DON PROCTER — Peter Norman, Altus Group’s vice-president, chief economist and the keynote speaker at the Light-Frame Wood Solutions Conference and trade show recently in Woodbridge, Ont.
Builders and developers face complex and possibly difficult times in Ontario. While the provincial government promises the construction of 1.5 million new homes, meeting its timeline would require ramping up construction starts from the current 50,000 to 70,000 a year to about 250,000 units annually, “which seems, I think, pretty outlandishly high.
Declining mortgage rates help and Norman said the Bank of Canada’s objective to bring inflation under control through hiked interest rates has “pretty much done its job.” To get things moving again, investor confidence will have to return, but fewer projects on the go has added “some amount of caution and distress in the development industry. Their costs are rising.”