00:00:00:00
[Audio: Bright, percussive music plays.]
[Visual: The sun shines on a row of newly built houses with "For Sale" signs. Traffic flows through a city intersection at night. A condominium tower's windows reflect the blue sky. A crane rises over a high-rise building under construction.]
[Visual: Slide with text that reads, "Ask an expert."]
00:00:05:00
[Speaker: Joelle Hamilton, Communications and Marketing, CMHC]
Why does a new home cost so much? It's not just labour, not just materials.
[Visual: Joelle Hamilton sits behind a desk with a tablet, a keyboard and a mug in front of a blue background. She has medium-length black hair and wears a black short-sleeved top.]
[Visual: A box that reads "Joelle Hamilton, Communications and Marketing, CMHC" appears briefly.]
There's a fee that can add $40,000 to $100,000, even more to the price of a single home, and most people have never heard of it.
[Visual: Two men in construction helmets and safety vests talk at a construction site with temporary support structures in a city.]
[Text on screen: "Development Charge"]
It's called a development charge.
[Visual: An aerial view of a residential neighbourhood with large single-family homes. Labourers add OSB boards to a wood-frame house in front of mountains. Three people seated at a table discuss blueprints.]
And depending on where you live, it can decide whether housing gets built or not.
[Visual: Joelle sits at the desk.]
Because this one policy tool has a bigger impact on housing than most people realize, and once you understand it, the whole market starts to look different.
[Visual: Slide with text that reads, "What they are"]
[Audio: Light, upbeat music plays.]
00:00:39:00
[Visual: An aerial view of apartment buildings under construction on a dirt lot. Heavy traffic moves in both directions on a six-lane highway. A streetcar turns a corner in a city. Water flows from public fountains. A child goes down a slide in the park. A crane extends in front of a city on a bay.]
[Speaker: Joelle Hamilton, Communications and Marketing, CMHC]
Think of development charges as growth fees. When new housing goes up, cities need to manage the costs that come with growth. So municipalities charge developers upfront to help fund those costs.
00:00:50:00
[Visual: Slide with text that reads, "Why they matter"]
[Visual: Joelle sits behind the desk.]
00:00:54:00
[Speaker: Joelle Hamilton, Communications and Marketing, CMHC]
Here's where it starts to hit home. These costs don't just stay with developers. They show up in rents, home prices and even in whether projects move forward at all.
00:01:04:00
[Visual: Slide featuring a stylized house with a price tag. An arching price bar over the house fills to 16%. Text under the house reads, "Up to 16% of home price."]
[Visual: Mathieu Laberge, a man with short brown hair wearing glasses and a suit, sits in a bright office.]
[Visual: A box that reads "Mathieu Laberge, Chief Economist, CMHC" appears briefly.]
In some cities, development charges make up between 8 to 16% of the price of a new home.
[Visual: Mathieu sits in the office.]
At that level, they can make or break a project.
[Visual: Slide with text that reads, "CMHC's new data"]
[Audio: Mellow, rhythmic music plays.]
[Visual: Joelle sits behind the desk.]
00:01:18:00
[Speaker: Joelle Hamilton, Communications and Marketing, CMHC]
Until now, comparing these fees across cities was surprisingly hard. So CMHC built a new data set with 40 municipalities across four provinces, all in one standardized view.
[Visual: A businesswoman walks towards professionals seated around a conference table. Three people talk while looking at a screen. Two people analyze printed charts. A woman gives a presentation to a team in a bright office. A woman talks to colleagues seated around a table.]
We used AI to pull the data from municipal bylaws and then checked it with analysts in municipalities. So instead of scattered information, we finally have a clear apples-to-apples picture.
[Visual: Joelle sits behind the desk.]
And this is just the beginning of a broader push to modernize housing data in Canada.
[Visual: Slide with text that reads, "What we found"]
[Visual: Joelle sits behind the desk.]
So what did we find? A few things really stood out. The biggest one is just how uneven these fees are.
00:01:59:00
[Speaker: Mathieu Laberge, Chief Economist, CMHC]
For a two-bedroom apartment, charges range from about $40,000 in Ottawa to $122,000 in Markham. That's more than three times higher!
[Visual: Slide featuring a stylized apartment building above text that reads, "2-Bedroom Apartment, $40,000 per unit in Ottawa." The text changes to read, "2-Bedroom Apartment, $122,000 per unit in Markham." The text changes to read, "2-Bedroom Apartment, 3X THE COST."]
And for a single-detached home, they go from $125,000 in Pickering to over $180,000 in Toronto.
[Slide featuring a stylized house above text that reads, "Single-detached home, $125,000 in Pickering." The text changes to read, "Single-detached home, $180,000 in the city of Toronto."]
[Visual: Mathieu sits in the office.]
That kind of gap can actually shift where developers choose to build and where people choose to live. And part of the reason is that every region calculates these fees differently.
[Visual: A crane extends from the roof of a large wood-frame apartment building under construction. Cranes rise high over concrete-frame apartment buildings in a city. Two people point to a blueprint. An aerial view of the Biosphere on the shore of the Saint Lawrence River. High-rise buildings tower throughout downtown Montréal. A train drives through the city.]
Some charge per unit, others per acre. In places like Montréal, development charges can be tied directly to new transit projects.
[Visual: Mathieu sits in the office.]
Some cities also delay fees to encourage rental housing construction.
[Visual: Slide with text that reads, "Viability impact"]
[Audio: Light, mellow music plays.]
[Visual: Joelle sits behind the desk.]
00:02:51:00
[Speaker: Joelle Hamilton, Communications and Marketing, CMHC]
As mentioned earlier, development charges can even be the difference between a project moving ahead or not. So what happens if you bring them down? We tested that using a tool we developed called the Housing Development Viability Analyzer.
00:03:07:00
[Speaker: Mathieu Laberge, Chief Economist, CMHC]
What we found was pretty simple. Small cuts, around 10 to 20%, don't move the needle all that much. You only see a slight increase in projects going ahead. But bigger cuts start to change things.
[Visual: Slide with text that reads "Projects Moving Forward, Fees: 100%" above an arching fee bar over an apartment building ranging from 0% to 100%. The fees drop from 100% to 90%, and two more apartment buildings appear under the arch. The fees drop down to 0%, the bar disappears and four more apartment buildings appear.]
[Visual: Mathieu sits in the office.]
And the impact is strongest where charges are high and where financial conditions are tight.
[Visual: Slide featuring a stylized map of Canada with pulsing dots labelled "VANCOUVER" and "TORONTO." Slide with text that reads, "Out of every 100 proposed projects, 50% cut, +5% projects viable" above rows of stylized apartment buildings with five coloured in.]
In cities like Toronto and Vancouver, cutting charges in half made about 5% more projects viable.
[Visual: Slide with text that reads, "FEES/PROJECTS VIABLE" above bar graph with two bars. The "Fees" bar graph descends from $100 to $0, and text appears that reads, "Removing them entirely." The "Projects viable" bar graph rises to "14%," and two rows of stylized apartment buildings appear next to it.]
And in some places, removing them entirely pushed that up to around 14%.
[Visual: The CN Tower rising over downtown Toronto at night. Text in the sky that reads, "Toronto +16,000 homes/year."]
In Toronto alone, that could mean 10,000 to 16,000 more homes built every year.
[Visual: Mathieu sits in the office.]
So the pattern is clear: the higher the fees, the bigger the impact when you reduce them.
[Visual: Slide with text that reads, "Why it's not so simple"]
[Audio: Relaxed, rhythmic music plays.]
[Visual: Joelle sits behind the desk.]
00:04:00:00
[Speaker: Joelle Hamilton, Communications and Marketing, CMHC]
So, you might be thinking, why not just lower them across the board? The challenge is that development charges now play a significant role in municipal finance. Reducing them creates a gap that cities will need to address. It's a real balancing act.
[Visual: Four people in hard hats and safety vests approach a concrete-frame building under construction. Three men wearing hard hats and safety vests consult a document. A man and a girl read a book on a tablet while walking down a hallway. A group of people having a discussion in a boardroom. Aerial view of cityscapes with high rises and mid-rises.]
00:04:15:00
[Visual: Joelle sits behind the desk.]
What this data shows is that development charges aren’t just a line item.
[Visual: Man consults a document. Aerial view of residential construction project.]
They’re a force shaping both housing costs and supply.
00:04:24:00
[Visual: Joelle sits behind the desk.]
And if we're serious about affordability, this is something we can't ignore.
00:04:29:00
[Slide with text that reads, "Subscribe on YouTube"]
[Visual: The CMHC logo appears above the Canada wordmark.]
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