We Read 1,331 Permits: The Cost to Build a House in Ontario

Building permits look like the honest answer to what a house costs here. They are not.

Between January 2024 and August 2026, 1,331 Toronto permits for a new detached house carried a declared project value. The median is $1,000,000. Now the shape of the numbers: 93.9 per cent are an exact multiple of $50,000, 1,250 of the 1,331. The single value $1,000,000 accounts for 18.9 per cent, 251 permits. Nobody prices a custom build at exactly a round million.

A permit records what somebody wrote in a blank box on a form. We downloaded 917,258 permit records from the open data portals of Toronto, Mississauga, Oakville, Burlington and Brampton on August 26, 2026, and set the declared values against what 13 companies publish per square foot.

What a building permit actually records

Ontario has one form for this, the Application for a Permit to Construct or Demolish. Section A asks two things about the job: "Project value est. $" and "Area of work (m2)". No breakdown, no supporting quote, no cost consultant's take-off. Section I declares the information "true to the best of my knowledge", the whole standard the figure is held to.

Nothing trues it up later. A permit closes on inspection of the work, not on a final invoice. The number filed in 2024 is still the applicant's estimate today, which is why every figure below is a declared value and never a cost.

Statistics Canada builds its Building Permits Survey on these records. Its reporting guide, now archived, says the value of construction is "as reported by the permit applicant or as estimated by the municipality". The field is close to complete where it matters: 99.4 per cent of Toronto New Houses permits in this window carry one.

What GTA permits declare a new house costs

Each figure is a median or quartile of declared values on permits issued in that window, one row per permit, blanks and zeros dropped. The last column is the test. A costed budget lands on an arbitrary number; a guess lands on a round one.

Toronto alone records a floor area beside the value, so it is the only one of the four where a declared dollar per square foot can be computed. The median Toronto new detached permit records 433.00 square metres of residential floor area, which is 4,661 sq ft at 10.7639 sq ft per square metre. Value divided by area, permit by permit, gives a median of $203 per sq ft declared across those 1,331 permits issued 2024 to 2026. Mississauga's 2021-2023 figure on the same method is $253 per sq ft declared on 407 permits. Oakville and Burlington publish no floor area at all.

Brampton publishes 221,902 permit records with a gross floor area field and no construction-value field of any kind.

What Toronto homeowners declare each job costs

The round-number habit runs through all of it, and nobody checked a figure against an invoice.

Mississauga stopped estimating and started calculating

Divide each Mississauga permit's declared value by its recorded floor area and the number changes character in 2024.

Before 2024 the ratio wanders project by project. From 2024 one new detached permit in five lands within 0.1 per cent of $8,880 per square metre, and one alteration in three lands on $710. Divide $8,880 by 10.7639 and that is $825 per sq ft prescribed (a rate the City sets and multiplies by your floor area, instead of using your own estimate). The City's separate growth management extract shows the same break and names its field PrescribedValue_Dollars.

Toronto's by-law does use a City-set value, but only for permit classes its fee table does not list. Municipal Code Chapter 363, section 363-4.9(B), says that "For the purposes of Subsections A(1) and (2)", the rules for unlisted work, "prescribed construction value will be established by the Chief Building Official on an annual basis". For a house permit, no by-law read here lets a municipality reject an applicant's estimate and substitute its own.

Nothing in the fee schedule disciplines the number

On a house permit the declared value does not move the price by a cent.

Toronto states the formula outright: "Permit fee = SI x A", where A is the "Floor area in m2 of work involved". Burlington uses the identical formula. Mississauga and Oakville publish the same kind of per-square-metre index.

Declared value survives only as the residual rule for work the area table cannot classify, such as a retaining wall. Toronto charges $21.65 per $1,000 of prescribed construction value there, and $92.79 per hour where no prescribed value exists. Oakville assesses "any building permit not otherwise listed" at 1 per cent of construction value. Neither rule touches a house, so nobody has a reason to labour over the estimate or to check it.

What builders publish, and why the spread is definitional

"When someone gives a square footage number, what does that included? Does that include permits, drawings, legal fees, cost of land? Excavation? I feel like people throw out numbers but don't specify."

That is a homeowner posting in r/homebuildingcanada. Here is what 13 Ontario and GTA publishers say.

RE/MAX, citing Altus, puts Toronto at $210 to $290 per square foot, the lowest reading here. The highest is $950 or more, a spread of 4.5 times ($950 divided by $210 = 4.52) for one province in one year. Force everyone onto hard construction cost for a GTA detached house and they cluster between $350 and $500.

Three gaps run through it. Two of the 13 state a denominator: Leedway, whose prices "are quoted for the heated living area only", and BVM, whose 5,100 sq ft is 3,800 above grade plus a 1,300 sq ft basement. Only three say whether HST is in or out. And two publishers contradict themselves, Leedway with $325 to $550 on one page and $300 to $600 on another, RE/MAX with $375 to $500 on one and $210 to $290 on another.

BVM publishes a real project budget instead of a range: $1,844,862.40 for a current custom build of about 5,100 sq ft, "inclusive of construction, finishes, and HST". Divide that by 5,100 sq ft and you get about $362, which it rounds to $360 all-in.

The market is not what moved. Statistics Canada's construction price index for a Toronto single-detached house moved from 104.1 in 2024 Q2 to 105.4 in 2026 Q2, about 1.2 per cent in two years, and Altus Group reports Toronto construction costs coming down over the past year. A page quoting $250 and one quoting $950 are not disagreeing about the market. They are counting different things.

The denominator does more work than the market

CMHC's Cost of Delivering Housing in Canada had a cost consultant price a defined Toronto single-family archetype from quantity take-offs in July 2017. Total project cost came to $244.57 per square foot, being $187.83 of construction and $56.73 of development cost.

That is normalised over a gross floor area of 3,855 sq ft, which the report says includes the walls and the 850 sq ft basement. The same house has 2,300 sq ft above grade, and builders quote per heated living area. So $244.57 x 3,855 sq ft = $942,817, and $942,817 divided by 2,300 sq ft is $410 per sq ft. Same house, same nails, about 68 per cent higher. Those are 2017 dollars, not a current price. The mechanism is the point.

What people building in the GTA report

One poster reported a relative's build "about 50km outside of Toronto" at "about 600k for 3400 square feet", or $600,000 divided by 3,400 sq ft, "about $176/ square foot". That owner was his own general contractor. The most upvoted reply was flat: "I don't believe it can be done today for $176 anywhere in Canada." Read all of it as experience, not market data. No two of them mean the same thing by "per square foot".

What to ask before you accept a per square foot number

Five questions turn an advertised rate into something you can compare.

1. What is the denominator? Gross, above-grade and heated living area differ by 68 per cent on one costed house.
2. Hard cost or all-in? KingsGate publishes both, at $350 to $500 and $450 to $700+ per sq ft.
3. Is HST in, and is land out? Only three of the 13 say whether HST is in or out, and every range that addresses the lot excludes it.
4. What is added for soft costs? Leedway puts design, permits and management at an extra 15 to 30 per cent.
5. Where is the line-item budget? One publisher of 13 shows a real one.

Then price your own permit, which you can do exactly. A new Toronto detached house of 250 square metres is 250 x $18.56 = $4,640, plus $56.33 for the new residential unit, so $4,696.33. Development charges are separate.