The Impact of Greenbelt Preservation on Housing Supply in York Region
When you’re trying to find a reasonable home around the York Region, it gets really frustrating sometimes. It’s like with almost every refresh on a listing site, you’ll find the prices rising. It’s no brainer that the reason behind this is a limited supply. However, there are some other forces behind it that are not quite visible in plain sight. One such factor that commonly gets overlooked is – The Greenbelt.
The Greenbelt directly affects the availability of lands required to build homes. The reduced availability of land leads to limited housing supply and higher prices. To get a better view of the scenario, let’s have a read over the next sections of this article!
About Greenbelt
Photo by Perfectus Photography & Design Co. on Unsplash
The Greenbelt was built in 2005, with a view to protect forests, wetlands, and farmlands from the side effects of urban sprawl. The majority of the Greenbelt is decorated just at the borders of the York Region.
By now, you might be picturing the Greenbelt as a bunch of large empty fields. However, the actual scenario appears to be a bit different. There are an abundance of farms and river valleys around the Greenbelt.
The Greenbelt helps the region by providing drinkable water. The forests hold carbon. Wildlife aids biodiversity. Altogether, it creates a system that creates more balance on the ecosystem of the region.
Now, let’s dive into the political background of the region. In 2022, the provincial government tried to run some development projects over the Greenbelt. However, the projects could not be translated into reality due to some backlashes. This indicates that the people around have a deep concern for the Greenbelt, and what to do with it still remains a big debate.
How Does the Greenbelt Affect Housing Supply in York Region?
Photo by Alexia Saumon on Unsplash
A very simple dynamic is at the core of this situation. When more lands are protected, it means there remains less land to construct buildings and infrastructure. Less supply eventually leads to a higher competition for the inventory that still remains. Considering the York Region is one of the fastest growing regions in Canada, this limitation leads to multiple inconveniences.
Increased costs beyond the plain sight
When home developers can’t manage to build in highly demanded places, they just jump over the Greenbelt region. They end up building in distant places such as Barrie, Innisfil, or Bradford. It causes new homeowners to deal with longer commutes. The longer commutes cause the highways to be more congested. Eventually it’s the taxpayers who need to fund the road extensions and other related services. While the houses are less expensive to build over those distant regions, the broader costs affect everyone.
York-based supply couldn’t keep pace either
Here’s a fact that most people overlook: most of the land supplies inside York’s towns and suburbs are dedicated for single-family homes only. If you want to construct a small apartment building or a townhouse instead, then you’ll have to endure a lengthy process first. This rezoning process wastes your time, harms your wallet, and takes political will which is often not there. Eventually, it leads to a gap where it gets tough to find affordable mid-level housing.
This comes as a substantial blow for buyers. When the supply gets tight, the ones that remain get extremely competitive. Scenarios like bidding wars get common, rental supplies dry up faster than usual. It especially gets tough for first-time buyers interested in healthy communities like Aurora or Stouffville, as they often end up chasing behind the same listings.
To get a better idea about the competitiveness, you can browse Stouffville home listings. We are talking about York Region’s one of the most demandable markets here, but it will indeed help you to get a bigger picture of York Region’s overall supply constraint. At the same time, you might get to discover some top-of-the-class listings that you can think of investing on.
However, it’s important to get a clear and transparent idea of what the Greenbelt is responsible for and what people spread as myths. It’s true that slow approval, strict zoning rules, and high building costs play important roles in rocketing the prices up in this region.
Also it’s important to realize that just exposing Greenbelt for development will not make the housing affordable overnight. It might just result in building larger and more expensive homes constructed far from the transit. The affordable real estate that most buyers dream for, might still be out of the reach of the middle class buyer. You can say Greenbelt is a piece of a puzzle, but not actually the whole picture.
The Aftermath
Face the truth – if you really want to buy in the York Region then it’s better to accept that you are about to enter a supply-constrained real estate market. And it will not loosen up dramatically, not anytime soon!
Indeed, the Greenbelt plays an important part behind the low supply and high cost of homes in the York Region. However, tearing it up can’t lead to a solution either. This land protects things that are even more important – farmland, clean water, and green space; which are the things that make the York Region a good place to live in.
The only solution that makes sense is constructing smarter over the little supply and limited boundary that’s still available. This means more mid-rise apartments and more townhomes near the transit. Definitely, faster approvals and better zoning can help to make the scenario better.
None of the above mentioned solutions are actually a quick one, but together they can slowly and steadily increase the supply in the York Region while keeping the Greenbelt safe and intact.
