​”While headlines fixate on condo weakness and stalled launches, a different kind of real estate boom is already underway in Toronto neighbourhoods.”

STOREYS:

This article was written and submitted by Noam Hazan, licensed architect and principal of Noam Hazan Design Studio, a Toronto based architecture & Interior design studio specializing in new single-family homes and missing middle housing.

Toronto is sleepwalking into a housing solution and most people do not even see it.

While headlines fixate on condo weakness and stalled launches, a different kind of real estate boom is already underway in Toronto neighbourhoods. It is not driven by Bay Street developers or glossy sales centres. It is driven by regular Torontonians. Homeowners. Realtors. Professionals with day jobs. First time “citizen developers” who are building gentle density on ordinary streets. And it is happening right now.

My view is simple. The missing middle is the most alive part of Toronto real estate today, and it is quietly building the kind of housing the city actually needs.

I am a licensed architect in Toronto and run a boutique practice focused on missing middle housing. Since the city expanded permissions for multiplexes and garden suites, our work has surged. Many architects are complaining the market is slow. In our niche, it is the opposite. The phone rings because this is one of the few lanes where projects still move.

The policy change was not complicated, but its impact has been dramatic. In May 2023, Toronto approved citywide permissions for multiplex housing, allowing duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes across residential neighbourhoods. Garden suites have also taken off. In June 2025, Council went further by allowing sixplex permissions in nine wards.

Those are planning decisions. But the results show up in permits and construction sites.

City data shows this is already happening at scale. In the first 18 months after the May 2023 change, Toronto issued 452 multiplex building permits. Garden suites are moving just as quickly: by May 8, 2025, the City reported 812 applications received and 480 permits issued. That’s not a fringe experiment, it’s an active pipeline. The practical effect is that any single home lot may now be able to support a fourplex plus a garden suite, and in certain wards, up to a sixplex, provided the site is zoned ‘Residential’.