Big Changes Coming To Ontario!

There’s no date set for the approval of the proposed More Homes Built Faster Act, 2022, that is in second reading. But when it is approved it is going to change so much about the housing market in Ontario.

Believe it or not but the biggest changes are going to benefit most homeowners in Ontario. The key to the strategy is something that I’ve written about previously, which is the secondary suite policy that was passed in Haldimand last year. This policy is the ability to create a free-standing rental property on the existing space of your larger residential lots. The initiative creates density in existing residential zones. On top of that this new home does not require Development Charges, or Parkland Fees, which greatly reduces the initial investment required to build. Included in the proposal is the removal of all zoning restrictions that limits the creation of duplexes and higher-density residential buildings. So it doesn’t matter if passed as proposed there will be a building frenzy of creating a large number of rentals to maximize rental income for the owners, and the net benefit is that renters will have more options to pick from.

Parking

One of the biggest issues in cities is always parking, developments and residential growth is almost always limited by the number of parking spots. As developments build up, parking goes out. Unless the development is large enough to accommodate the cost of a raised parking lot. So to ameliorate this the new policy is proposing that the new province wide minimum for parking be lowered to one parking space per unit. Down from the current minimum of 2 spots per unit. This decrease alone will ensure that hundreds of developments that are held up because of parking will be approved.

Conclusion

If all these changes that are proposed do go through, in the next year it will be a scramble for people to find properties that can support multiple units. If you want to be ahead of the curve please reach out to us by clicking here. We can help do the research to determine if your properties will be eligible for multiple secondary suites. See proposed policy here.