I'm skeptical that this is anything more than marketing. The G&M had an opinion piece about this -- basically, it's a headline to make it look like there's work being done on the housing front. The reality is that approvals happen locally, not federally, so unless all these designs are also approved by municipalities all over Canada, there's no real advantage. Many companies already have preapproved designs, as well.
Am I missing something? Moffat finds this development encouraging, but he knows better than anyone that the bottleneck isn't there.
There's multiple bottlenecks. The National Housing Accord points out that there's a bottleneck specifically for *CMHC approvals*, for lending (RCFI) or insurance (MLI Select). The nominal wait times for CMHC approval for RCFI are 60 days to be selected for underwriting, and then 265 days for underwriting; the actual wait times can be up to 2X as long.
I understand that architects may be concerned that this means less work for them. California's pre-approved ADU designs may be either city-owned (freely available) or designer-owned: the designer retains ownership, licenses them for a fee, and can make modifications on request.
I'm skeptical that this is anything more than marketing. The G&M had an opinion piece about this -- basically, it's a headline to make it look like there's work being done on the housing front. The reality is that approvals happen locally, not federally, so unless all these designs are also approved by municipalities all over Canada, there's no real advantage. Many companies already have preapproved designs, as well.
Am I missing something? Moffat finds this development encouraging, but he knows better than anyone that the bottleneck isn't there.
There's multiple bottlenecks. The National Housing Accord points out that there's a bottleneck specifically for *CMHC approvals*, for lending (RCFI) or insurance (MLI Select). The nominal wait times for CMHC approval for RCFI are 60 days to be selected for underwriting, and then 265 days for underwriting; the actual wait times can be up to 2X as long.
I understand that architects may be concerned that this means less work for them. California's pre-approved ADU designs may be either city-owned (freely available) or designer-owned: the designer retains ownership, licenses them for a fee, and can make modifications on request.