Fees, Taxes, and Supply: Frank Cairo on Ottawa's Sub-$300,000 Townhomes
You do all the right things as a young person to put yourself on the path to home ownership. You graduate, maybe find yourself in a two-income household. You're ready to buy. Instead, you're priced out. That is how radio host Graham Richardson described the problem facing young Canadians before he introduced a guest whose numbers, he said, he had to read twice.
The guest was Frank Cairo, co-founder and CEO of CAIVAN, the Ontario developer and founding donor of the Future Cities Institute (FCI). On The Graham Richardson Show on iHeartRadio, Cairo confirmed that CAIVAN is selling townhomes in Ottawa's west end for less than $300,000. FCI had no part in the project, but it caught our attention for the same reason it caught Richardson's.
The homes are at CAIVAN's Magnolia community in Stittsville, with up to three bedrooms, and sales opened September 12. The development offers a real-world case for a question housing researchers keep asking: which levers actually move the price of a new home?
Cairo pointed first to government. Fees and taxes, he said, can account for close to a third of what a buyer pays for a new home. CAIVAN says the pricing reflects the expanded HST rebate for eligible new homes and Ottawa's reduction in development charges. "We're seeing those savings translate to better selling prices with customers," Cairo said.
He was clear that policy was only part of it. CAIVAN works across manufacturing, land development, and home building, and Cairo described the price as the end of "a long and laborious process of reducing costs in every way we can across our entire value chain."
If we don't have supply increase in a material way, there always will be an increase in value over time that may be accelerating beyond what people can afford.
Then Richardson asked the obvious question. With thousands of interested buyers and a few hundred homes, what stops early buyers from reselling at a higher price? Cairo did not argue. "If we don't have supply increase in a material way, there always will be an increase in value over time that may be accelerating beyond what people can afford," he said.
In Cairo's account, fee relief and cost-cutting brought this price down, but keeping homes within reach for the next buyer takes steady new supply for years to come. CAIVAN says another 100 homes could follow this fall, with several hundred more in 2027.
According to Canadian Mortgage Trends, CAIVAN estimates monthly mortgage payments starting around $1,330, based on a $20,000 down payment, a 3.94% rate, and a 30-year amortization, with a household income of roughly $67,000 needed to qualify. Property taxes, fees, and utilities come on top of that.
Richardson came back to that monthly payment once Cairo signed off. "A lot of renters would be interested in that," he said. "That's for sure."
Hear the full interview on The Graham Richardson Show, starting at 53:09.