessions on everything from AI adoption to modular construction.
Among them, three sessions dug into housing from very different angles: a market update, a materials-focused deep dive on mass timber, and a policy panel on what it'll actually take to make things move. Between them, a market analyst, a real estate broker, a trio of architects and engineers, and a panel of housing executives laid out where the correction stands, where the industry is looking for new tools, and where the policy conversation is getting stuck.
Resale is stabilizing, but new construction is still in freefall
During Housing 101: State Of The Housing Market, Urbanation's Shaun Hildebrand laid out just how deep the GTA condo correction has run — with new launches nearly stopped, standing inventory in the thousands, and default rates climbing toward 15–20% in 2026 — but pointed to early stabilization on the resale side specifically: listings pulling back, downtown months of supply tightening, and HST removal narrowing the new-versus-resale price gap.
Daniel Foch of Valery.ca zoomed out nationally, noting this correction rivals anything on record since the 1960s, with Ontario and BC diverging sharply from provinces like Alberta, where rental construction and migration are still driving growth. His read on the path forward: prices have already done most of the correcting, and it's wages that need to catch up next.
Mass timber is having a moment, but the economics are still catching up
Structural engineer David Moses and architect Chris McQuillan joined moderator Joseph Ogilvie for Mass Timber 101: Mass Timber's Killer Applications, to talk through why timber is gaining ground on concrete and steel — sustainability, labour shortages, and volatile steel supply chains among the drivers — with healthcare emerging as an unexpected growth area. The sticking points: moisture management and a financing model that still doesn't favour developers who have to pay upfront. The panelists agreed the bigger opportunity may be cultural — timber's ties to digital design and sustainability could be exactly what pulls the next generation of talent into construction.
Policy is the real bottleneck
RESCON's Richard Lyall, WoodGreen's Mwarigha, and the City of Toronto's Hugh Clark debated at Housing 201: Housing For Life: Moving Beyond Investor Units, whether Build Canada Homes amounts to real change or just tinkering at the margins. The consensus, more or less: development charges, fragmented approvals, and decades of underinvestment in rental housing are the deeper problems — and no single federal program is going to fix that on its own. Even the federal government's recent intervention in a stalled Vancouver project split the room, read by panelists as ranging from a necessary reset to little more than a symbolic gesture.
That's three sessions, three distinct topics, and three versions of proof that the housing conversation in this country is far from settled. Class dismissed — for now. And because a picture's worth a thousand words, check out the SiteSummit 2026 gallery below:
SiteSummit 2026
Images: SitePartners
