Multiplexes: Making real estate accessible again

When we hosted our “Unpacking Multiplexes” events in Toronto and Vancouver, both rooms sold out. What struck us wasn’t the demand for content. It was who was in the room: seasoned investors alongside first-time buyers, small developers, homeowners, real estate agents and professional service providers. People who, two or three years ago, wouldn’t have thought of themselves as real estate investors at all.

Next stop, Edmonton on June 11: Purchase tickets here.

That’s what’s different this time. Multiplexes aren’t just another investment trend, they’re the first credible path back into real estate for the people who’d been priced out of it.

How we got here

CMHC’s affordability ratio in Toronto sat at 59 per cent of household income in 2019. By 2024, it was 74 per cent. Nationally, it jumped from 39 per cent to 54 per cent. For most working households in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and Halifax, the math on a single-family home stopped working.

CMHC’s June 2025 supply gap report estimates Canada needs 450,000 new units per year through 2035 to restore 2019-level affordability, roughly double the current pace. That gap won’t close without a different kind of housing being built, and a different kind of buyer building it.

What’s changed (and where)

Three things shifted across the country in the last 24 months:

Zoning reform from coast to coast. B.C.’s Bill 44 made small-scale multi-unit housing legal province-wide (up to four units, six near transit). Toronto’s By-law 654-2025 permits five and six-unit buildings as-of-right across the former Toronto and East York district plus Ward 23. Edmonton’s Zoning Bylaw renewal allowed up to eight-unit small-scale residential on most lots, though council has been debating amendments. Calgary’s 2024 citywide rezoning made R-CG the base residential designation, though that change is now under review. Quebec, Halifax and Ottawa are following.

Development charge relief. Toronto fully waived development charges for buildings up to six units, saving $200,000 to $270,000 per project. Other municipalities have followed with reduced or deferred charges. For an independent developer, that’s often the difference between a project that pencils and one that doesn’t.

Federal financing. CMHC’s MLI Select offers up to 95 per cent LTV, up to 50-year amortization and premium discounts for projects hitting affordability, energy or accessibility targets. It applies the same way to a fiveplex in Halifax, a 12-unit infill in Edmonton, or a six-storey rental in Vancouver. CMHC’s multi-unit insurance products supported more than 283,000 units in 2024, a 28.7 per cent increase over 2023.

Someone with equity can now plausibly underwrite a five or six-unit build that would have required an institutional partner three years ago in most markets across the country.

CMHC MLI Select

MLI Select is CMHC’s mortgage loan insurance product for purpose-built rental properties with five or more units. They “gamified” it: projects earn points for committing to below-market rents, meeting energy benchmarks and including accessibility features. Remember: Affordability, Accessibility and Energy Efficiency.

Benefits scale with points hit:

• 50 points: up to 85 per cent LTV, longer amortization, 10 per cent premium discount
• 70 points: up to 95 per cent LTV, up to 50-year amortization, 20 per cent premium discount
• 100 points: maximum benefits, including 30 per cent premium discount

As of July 2025, CMHC moved to a risk-based premium model with new surcharges for amortizations beyond 25 years. Any pro forma built before mid-2025 should be re-run, and run with realistic and worst-case scenarios (rents are softening and vacancies are rising).

Three different doors into the same building

The same asset class is now accessible to three different types of buyers, each for different reasons.

For traditional investors, multiplexes offer better leverage, longer amortization and stronger cash flow than single-family rentals, particularly with MLI Select.

For small developers and builders, as-of-right zoning, fee relief and faster permits mean projects that previously required institutional scale can now be executed by independent teams. Since multiplex zoning came into effect in May 2023, Toronto has issued 452 multiplex building permits and received over 750 applications, more than triple the previous three years combined. Edmonton, Calgary and several B.C. municipalities are seeing similar acceleration. The majority of those projects are renovations or retrofits by smaller operators, not large builders.

For homeowners, the picture is most underappreciated. From Halifax to Victoria, the same dynamic is taking shape: a buyer priced out of a detached home can sometimes qualify for the same property as a multiplex, living in one unit and renting the others to support the mortgage. In Toronto, multiplexes are already delivering family-sized two and three-bedroom units at a higher rate than new condos, averaging around 1,140 square feet, a pattern repeating across the country as zoning catches up. For owner-occupiers, that’s the closest thing Canadian housing has produced to a genuine affordability tool in a decade.

What Alberta proves

Alberta’s two major markets are the strongest evidence that this thesis works.

Edmonton’s Zoning Bylaw Renewal, effective January 2024, has produced what may be the fastest missing-middle response in Canadian history. Row house starts in mature neighbourhoods jumped from an average of 146 units per year (2019 to 2023) to over 1,200 in 2024 alone. By 2025, five to eight-unit buildings outnumbered single-family home permits in the city for the first time ever. Edmonton recorded 21,337 housing starts in 2025, the highest in its history.

Calgary, despite ongoing political turbulence around its 2024 rezoning, led all Canadian cities in housing starts per capita in 2025, with multifamily accounting for roughly 70 per cent of the activity. Together, Alberta produced nearly a quarter of all Canadian housing starts in 2025 despite holding under 12 per cent of the population.

The risks

Construction labour shortages are lengthening timelines. Rental demand has softened in Toronto and Vancouver as international migration slows. The CMHC premium changes have made high-leverage construction loans more expensive than they were 18 months ago. Resale markets for completed fourplexes and sixplexes are still thin, which is why most operators we work with are underwriting these as long-term holds, not flips.

Multiplexes aren’t a guaranteed win. They’re a more accessible version of a market that, for many Canadians, had become functionally inaccessible. That’s a meaningful difference, but it isn’t easy money. It takes the right property and the right people to make it happen.

Why we keep running these events

These rooms keep filling because the people in them, developers, lenders, brokers, architects and operators, are figuring it out together on real deals. The questions get sharper, the pro formas get more honest, and the network compounds. That’s the case for multiplexes in 2026: not the smartest, easiest, or safest investment in Canada, but the most accessible one with real upside, for the widest range of Canadians, in a long time.

Join us at the next event

Our “Unpacking Multiplexes” series is expanding across the country through 2026.

Next stop, Edmonton. Join us at the Fringe Theatre on June 11 at 6 pm: purchase tickets here.

Sponsorship and speaking opportunities: reach out to info@realist.ca.

With thanks to our sponsors and partners

CMHC, Vancity, KV Capital, Small Housing BC, BLD Financial, City of Edmonton, City of Toronto, Lanescape, Dorr Capital, Calvert MIC, Liv.Rent, Theorem Developments, and many more.

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