The Canadian Home Builders Association (CHBA) has released its 2024 Municipal Benchmarking Study, a data-driven analysis measuring the efficiency of Canada’s major cities in facilitating affordable housing supplies. The study ranks 23 municipalities across Canada with a common thread emerging among the top performers in the study—their utilization of Computronix’s POSSE software solution for municipal planning, community development, and land management.
In fact, three of the top-five ranked cities in the study are Powered by POSSE municipalities (#1 Edmonton, #2 Halifax, #5 Calgary). Moreover, with Saskatoon finishing tied for #10 in the rankings, the CHBA study confirms 40% of the top ten performing municipalities in Canada are utilizing POSSE powered solutions to achieve efficiency gains contributing to improved housing outcomes:
Given their bottom line impacting on influencing beneficial housing outcomes, Average Approval Time benchmarks carry great weight in the CHBA Benchmarking Study. It is within this category that ‘Powered by POSSE’ cities truly outperform other municipalities.
In addition to Saskatoon (#1), Edmonton (#4), and Calgary (#6), all achieving approval timelines of less than 6 months, ranking them amongst the best in their respective provinces, each of these POSSE powered municipalities improved upon the already strong benchmarks they achieved in the 2022 CHBA Study. Consistent with the study’s findings, these continual improvements in municipal efficiency validate the gains that are achievable when Canadian municipalities pursue the path of process modernization utilizing POSSE workflow automation.
Halifax promises to be the next Canadian city leveraging a POSSE solution to achieve top-tier housing benchmarks, with this municipality seeing the greatest improvement in approval timelines in 2024 with an astounding decrease in time to approval of 11 months on average.
Launching its own POSSE system in September 2024, the City of Ottawa is now well positioned to set the pace in Ontario where otherwise antiquated permitting systems continue to play a prohibitive role in the province’s poor performance on both housing benchmarks and affordable housing supply.
Despite application volumes declining by 38.4% in 2023, municipalities in Ontario consistently benchmark lower than other Canadian cities due to lengthy approval processes and high fees charged on development applications and new residential developments. The lone exception is London, Ontario, the province’s top performer across all CHBA benchmarks in 2024.
The CHBA Study also benchmarks the Planning Features for each Canadian city, scoring each municipality’s capabilities to progress applicants effectively through each phase of plan preparation, submission, and tracking.
In this benchmark category, the CHBA recognized Halifax as ‘best-in-class’ with its application submission process, awarding an overall score of 94% for planning features. Another POSSE Powered municipality was also cited for their technological prowess, with Edmonton recognized as the first municipality in Canada to introduce automated permitting for single-detached homes and semi-detached homes in developing neighbourhoods.
Completing the triple crown, in the category of ‘Technology and Website’ enhancements, five Canadian municipalities received special recognition for their achievements, with 2-of-the-5, Halifax and Calgary producing impressive results while equipped as proficient POSSE users.B
Amidst the current economic trend of ‘Buying Canadian,’ perhaps the most encouraging news of the 2024 CHBA Municipal Housing Benchmark Study is the news that many Canadian cities are now making substantial progress to improve municipal housing processes and more importantly, are seeing these efficiency gains translate into increases in affordable housing inventory.
Calgary, Edmonton, and Durham, (POSSE clients all), were the top three destinations for young people living in Canada between 2021 and 2023, with housing affordability playing a pivotal part in the intra-provincial migration trend for each of these growing cities.
Canadian cities leveraging an award-winning Canadian software solution to become more modern, efficient, and affordable. Now there is a Canadian success story worth celebrating.
For more information, see the Canadian Home Builders’ Association 2024 Municipal Benchmarking Study, and/or view the Municipal Factsheets for each of the following POSSE Powered cities:
