The GTA’s notoriously constrained low-rise housing sector is loosening a tad, Altus Group chief economist Peter Norman tells us. Last year saw the best low-rise sales in nearly a decade, 19,637, up 15% on the 10-year average. And low-rise land transactions more than doubled versus 2014, to $2B. Peter is keeping a close eye on the low-rise market this year, as lands are finally released for development and single-family housing starts begin to recover after a long drought. “There’s been pent-up demand, and it's created pricing pressure” ($829k average for low-rise homes).

Can the low-rise resurgence be sustained? Peter thinks so. It's taken a while for municipalities to bring official plans into conformity with the province’s growth plan directives, tying up supplies of developable low-rise land in bureaucratic wrangling. “The past decade has been a little rocky," he says. But things are settling down, and lands are being brought forward in a “timely manner," notably the province’s sale of Pickering’s Seaton Lands (above). “There are lots of bright lights now in terms of places where supply is coming from. So the situation is starting to solve itself.”