In May 2023 Toronto did something it had been debating for a decade. It legalized up to four residential units, as-of-right, on nearly every residential lot in the city.
City Planning's own Housing Action Plan projected the change could enable somewhere between 5,000 and 25,000 units by 2031 — 600 to 3,000 a year.
Toronto permitted roughly 180 multiplex units in 2024.
That gap is the subject of this piece. Not because it is a story about failure, though partly it is. Because for anyone considering building one of these buildings, it is the most important market fact there is.
What the by-law actually produced
The City's own monitoring report, covering May 12, 2023 through November 4, 2024 — eighteen months:
| Metric | Figure |
|---|---|
| Building permit applications, 2-to-4-unit buildings | 750 |
| Multiplex building permits issued | 452 |
| Permits completed | ~108 (24%) |
| Total residential units proposed | ~1,288 |
| Net new units | ~726 |
The typology split of those 452 permits: 182 duplexes, 156 triplexes, 114 fourplexes.
Against the pre-by-law baseline, this is genuine progress. From 2020 to 2022, Toronto saw about 112 permits producing 253 net new units. Net new units roughly tripled in the first eighteen months of the new permissions.
Tripling a very small number still produces a small number.
The Edmonton comparison
This is the number that should focus the mind.
| Multiplex units permitted, 2024 | |
| Edmonton | |
| ~3,500 | |
| Toronto | |
| ~180 | |
| Analysis of municipal building permit databases by Damien Moule, published May 2025. Edmonton's mature neighbourhoods alone added roughly 600 units — more than Toronto's entire output. | |
Edmonton is a smaller city. It permitted roughly twenty times as many multiplex units. Its mature neighbourhoods alone produced more than all of Toronto combined.
Toronto is not short of land, demand or capital. What it has been short of is builders who actually do this work at volume — and, until July 2025, a development charge structure that let the arithmetic close.
The national picture makes Toronto look worse, not better
Missing middle housing — accessory suites, multiplexes, row homes, stacked townhouses, low-rise apartments and residential conversions — is having a genuine national moment. CMHC's tracking across six major cities:
| Missing middle as a share of total housing starts, six major cities | |
| 2018 | |
| 26% | |
| 2023 | |
| 26% | |
| 2024 | |
| 39% | |
| January–June 2025 | |
| 48% | |
| CMHC Housing Observer, 2025. Growth ran about 5% a year from 2018 to 2023, then over 44% between 2023 and 2024. | |
Nearly half of all new housing starts across Canada's six largest cities in the first half of 2025 were missing middle. It is not a niche any more.
Toronto's share of those starts across the six cities in 2024? Nine per cent. The country's largest city, in the middle of its worst affordability crisis, contributed less than a tenth of the national missing-middle output.
And the composition is telling: conversions made up 42% of Toronto's missing-middle construction, and by early 2025 there were more than four times as many units initiated through conversion as through combined single- and semi-detached starts on new foundations. Toronto is renovating its way toward density, one house at a time.
Why the gap exists
The yellowbelt is enormous
Research from Toronto Metropolitan University's Centre for Urban Research and Land Development found that a majority of Toronto's residentially-zoned land permits only single-detached and semi-detached housing. Roughly 200 km² of the city is zoned exclusively for single-detached dwellings.
The development that does happen is extraordinarily concentrated. Between 2014 and 2018, Downtown and the Central Waterfront took 36.6% of units in the pipeline while comprising just 3.4% of the city's land area. Four urban centres took another 10.5%. The designated avenues took 21.5%. Everything else in Toronto — the overwhelming majority of the city — accounted for about 31.4%.
The same research estimated that housing diversity comparable to Vancouver's would let Toronto accommodate 300,000 to 400,000 additional family-friendly units. One duplex per hectare in single-detached zones would house 45,000 people.
Established neighbourhoods produce almost nothing
From 2011 to 2023 — thirteen years — Toronto's established neighbourhoods generated 6,088 net new homes. Fewer than 470 a year, across the bulk of the city's residential land.
