The 2025 budget and Toronto’s bursting real estate bubble
City officials warned council for years not to get addicted to real estate-linked revenues, and now we're paying the price
By John LorincFor years, Toronto’s finance officials have dutifully added an annual footnote to their budget documents, cautioning readers that a portion of the City’s revenues — namely the municipal land transfer tax (MLTT) and, to a lesser degree, development charges — is exposed to fluctuations in property markets. Or could be, except that Toronto’s property markets just kept climbing and climbing so those teeny-tiny actuarial red flags didn’t give anyone pause to contemplate... Read more
