On behalf of the Ontario…

On behalf of the Ontario Real Estate Association (OREA), we would like to thank you and your Ministry for your public commitment to reducing red tape in the housing industry and getting more affordable homes built faster. As you know, OREA supports nearly 100,000 REALTORS® in helping Ontarians find a great place to call home – but regulatory red tape is making it difficult to get more homes built. With Bill 185, Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act, Ontario’s sixth piece of housing legislation since 2018, the province will make significant progress on important policy solutions.

Alongside several legislative proposals arising from Bill 185, OREA is pleased to see that your Ministry wants to improve data collection and reporting for municipalities. Specifically, OREA agrees with your proposal to require an additional 21 municipalities with provincially assigned housing to targets to report information on planning matters on a quarterly and annual basis. We also support your proposal to require that municipalities report the status of planning applications more accurately by publishing a summary table of key statistics for each quarterly report. OREA understands that collecting reliable, accurate data is integral to tracking the progress of municipalities and assessing their capacity for critical housing and infrastructure projects. In fact, OREA has always advocated for increased information sharing in the housing market – as a response to an estimated $30 billion of laundered money infiltrating the housing market between 2008 and 2018, OREA recommended a publicly accessible ‘beneficial ownership registry’ to strengthen transparency and public trust in the province.

Despite the potential for improved transparency, OREA wants to ensure that new data reporting requirements do not introduce administrative burdens and delays. Considering the magnitude of the current housing affordability crisis, municipal staff may be working under tighter timelines to streamline approvals for much-needed housing developments. If additional data reporting requirements would significantly interrupt this endeavor, OREA would not recommend that new data reporting requirements take priority. OREA encourages you to carefully assesses how this change would impact the operations and efficiency of municipal staff, ensuring no new burdens or delays are inadvertently created.

We appreciate the work that you and your Ministry are doing to foster improved data collection and increase housing supply across Ontario. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this consultation process – together, we can help fulfill the dream of homeownership for many hard-working Ontarians.

Sincerely,

Tim Hudak
CEO, Ontario Real Estate Association