GTA home buyers are still very reluctant to pay more for an environmentally friendly place to live, but rapid changes in technology and construction methods are bringing the prices of greener homes down, says the president and CEO of the Building Industry and Land Development Association (
BILD).
Bryan Tuckey is speaking this week about the state of home building in the GTA at the Greater Toronto Chapter of the
Canada Green Building Council’s
Green Homes Summit. The gathering of industry folk will explore new developments in greening for residential construction ranging from “ground-related” homes—that is single-family, semi-detached and townhomes—up to 12-storey midrise buildings.
“Embedded in BILD’s strategic plan is sustainability and green buildings. Our members are leaders in building greener homes,” says Tuckey. “Consumers are still price sensitive and tend to look in the shorter term than the longer term, so you really have to educate the buyer about energy efficiency and that’s still one of the challenges in front of the industry.” Faced with a choice between floor-to-ceiling windows or a lower energy bill, many buyers will still pick the former.
Amidst all the speculation about whether the GTA housing market is a bubble that will some day burst, Tuckey says the numbers suggest otherwise. Household formation in the region—which has
held steady at about 36,000 annually since the early 2000s—is still proportional to the number of homes built here each year, about 35,000 in 2015.
“There’s not really a bubble. You’re just building to family formation,” says Tuckey.
But the market has essentially split in two, the low-rise and the high-rise market. The demand for ground-related homes far outpaces supply, fuelling double-digit price increases, up 17 per cent from 2014 to 2015. Condo prices, by contrast, have flat-lined, as supply has managed to keep up with demand.
Writer: Paul Gallant
Source: Bryan Tuckey