The reason is not exotic. Two of every three building permits in those neighbourhoods replaced a single house with a single house.
The province never mandated four units
A common misconception is worth correcting. There is no province-wide fourplex requirement in Ontario. The provincial floor is three units, set by Bill 23 in November 2022. Premier Ford publicly ruled out an Ontario-wide fourplex policy in 2024, calling it a "massive mistake." Neither Bill 17 in 2025 nor Bill 98 in 2026 introduced a four-unit requirement.
Toronto's four-unit permission is a municipal by-law that goes beyond what the Province required. Toronto did it. Ontario did not ask for it.
And then Council capped the sixplex at nine wards
In June 2025 Council permitted fiveplexes and sixplexes as-of-right — in nine of twenty-five wards. The mechanism for other wards to opt in exists but is informal, and as of mid-2026 no ward has used it. Ottawa cut $10 million from Toronto's Housing Accelerator Fund allocation in January 2026 over the shortfall.
We cover the geography in detail in The Nine Wards.
Why this is an opportunity, not a lament
Here is the part that matters commercially.
Toronto has legalized a building type, exempted it from development charges, and then produced almost none of it. Meanwhile the channel that actually supplied the city's new rental units for twenty years has shut off.
The condo channel is closed
| GTHA new condo market | Figure |
|---|---|
| New condos sold, Q1 2026 | 246 — down 54% year over year, 94% below the ten-year average |
| New project launches, Q1 2026 | Zero. A first in decades. |
| Unsold new condos | 4,295, more than double a year earlier, with a further 8,629 expected to reach the market |
| Condo construction starts | 2,176 units year to date at Q3 2025 — a 28-year low |
| Project cancellations | 32 projects and 6,981 units since the start of 2024, with 20 more projects on hold or in receivership |
Investor-owned condos have been Toronto's de facto purpose-built rental supply for a generation. That pipeline is not slowing. It has stopped.
And purpose-built rental is moving the other way
GTHA purpose-built rental starts rose 50% year over year in the first half of 2026, with 31,645 units under construction across 102 projects. Urbanation's Shaun Hildebrand, on Q2 2026: "Renters are responding to two years of falling rents, and with condo completions now receding, demand is outpacing supply."
Vacancy in stabilized new GTHA purpose-built rental improved from 7.9% in Q1 2026 to 6.8% in Q2. Including buildings still in lease-up, total vacancy fell from 14.7% a year earlier to 12.4%.
Those are not tight-market numbers — and we would not pretend otherwise. They are numbers moving in the right direction, in a market where the future supply pipeline has been emptied.
What this means if you are the one building
Put the pieces together.
A legalized building type that almost nobody is building at scale
Development charges on units two through six at zero, with no sunset in the adopted by-law
Construction costs at or near the most affordable levels in three to five years
CMHC financing at up to 95% loan-to-cost and 50-year amortization at five units or more
A 100% federal HST rebate on new purpose-built rental, plus the Ontario portion
A condo pipeline at a 28-year low, removing the main competing source of new rental supply
The reason more people are not doing this is not that the economics do not work. It is that developing a building is hard, and most people who own a Toronto lot are not developers and have no obvious way to become one.
That is a solvable problem, and it is the problem we work on.
How VIP Condos Toronto helps close the gap
We are not the builder and we are not the general partner. We are the brokerage that has done the vetting, and that is the value we bring to this.
Our bench of contractors and consultants is pre-vetted for the thing that actually matters: whether they build multiplexes as their core business, repeatedly, with standing crews and common plans — or whether yours would be their first. One GP corporation we work with is operated by a principal with more than thirty years of construction and development management experience, whose related entities have delivered over three million square feet and more than $5 billion of development value, and which is now structured as a vertically integrated operation dedicated to multiplex projects: planning, development, financing, construction, lease-up, stabilization, operation and sale.
