SiteSummit 2026– provided by SiteNews and EllisDon– leaned into its “Summer School” theme, loading its Toronto program with sessions on whatever from AI adoption to modular building and construction.
Amongst them, 3 sessions dug into real estate from very various angles: a market update, a materials-focused deep dive on mass lumber, and a policy panel on what it’ll in fact take to make things move. In between them, a market expert, a realty broker, a trio of designers and engineers, and a panel of real estate executives laid out where the correction stands, where the market is searching for new tools, and where the policy conversation is getting stuck.Resale is stabilizing, but new building is still in freefall During Real estate 101: State Of The Real Estate Market , Urbanation’s Shaun Hildebrand laid out just how deep the GTA condominium correction has actually run– with new launches nearly stopped, standing inventory in the thousands, and default rates climbing up towards 15– 20%in 2026– however pointed to early stabilization on the resale side specifically: listings pulling back, downtown months of supply tightening, and HST elimination narrowing the new-versus-resale price gap. Daniel Foch of Valery.ca zoomed out nationally, noting this correction competitors anything on record considering that
the 1960s, with Ontario and BC diverging dramatically from provinces like Alberta, where rental construction and migration are still driving growth. His continued reading the course forward: rates have actually already done the majority of the remedying, and it’s earnings that require to capture up next.Mass timber is having a minute, but the economics are still capturing up Structural engineer David Moses and designer Chris McQuillan signed up with mediator Joseph Ogilvie for Mass Wood 101: Mass Wood’s Killer Applications, to talk through why lumber is gaining ground on concrete and steel– sustainability, labour shortages, and unpredictable steel supply chains among the drivers– with health care emerging as an unforeseendevelopment location. The sticking points: moisture management and a funding design that still does not favour designers who need to pay upfront. The panelists concurred the bigger opportunity might be cultural– lumber’s ties to digital style and sustainability could be exactly what pulls the next generation of skill into construction.Policy is the real bottleneck RESCON’s Richard Lyall, WoodGreen’s Mwarigha, and the City of Toronto’s Hugh Clark discussed at Real estate 201: Housing For Life: Moving Beyond Financier Units, whether Build Canada Homes amounts to real change or just playing at the margins.