From the City permit register

Which Toronto multiplex type is cheapest, and which one waits longest

850 new multiplex building projects have been filed with the City of Toronto since Jan 1, 2024. Each type has its own page on this site showing its own record. This page puts them side by side, because the useful facts are the ones you only see by comparing.

The gap between the fastest and slowest type is 50 days on the median permit. That is the difference between a build that starts this season and one that does not.

The thing that surprises people

A triplex waits longer than a fourplex. The median triplex permit takes 111 days against 91 days for a fourplex. A sixplex is faster than both, at 68 days, though that median rests on only 14 issued projects and should be read with that in mind.

Adding units does not add review time in this register. What these medians cannot tell you is why, because the City does not publish a reason alongside a permit date. Ask your designer what drove the timeline on projects like yours rather than budgeting from the unit count.

Every type, side by side

Projects filed since Jan 1, 2024. Medians are shown only where the City has issued enough permits of that type to compute one.

Type	Projects	Addresses	Median declared value	Median days to issue	Issued
Duplex	115	106	$800,000 n=92	61 n=94	88/115
Triplex	56	51	$900,000 n=55	111 n=44	38/56
Fourplex	309	277	$1,000,000 n=294	91 n=239	223/309
Fiveplex	2	2	not stated n=2	none issued n=2	2/2
Sixplex	24	24	$1,000,000 n=21	68 n=14	14/24
Multiplex (unnumbered)	47	45	$900,000 n=44	74 n=27	24/47
Laneway suite	14	12	$900,000 n=13	124 n=11	11/14
Garden suite	63	58	$1,000,000 n=61	66 n=50	46/63

The n under each median is how many projects that median is drawn from, not the number of projects of that type. A project with no declared value, or one the City has not issued yet, cannot contribute to those figures. Types with fewer than 20 are shown here but are left out of every comparison in the prose on this page.

How many are filed

Fourplex 309
Duplex 115
Garden suite 63
Triplex 56
Multiplex (unnumbered) 47
Sixplex 24
Laneway suite 14
Fiveplex 2

How long the City takes

Median days from application to permit issue. Only types with at least 20 issued projects.

Duplex 61 days
Garden suite 66 days
Multiplex (unnumbered) 74 days
Fourplex 91 days
Triplex 111 days

Citywide median across all 637 issued projects: 81 days. 213 projects are still waiting and are not in any median.

What this page can and cannot see

The City records a building type on every permit, which is how these 850 projects were selected. It does not record which kind of multiplex. That comes from the permit description the applicant wrote, so a type can only be counted when someone typed it.

519 of 850 projects (61.1 percent) name a type in the description. The other 331 say only that a new two-unit or multi-unit house is going up.
96 projects name more than one type, usually a multiplex with a garden or laneway suite on the same lot. They are counted under each type they name, which is why the rows above do not sum to 850.
Declared value excludes the land. It is what the applicant told the City the construction would cost, and in Toronto the lot is usually the larger number.
Laneway and garden suites appear twice on this site. The rows above count new buildings the City classified as two-unit or multi-unit houses whose description mentions a suite. The far larger body of suite permits, filed under the City's own laneway and rear-yard suite classification, has its own page.

PlexCheck Toronto

These are medians. Your lot has one answer.

The table above says what other people's projects cost and how long they waited. PlexCheck reads the City zoning stamped at your address, shows the unit ceiling that applies there, and prices the build against CMHC survey rents for the area.

Free. City-stamped zoning and CMHC survey rents. Takes about 30 seconds.

Check your address

Questions people ask

Which multiplex type gets its Toronto permit fastest? +

Duplex, at a median of 61 days from application to issue across 94 issued projects. Triplex is the slowest at 111 days, a spread of 50 days. The citywide median across all new multiplex projects is 81 days. Only types with at least 20 issued projects are compared, because a median drawn from a handful of permits says more about those permits than about the type.

Does a bigger multiplex take longer to permit in Toronto? +

Not in this data. A triplex takes a median of 111 days against a fourplex's 91, so the smaller building is the slower one, and a sixplex is faster still at 68 days. Unit count is not what drives the review. These are medians of what the City actually did, and they do not explain themselves, so treat the pattern as a reason to ask your designer about your own project rather than as a rule.

Which multiplex type is cheapest to build in Toronto? +

On declared construction value, duplex is the lowest at a median of $800,000 across 92 projects that state a value, against $1,000,000 for fourplex. That is the figure the applicant wrote on the application. It is not a sale price, it is not the finished cost of the build, and it excludes the land, which in Toronto is usually the larger number.

Which multiplex type do Toronto owners apply for most? +

Fourplex, with 309 projects at 277 addresses since January 2024. That is 59.5 percent of the 519 projects whose permit description names a type at all.

Why do the type counts not add up to the citywide total? +

Two reasons. The City's permit description names a type on 519 of the 850 projects, so 331 say only that a new two-unit or multi-unit house is being built. And 96 projects name more than one type, usually a multiplex with a garden or laneway suite on the same lot, so they are counted under both. Adding the type rows together would double-count those and still miss the unlabelled ones.