A new report from the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) reveals many key municipalities surrounding the Greater Toronto Area have made at least some improvements in approval wait times for residential development projects.

But David Wilkes, BILD’s president and CEO, told RENX that progress in one of the 15 markets examined in the Municipal Benchmarking Study — which Altus Group developed on BILD’s behalf — proves systemic hurdles in the region’s building industry aren’t so entrenched after all.

“We have seen progress, (namely) the City of Vaughan pass a motion for staff to look into reducing development charges,” Wilkes told RENX following a roundtable BILD hosted yesterday, which was attended by industry stakeholders and media.

“We have seen the City of Toronto (down to 25 months in 2024 from 32 months in 2022) looking at ways to expedite approvals. We just need more of that, and we need to see it quicker.”

The report was publicly released this morning. It updates a similar study from two years ago.

The best and worst municipal approval wait times

Of the 15 municipalities — which, after Toronto, include cities and towns in Durham, York and Peel Regions, as well as Innisfil, Clarington and Barrie in Simcoe County — the study found 10 (67 per cent) improved approval timelines; three (20 per cent) showed no change; and two (13 per cent) worsened. 

The collective average for approval times in 2024 was 20 months.

The most significant improvement in permitting times for development projects was recorded in Vaughan, where the process has dropped to just over 18 months, an improvement of eight months. Barrie remains the city with the fastest approvals, averaging 11.2 months in 2024, an improvement of over two months from 2022.

The cities with the slowest approvals include Richmond Hill at 33.6 months (an improvement from 35.9 months) and Caledon (which dropped from 34.4 months to 26.9 months.

Toronto also improved, dropping seven months from 32 months in 2022 to 25 months in 2024. Mississauga declined from 27.4 months to 25 months.

Development cost escalation

Each month of delay in a development comes at an additional cost-per-unit of between $2,673 and $5,576, making the final cost of a home anywhere from $43,000 to $90,000 more expensive.

However, Wilkes said the report’s third edition isn’t a remonstration of the municipalities in question, rather it’s a demonstration of how materially consequential these inefficiencies are. He hopes it will galvanize municipalities to continue building on progress made since the second edition was released two years ago.

“We want to work with them on best practices, how to expedite approvals, and look at best practices that might exist in other municipalities,” Wilkes continued. “As we look at the 20-plus months it takes to get a project approved, time is money and it adds tens of thousands of dollars.

“We want to continue the conversation on how to reduce the cost to build and expedite approvals, and we have seen progress.”

According to the Municipal Benchmarking Study’s calculations, 25 per cent of a GTA home price comprises the suite of municipal levies imposed upon developers which are subsequently passed onto consumers. 

But with consumers essentially taxed twice — and in light of considerable softening in the GTA’s housing market the last couple of years — Wilkes said the impact of a superfluous tax regime on consumers cannot be understated.

“If you look at that over the course of a 25-year mortgage, about five or six years are simply paying for government fees and taxes,” Wilkes said.

Other key benchmark findings

Among the 102-page report’s major findings is the GTA’s chasm between housing stock and population growth hasn’t been this wide in over five decades.

Housing starts between 2022 and 2024 increased considerably — and, at 76,064 in Toronto, by a wide margin over the other 14 municipalities — compared to data from 2019 to 2021.

But Ontario’s population has also surged in the past few years, while housing starts only rose by 44,541 — nearly 40,000 of which occurred in the 15 municipalities examined — and the report anticipates housing affordability will further deteriorate in the immediate years ahead. 

Put another way by Jared Menkes, EVP of high-rise residential at Menkes Developments, who attended BILD’s roundtable, the GTA is on a precipice.

“We know by 2027 that 90,000 units that are under construction today will pretty much be through, but since 2022 we haven’t had great sales, which means not great starts,” he said. “Which means we’re going to have a big housing crisis.”

Government inefficiency 

Asked by RENX if development applications are redundantly scrutinized by municipal governments — as claimed by another developer during the roundtable —  Alex Beheshti, a senior consultant with Altus Group, described a highly bureaucratic milieu involving “circulation processes.”

Beheshti, who specializes in urban planning policy analysis, additionally explained how even reasonable concerns — like the way developments interact with new or existing transit stops — become subsumed by bureaucratic introspection.

“There can often be a lot of conflicts — both internal and external conflicts — and it’s often left up to the homebuilder to solve this,” he said, “and it can add, in some cases, years (onto the application process).”

In such cases, he added, municipalities will sometimes ask developers to make additional concessions. 

But even those can get lost in the fray.

“For years the city can’t get on board with what to ask of the developer. This stuff is very, very common and it’s a big, frustrating point because homebuilders want to address what the city is asking of them, but the city itself doesn’t sometimes know what it wants addressed.”

How the municipalities in the report fared, from shortest approval times (for all development types) to longest:

• Barrie: 13.1 months in 2022; 11.2 months in 2024 - Better
• Whitby: 12.6 months in 2022; 12.4 months in 2024 - Same
• Oakville: 13.9 months in 2022; 14.1 months in 2024 - Same
• Brampton: 19.1 months in 2022; 14.1 months in 2024 - Better
• Clarington: 21.9 months in 2022; 14.3 months in 2024 - Better
• Vaughan: 26.9 months in 2022; 18.1 months in 2024 - Better
• Innisfil: 23.2 months in 2022; 19.8 months in 2024 - Better
• Oshawa: 26.1 months in 2022; 20.7 months in 2024 - Better
• Markham: 23.5 months in 2022; 22.6 months in 2024 - Same
• Milton: 10.2 months in 2022; 23.3 months in 2024 - Worse
• Bradford West Gwillimbury: 20.4 months in 2022; 23.5 months in 2024- Worse
• Toronto: 32.0 months in 2022; 25.0 months in 2024 - Better
• Mississauga:1 27.4 months in 2022; 25.0 months in 2024 - Better
• Caledon: 34.4 months in 2022; 26.9 months in 2024 - Better
• Richmond Hill: 35.9 months in 2022; 33.6 months in 2024 - Better
• Average: 22.7 months, in 2022; 20.3 months in 2024 - Better