Yesterday evening I sat on a panel at The Canadian Real Estate Investor's 2nd annual Unpacking Multiplexes event. I'm not sure that I would construe myself as an expert on multiplexes , but I was asked to talk from more of a macro perspective and also talk about our productized rental housing strategy . And so that's what I did. A big thanks to Daniel Foch and Nick Hill for inviting me.
Two things stood out to me from the sold-out event (~250 people).
First, there's a massive amount of interest in building multiplexes in Toronto. In attendance were people ranging from experienced builders to people who are just starting out and looking for their first multiplex site. This breadth of interest seems to be one of the features of this housing typology.
It's small enough that it's accessible to small developers or even individual homeowners who maybe want to live in one of the homes and rent out the rest. At the same time, there are developers who used to be at big shops, are now on their own, and want to build a big business with this scale of housing. Both are good outcomes.
Second, this entire push for more housing feels very much like an iterative process. The City of Toronto is monitoring these new policies, watching how the market responds, and then making adjustments as needed. This is the way to do it, and it should make us all feel optimistic about the future of our city.
We're on our way to creating more missing middle housing — in every sense of the word middle .