The new president of the
Ontario Home Builders' Association,
Heathwood Homes' Bob Finnigan, says the end of the traditional suburban single-family dwelling is nigh.
But he figures that won't stop a new wave of urban family exodus, given that condos have largely ignored families.
"The growth plan, which calls for the intensification of land use across the GTA, is restricting the ability to build a true single family home even in suburban developments," he says, reflecting on the latest numbers which peg the GTA's 2010 development at about 37,000 new residential units. "You're going to see town homes, semi-detached, your traditional 40 or 50 foot single family home is going to become rarer as time goes on."
Though he appears to be neither for nor against this latest development, which has also seen the centre of gravity in GTA's development shift from the 905 to the 416, he is concerned that the average size of the now dominant built form, the condo, is 600 square feet which, he says, "really isn't providing a lot of growing family units.
"There's not a lot of three bedroom, almost no three bedroom, two bedrooms are rare, and those units that are that size are generally expensive because the cost of construction in high-rise is more than double low-rise. The 416 housing stock is not family oriented."
And with the suburban shift from single-family homes to town houses, duplexes and other forms of higher density low-rise development that remain larger than the downtown average, he sees another suburban shift once the current young condo-buyers start to reproduce.
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Bob Finnigan
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