Toronto Residents Concerned About Housing Affordability and Municipal Tax Burden
Toronto, ON, Dec 4, 2025 — Recent Ipsos polling for TRREB shows that affordability concerns are influencing life decisions. 41% of Toronto respondents say they are likely to leave the city within the next five years due to cost pressures, highlighting the urgency for effective policy solutions to retain residents and sustain a vibrant housing market.
Affordability Concerns and Frustration
Housing affordability remains a top concern for Toronto residents. 88% are concerned about the current state of housing affordability in Toronto. Concern is highest among younger adults and low-income households, with 92% of those aged 18–34 and 94% of households earning under $40,000 expressing worry. Residents increasingly fear that young people may never be able to afford homes in the city, and 82% report being frustrated by the lack of progress on housing affordability.
Municipal Land Transfer Tax and Property Taxes as Key Issues
Government-imposed costs are viewed as a major obstacle to affordability. 81% of Toronto respondents agree that high development fees and housing-related taxes contribute to the affordability crisis, and 88% believe housing taxes are too high. The TRREB Fall Advocacy Report identifies municipal revenue sources such as property taxes, development charges, and the Municipal Land Transfer Tax (MLTT), a tax that residents see as exacerbating affordability challenges. In fact, 56% of Toronto residents say the City depends too much on the MLTT, and 60% believe cities overly depend on property taxes, placing both among the most overused municipal revenue tools.
Support for Policy Action
Public support for tax relief is strong with 78% of Toronto residents favor lowering taxes for all homebuyers, reinforcing calls for municipal and provincial action to reduce financial barriers to homeownership. Eighty-two percent of residents favor reducing development charges by 50%, and 82% support removing HST from the purchase of a home under $1.5 million.
Toronto residents are signaling a clear need for change. Concerns about affordability, frustration with progress, and dissatisfaction with municipal tax reliance, particularly the MLTT, underscore the urgency for policies that ease financial pressures and restore confidence in the housing market.
About the Study
These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between Oct 17th – 30th , 2025, on behalf of TRREB. For this survey, a sample of 2,000 GTA residents aged 18 years and over was interviewed. Weighting was then employed to balance demographics to ensure that the sample's composition reflects that of the adult population according to Census data and to provide results intended to approximate the sample universe. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ±2.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all GTA adults been polled. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error.
For more information on this news release, please contact:
Sean Simpson
Senior Vice President, Canada, Public Affairs
[email protected]
Raymond Vuong
Senior Account Manager, Canada, Public Affairs
[email protected]
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