Faster approvals means lower home prices

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Marshall Homes cuts approval time for new project in Ajax and passes on the savings to new home buyers

If anyone doubted faster building approvals save homebuyers money, Marshall Homes’ stacked townhome in Ajax should make believers out of them.

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 Aptly named Time, the project was approved in only five weeks, and that’s part of the reason all 81 units are priced from the low to the high $600,000s.

 That’s significant considering the average price of an attached home in the area is $851,733 — and because occupancies could begin as early as February 2026 if all goes according to plan.

“The urgent need right now is for people to be able to afford, qualify and buy a home,” says Craig Marshall, founder and president of Marshall Homes. “There aren’t many urban, or stacked, townhomes available in Durham Region, nor even GTA-wide.”

 It took barely over a month to approve Time’s official plan amendments and rezoning courtesy of political will. Ajax Mayor Shaun Collier used the strong mayor powers the provincial government granted late 2022 to ensure Time wouldn’t become mired in red tape.

Residential development proposals are notoriously slow to receive permits in the GTA, ranking among the worst jurisdictions in North America for approval times. Developers are stuck financing the building site in the interim, and to make their project economically viable, additional expenses are added to a home’s sale price.

Marshall hopes Time’s legacy will be that of an affordable, quality build made possible by an earnest collaboration between the public and private sectors.

However, chances are slim if municipalities throughout the metropolitan region don’t heed developers’ warnings that exorbitant costs hinder new home construction. 

“The interest payments on land have come down a bit, but it’s not low. We’re well above consumer mortgage rates to carry raw land. How are we going to get homes built if they’re sitting in approval stages for two years? That’s why the use of strong mayor powers in this case was certainly validated,” Marshall said.

“[Ajax’s municipal officials] came right back at us and were very cooperative in getting these applications through very quickly.”

Another time-saver other that municipalities could emulate is allowing developers to file the various applications of their proposal individually rather than all together.

“It helped the whole thing by cutting down the time,” Marshall continued.

However, Time’s legacy is likely to be that of an outlier. David Wilkes, president and CEO of the Building Industry and Land Development Association, noted GTA municipalities are among the slowest in Canada to approve projects.

 Until that’s rectified, prices will remain elevated, he added.

 “There are real savings to be had by eliminating the excessive approvals,” Wilkes said. “We’d all benefit, especially people looking to purchase homes in the GTA, and if we can eliminate unnecessary costs, that can contribute to more affordable homes.”

 The [2024] Greater Toronto Area Municipal Benchmarking Study, which BILD released in late September, revealed marginal improvements in approval times over 2022. The GTA-wide average to approve one application was 20 months.

Moreover, as Wilkes reminds, most developments require two or three applications.

“So we’re talking delays for approvals anywhere from three to five years,” he said. “That’s real money, because depending on the municipality and type of project, it adds costs of anywhere from approximately $2,600 to $5,500 per unit per month.”

That’s $42,000 to $90,000 on the final price of a home. But Wilkes is optimistic that can improve.

“The fact there are examples of approvals being done much quicker is encouraging — looking across the country, we see approvals in Edmonton being done in four to six months,” Wilkes said. “So we know there’s opportunity to expedite the process.”