While much research has documented the proliferation of new residential space through condominium development in Toronto over the last two decades, low-rise homeowners have been adding significant space to single-family housing across the city through renovations, including housing additions and basement underpinnings. These granular spatial transformations have been less visible than the city's condo towers, yet they are significant, contributing to changes in both housing supply and growth in low-rise home valuations as they have proliferated across the city in recent years. In this talk we examine two decades of public building permit data published by the City of Toronto to identify and map home renovations that have either added space or that create the building envelope for new livable floor space within a single-family home. In doing so, we highlight the conceptual importance of these types of renovations to theories of equity wealth and housing supply.
