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After 115 years in business, Leon’s Furniture is getting into the house-building game. No word yet on whether homes come fully furnished with brand-new pieces from the showroom.
What happened: Leon’s, the Canadian furniture chain best known for letting shoppers ho-ho-hold the payments, has received approval to rezone the 40 acres of land around its Toronto-area headquarters and build as many as 4,000 residential housing units.
- It’s the recliner supplier’s first dip into housing construction, as it looks to populate this plot of land with townhouses and mid- and high-rise buildings.
- If the development proves profitable, Leon’s could turn its attention to the rest of the 430 acres it owns, much of which is empty fields and farmland or vacant parking lots.
Why it matters: As the housing market continues to crunch Canadians, Leon’s is the latest retail property owner to jump on the trend of converting some land into residential housing.
- Real estate giant RioCan is pursuing a strategy of turning some properties into “vibrant communities,” blending residential apartments with retail and commercial spaces — best exemplified by the swanky new development, The Well, in Toronto.
- Another major retail real estate developer, SmartCentres (the place with the penguins that houses your local Walmart), also redeveloped some properties to be mixed-use.
- And Oxford Properties, one the country’s largest mall operators, is working on adding housing to its Square One and Yorkdale malls, both in the Greater Toronto Area.
Yes, but: Retailers adding a few thousand homes isn’t going to solve Canada’s housing crisis; it’s just a drop in the bucket of the 3.45 million extra homes that must be built by 2030.
Bottom line: More needs to be done to incentivize residential developers. Research shows that, despite the crisis, Canada is building fewer homes than a few years ago. A study also found that Canada ranks second-last among OECD nations for permit approval times.—QH