Twenty three Canadian municipalities got measured on what it costs to get a home approved and built. Edmonton finished first.
Not competitive for a city its size. Not respectable. First, ahead of everybody, on the combination of what a builder hands city hall and how long city hall takes to hand back a permit.
That national benchmarking landed a year ago and it is still the most current read anybody has produced on the question. Nothing has come along to knock it over. So it is worth going back to the file, because the numbers sitting under that first place finish explain more about Alberta housing costs than a year of press conferences ever will.
What Edmonton charges, per door
Municipal charges on a low-rise unit in Edmonton come to $36,000. On a high-rise unit, $9,300.
The Canadian average for that same low-rise unit is $82,600. Edmonton is $46,600 under it. Not trimmed. Not slightly better than the middle. Under half.
And the national number is moving in the wrong direction. Low-rise municipal fees across the country climbed an average of $27,500 per unit in two years. That is a second-hand car bolted onto every new home in Canada, added by nobody in particular, approved by councils that will never be asked about it at a mortgage table.
The spread is where it gets ugly. Moncton charges $8,700 a unit. Toronto charges roughly $195,000. Toronto is not charging a little more than Edmonton. Toronto is charging more than five times as much, on the same product, for the same reason, to the same kind of family.
High-rise charges tell a similar story. The national average is $35,000 a unit. Edmonton is at $9,300.
Ten and a half months became three and a bit
The approval timeline is the part that should get attention, because it is the part cities always insist cannot be fixed.
Edmonton’s approval timeline came in at 3.4 months. In the previous edition of the same study it was 10.5 months. Seven months of waiting disappeared out of the process, and the study puts the indirect cost of delay in Edmonton at $3,260 per low-rise unit for every month a file sits. Seven months at that rate is better than $23,000 per unit that stopped being spent on nothing.
Edmonton’s new Zoning Bylaw took effect January 1, 2024, inside the window the study covers. Make of that what you will. What is not in dispute is that a city the size of Edmonton cut its approvals by two thirds while other councils were still explaining why the file takes as long as it takes.
Compare the range. Saskatoon approves in 2 months. Hamilton takes 31. Thirty one months is two and a half years of carrying costs, interest and staff time before a single unit exists, and somebody pays every month of it. It is not the planner.
The high-rise delay cost in Edmonton runs $1,606 per unit per month, which is roughly half the low-rise figure. Apartment files that stall are cheaper to stall. They still are not free.
First overall without finishing first in anything
Here is the detail that gets skipped in the victory lap.
Edmonton did not top a single category. Planning features, 6th, on a score of 85%. Approvals timelines, 4th. Government charges on low-rise, 8th. High-rise charges, 9th. Four categories, four solid results, no gold medals, and the best overall score in the country.
That is what a functioning municipality looks like on paper. No single heroic reform. No branded initiative with a launch event. Just a city that is good at the boring parts in four directions at once while other councils chase one headline number and let the rest rot.
It also means there is room left. Eighth and ninth on charges is not a ceiling. There are seven municipalities in this country billing less per low-rise door than Edmonton does, and a council that wanted to could go get them.
Why any of this shows up on a price tag
Kevin Lee, CEO of the Canadian Home Builders’ Association, has been blunt that development charges and delays “directly impact the price of homes and how many are built.” That is the entire mechanism. Fees are not absorbed. Time is not absorbed. Both get added to the number on the listing, and the buyer covers them without ever seeing the line item.
Which is why the results in the Edmonton scorecard matter well beyond a ranking. The same forces that put $3.3 billion of Edmonton real estate investment in motion are the ones a slow permit counter can shut off in a single budget cycle. And the reason Alberta is building while other provinces file reports about building is sitting right there in the fee schedule.
Twenty three cities got the same test. One of them passed it in every subject. It was ours.
Should Edmonton council chase the seven cities still charging less per unit, or defend the ranking it has?
