There is no doubt that recent homebuyers and intending home buyers in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area ("GTHA") continue to have a strong innate preference for ground-related homes, especially single-detached houses. Many recent first-time buyers have purchased a ground-related home. This is consistent with the June 2022 Bank of Canada report that shows that in recent years house price trends in Canada have increased more rapidly in the suburbs than in downtown areas.
In contrast, this paper by Frank Clayton finds that urban land-use policies are designed to shift the new housing supply away from ground-related homes, especially single-detached houses, to apartments, primarily for environmental reasons. The current provincial government's version of the Growth Plan incorporates a sizeable shift away from single-detached houses to apartments in the GTHA.
This disparity between housing demand and supply sets the stage for housing prices to move even higher in the coming years, with adverse consequences for younger and immigrant households and a more unequal distribution of wealth among households in the GTHA. As in recent years, these higher housing prices will encourage many households to move further away from employment nodes, searching for affordable types of ground-related homes.
