Frequently Asked
Questions

NBRS (pronounced "neighbours") is a Toronto-based developer building quality rental housing at the neighbourhood scale. We focus on 5-10 unit buildings in established neighbourhoods—the kind of homes Toronto used to build but stopped decades ago. Learn more about our mission and founder Anthony DiCenzo.

Missing middle housing refers to the range of multi-unit housing types between single-family homes and high-rise apartments—duplexes, triplexes, townhouses, and small apartment buildings. These building types were common in Toronto until restrictive zoning made them illegal to build. Recent policy changes are finally making them possible again.

Our first project, FAMILY 1, is in Mimico, a neighbourhood in Toronto’s Etobicoke area. NEIGHBOUR 1 is our second Toronto project. Explore our rental homes for current project details; contact us for location and leasing questions.

Our homes are designed for families who want to stay in Toronto but need more space than typical condos offer. We're looking for renters who value quality, community, and neighbourhood living. Sign up for our waitlist to be notified when units become available.

Our units are designed for families, with real bedrooms, real storage, and real space. FAMILY 1 features 1,300 square foot, three-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom homes, with dedicated outdoor space in three of the five homes—the kind of space that is hard to find in Toronto's rental market.

As-of-right development means the zoning already permits what we want to build. We don't need to apply for rezoning or go through lengthy approval processes. This allows us to target construction completion within 12–18 months of acquisition. Lease start dates are scheduled separately.

We're looking for partners who share our vision: accredited investors seeking stable returns with social impact, landowners with underutilized parcels, brokers with off-market or as-of-right sites, and nonprofits looking to expand community housing. Visit our Partner page to get in touch.

FAMILY 1 in Mimico is available for move-in November 1st, 2026. Join our waitlist to stay updated on progress and availability.

A multiplex is a residential building with two to six units — including duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and sixplexes. These are the building types that shaped Toronto's most beloved neighbourhoods before restrictive zoning made them illegal. Since May 2023, Toronto's updated zoning allows multiplexes to be built as-of-right across the city.

Yes. Toronto has citywide fourplex permissions, while five- and six-unit permissions depend on the location. Our Toronto multiplex guide links to the current City rules. A compliant proposal may avoid rezoning, but building permits and other approvals still take time. We do still go to the Committee of Adjustment where it's worth it — used carefully, minor variances let us reduce construction cost and improve how the homes actually live, without taking on the risk and delay of a rezoning. NBRS selects as-of-right sites and targets construction completion within 12–18 months of acquisition, with lease dates scheduled separately.

Most multiplex developers in Toronto build small units aimed at investors. We build homes sized for families at different stages of life. FAMILY 1 is five three-bedroom homes of roughly 1,300 sq ft, with real storage and dedicated outdoor space in three of the five homes. NEIGHBOUR 1 is seven homes ranging from 500 to 1,400 sq ft, from one bedroom up to three-and-a-half — because a family starting out and a family with three kids need different things, and both should be able to stay in the neighbourhood. Across every product we focus on quality design, construction completion targeted within 12–18 months of acquisition, and renting directly to families.

Multiplex housing adds gentle density without changing the character of a street. It keeps families in established neighbourhoods, supports local schools and businesses, and makes better use of existing infrastructure like transit and parks. It's the kind of growth that strengthens communities rather than displacing them.

Fourplexes have been permitted as-of-right on virtually every residential lot in Toronto since May 2023. Sixplexes are more limited: as of June 2025 they're permitted as-of-right across the Toronto and East York district and in Ward 23 (Scarborough North), with an opt-in path for other wards. So the honest answer is that it depends on your lot — the citywide permission is four units, and six is geographic. Either way, that count is for the main building: as-of-right permission also allows a garden suite or laneway suite at the rear. On a four-unit lot that rear home is what takes a project to five, which is the threshold where CMHC MLI Select financing becomes available. We check all of this before anything else, because it changes what a site is worth.

New purpose-built rental housing now qualifies for a full rebate of both portions of HST. The federal government removed the 5% GST on qualifying purpose-built rental in September 2023, and Ontario matched it by rebating 100% of the 8% provincial portion and removing the per-unit cap that used to apply. Together that's roughly 13% off the tax-exposed cost of a project. To qualify, the building needs at least four self-contained units, and construction has to have started after September 13, 2023 and begin before 2031. In practice this enables us to effectively reduce the cost to build by 13%.

Yes, on the first six units. Toronto exempts development charges on multiplex projects of up to six units. Outside that exemption, development charges can run as high as $138,000 per unit, so on a six-unit building the waiver can be worth over half a million dollars. Parkland dedication is exempted alongside it. This is the policy change that makes small-scale rental viable for builders who aren't operating at tower scale.

MLI Select is CMHC's mortgage insurance program for multi-unit rental. It scores a project on affordability, energy efficiency and accessibility, and better scores unlock better terms — up to 95% loan-to-value, and amortizations as long as 50 years at the top affordability tier. The detail most people miss is the threshold: MLI Select requires at least five self-contained rental units. A fourplex doesn't qualify on its own. That's one of the reasons we build at five units and up — FAMILY 1 is five homes and NEIGHBOUR 1 is seven. CMHC is a continuously evolving program, and we design our products to score on energy efficiency and affordability so we can access the program's lower financing rates and improve project cash flow.

There's no honest single number, because the land is usually the largest and most variable line — and it's the one nobody else can quote for you. What we can say is what moves the total: the product itself, and the site conditions — lot geometry, site access, soil conditions, and any required servicing upgrades. What's changed recently is the deductions rather than the costs. Between the full HST rebate on purpose-built rental and the development charge exemption on the first six units, a six-unit project carries meaningfully less cost than the same building would have in 2022. We're also building supplier relationships and refining our products to bring costs down further, while holding the quality standard these buildings need — we intend to own them as Toronto keeps growing into a global city. We'd rather walk a specific site than quote a range that turns out to be wrong for your lot.

Longer than "as-of-right" implies, but it can be managed. On FAMILY 1 we went from site acquisition to Committee of Adjustment approval and permits in hand in four months, and we broke ground in September 2025. That's faster than typical, and it's deliberate: before we commit to a site we already have a full understanding of what we're building and how we're going to achieve it. We're productizing our designs so that drawings can be developed ahead of acquisition rather than after it, which is where most of the avoidable delay sits. Across the city the picture is worse — permit review is the real bottleneck, not zoning. FAMILY 1 is available for move-in November 1st, 2026.

NBRS focuses on new ground-up construction. We give new life to old properties and put new homes for families back into the City of Toronto. Converting an old house into units usually means inheriting its foundation, its framing, its servicing and whatever was done to it over a century — and those unknowns tend to surface after you've committed. Building new lets us design real family-sized layouts, proper sound separation between homes, and current energy performance in from the start. The energy piece isn't just principle: it's what scores points under CMHC MLI Select, and it's very hard to retrofit a century home into a building that performs well on that scoring.