Due to COVID-19 and other factors, prospective new-home buyers are more carefully weighing location, housing type, design and amenities – and affordability – than ever before.

To help you understand all the issues to make a better, more informed homebuying decision, we went to some of the industry’s top builders and developers for expert advice, as part of our 2021 Builders' Annual.

What advice would you like to offer new-home buyers, as we approach 2022?

It’s very important to understand your personal finances and get properly pre-approved for a mortgage. It’s also very important to understand the timeline, because one of the things that the pandemic has had an impact on is occupancy dates. Our industry struggles to meet timelines due to the impact of COVID-related items, such as material and labour shortages. So, it is key to research your builder, to make sure it is recognized as one of the top builders by Tarion Warranty Corp. to ensure that even during difficult times, you know your builder will be there to help you.

There’s been a lot of discussion about wellness and new home design to address emerging needs coming out of the pandemic. What’s your take on this?

There’s a lot we have to do as an industry with Toronto Green Standard implementation, and we have to adhere to a lot of building code issues that could be much Greener. Also, things such as social distancing and how amenities would be laid out – such as treadmills being placed farther apart, wider spaces to allow for social distancing – to happen within the community would change the way we look at high-density living spaces.

What is it about your company or projects that differentiates you in the marketplace, that you’d like to stress to prospective new-home buyers.?

What makes our projects unique is location, as all of our locations are either in the downtown core or on major transit hub lines. We also take great pride, as the 2020 Tarion Homeowner Choice Award winners, to strive to put our purchasers first and have all our processes directed to make sure our purchasers are taken care of.

How is your company addressing the affordability issue?

As we look at the design of our suites, one of the things we are most proud of is that we have been able to offer great design in smaller spaces, leading to prices that are very affordable.

We recently had a federal election, and all the major parties promised to address housing supply and affordability. If you had the opportunity to speak directly to the Prime Minister on this topic, what would your advice be?

Put pressure on municipalities, particularly in the GTA, about opening the supply chain. The government spends a lot of money on infrastructure, such as transit hubs, and to ensure they are being fully utilized, we need to increase the density in the area. It would be great to see the government work with the municipalities to create more supply in the GTA to help with affordability. The Vaughan Metropolitan Centre is a great example where the transit hub set-up has much increased the supply of housing needs. More supply means better affordability, and as there is more supply, we may see prices moderate. And if there was an oversupply, prices may even come down.

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