We do not publish our partners' corporate names here. If you are weighing a project and want to know exactly who you would be building with — the principals, the completed projects and the references — contact Frank Merigliano directly at 416-885-0172 or frank@vipcondostoronto.net and we will make the introduction.
We introduce clients into that bench either as 100% owners with a turnkey fixed-price contract, or as limited partners in a GP/LP structure. We will tell you honestly which one fits your situation, including when the answer is that neither does yet.
Related reading: 100% Ownership or GP/LP Partner? and Toronto's Multiplex Playbook for 2026.
A note on the data
Two honest caveats, because they matter for how much weight to put on the figures above.
The 452-permit and 750-application figures are the City's most recent official numbers and run only to November 2024. We could not locate a 2026 monitoring report with updated counts. The next official reports are due in the second quarter of 2027 for fiveplexes and sixplexes, and at the end of 2027 for multiplexes generally. Read the counts as the state of play at the end of 2024, not today.
We also could not find a published statistic for the share of Toronto's housing stock that is specifically three-to-ten-unit buildings. The starts data and the land-use research above are the closest verifiable substitutes, and in our view they make the point more persuasively anyway.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it too late to get in?
On the evidence, no. Roughly 180 multiplex units permitted in 2024 in a city of three million is not a saturated market. The constraint is execution capacity, not opportunity.
Are falling rents a reason to wait?
Rents are soft — asking rents hit a 46-month low in April 2026 after 26 consecutive months of year-over-year declines, and new buildings are discounting roughly $377 a month off face rent. That is a reason to underwrite on net rents rather than asking rents. It is not obviously a reason to wait, because construction costs are also at a multi-year low and a building started in 2026 leases into 2027 or 2028, into a pipeline that has already been emptied.
Will the other sixteen wards get sixplexes?
The opt-in mechanism exists and no ward has used it as of mid-2026. City Planning must report on implementation by the second quarter of 2027. Build your plan on the rules as they are today, not on the rules you hope are coming.
What about conversions instead of new builds?
Roughly three-quarters of Toronto's multiplex permits since 2023 have been conversions of existing houses. It is a legitimate and often cheaper route, and it inherits whatever is wrong with the existing structure. Whether it beats a new build is a site-by-site answer, not a general one.
This guide is for general informational purposes and does not constitute legal, financial, or tax advice. Market data cited reflects published figures as of September 2026 and will change. Every situation is different — always consult a licensed real estate professional, lawyer, and tax advisor before making any decisions.
Ready to Take the Next Step?
Create your free, secure account at www.VIPCondosToronto.net for full MLS access, real-time sold data, and VIP pre-construction pricing and floor plans — the same tools our team uses every day.
For personalized advice on your specific Toronto buying or selling situation, contact Frank Merigliano and the VIP Condos Toronto team directly:
Phone: 416-885-0172
Email: frank@vipcondostoronto.net
Web: www.VIPCondosToronto.net
Frank Merigliano, Team Leader / Sales Representative, VIP Condos Toronto, RE/MAX PREMIER INTERNATIONAL INC., Brokerage — licensed since 1993, with RE/MAX since 1995, and a Top 50 RE/MAX team in Canada since 2015.
Sources: City of Toronto multiplex monitoring report; Damien Moule, analysis of Toronto and Edmonton building permit data (City Hall Watcher, May 2025); CMHC Housing Observer, missing middle housing development in Canada; Toronto Metropolitan University CUR, "Density Done Right"; Build Canada, Finish the Sixplex Permission; Osler, Bill 23 More Homes Built Faster Act; Global News, Premier Ford rules out Ontario-wide fourplex policy; CP24 / Urbanation, GTHA condo market Q1 2026; Urbanation, condo project cancellations Q3 2025; Urbanation, GTHA rental market Q2 2026; Rentals.ca, April 2026 rent report.
Have questions?
Want to know more about Toronto's Missing Middle Is Still Missing — And the Numbers Say Why? Send me a message and I'll get back to you within 24 hours.