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Prince Edward County is racing to build thousands of homes. Yet more than 1,000 short-term accommodation (STA) listings have been reported in the County, while contemporary reporting on a separate Picton redevelopment found that 27 families were evicted from rent-controlled homes and that 38 houses subsequently sat unoccupied.[1][2] Now developers are trying to restore affordability partly by building smaller. Base31’s proposed $299,000 entry-level home puts a much bigger question into focus: are we measuring how many homes we build, or how much housing we actually add?
Prince Edward County desperately needs housing for workers, young people trying to remain in the community, seniors looking to downsize, families raising children and people who simply cannot afford the County’s conventional housing stock. Against that backdrop, Base31’s announcement of an entry-level home starting at approximately $299,000 is significant.[3] At a time when the cost of new construction has pushed ordinary home ownership beyond the reach of many households, getting a newly built home below $300,000 deserves attention.
But there is a surprisingly basic unanswered question about exactly what $299,000 buys. Local reports have given two substantially different figures for the size of the entry-level home—450 and 612 square feet—and that discrepancy opens the door to a much larger question about Prince Edward County’s housing strategy.[3] We count housing units obsessively, but a “unit” tells us remarkably little about who can afford it, who can live in it, whether it becomes a permanent home or whether it actually increases the community’s effective housing supply.
First, how big is the $299,000 home?
Following an August 19, 2026 presentation to Prince Edward County’s Planning and Development Committee, local reporting described the approximately $299,000 offering as a small stacked townhome and reported that it would contain 450 square feet, one bedroom and a garage.[3] A separate local report subsequently gave the floor area as 612 square feet.
That is not a trivial difference. A 612-square-foot dwelling is approximately 36 per cent larger than a 450-square-foot dwelling. The County’s published subdivision material identifies housing forms, lots and blocks but does not appear to provide an individual floor plan that independently resolves the difference.[4] County First therefore considers the precise size unresolved unless and until an authoritative floor plan or clarification establishes it.
Whether the eventual answer is 450 square feet, 612 square feet or something in between, however, the disagreement points toward a much more consequential question. Prince Edward County does not simply need more doors. It needs homes capable of accommodating the people the community says it wants to retain and attract.
Small homes can be part of the answer
There is nothing inherently wrong with a compact home. For a single person, a couple, a retiree or a first-time buyer willing to exchange space for a lower purchase price, a small dwelling may be exactly what is needed. Smaller homes can require less land, consume less energy and make more efficient use of expensive municipal infrastructure. Most importantly, they can create something increasingly difficult to find in Prince Edward County: an entry point into home ownership.
A worker who could never qualify for a $600,000 mortgage might conceivably purchase a home at $299,000. A senior occupying a larger three-bedroom house might move into a smaller new home, potentially freeing the larger property for another household. Housing diversity can therefore make a community work better, particularly in a place where the conventional model has long been dominated by detached houses on relatively large lots.
But a very small one-bedroom home is not interchangeable with a two- or three-bedroom home for a family with children. That distinction becomes important when governments announce hundreds or thousands of new “housing units” as though every unit addresses the same need. A studio apartment, a compact one-bedroom condominium, a two-bedroom rental and a three-bedroom family house are all counted as one unit even though they serve fundamentally different households.
Ontario has already shown us who often buys small condos
Statistics Canada provides particularly useful evidence about what can happen when large numbers of small ownership units enter a housing market. In 2022, 43.5 per cent of Ontario condominium apartments were classified as investment properties. The Toronto census metropolitan area was slightly lower at 38.9 per cent.[5]
The much more revealing statistic is what happened when Statistics Canada examined unit size. Among Toronto condominium apartments built after 2016, 64.5 per cent of units under 600 square feet were investment properties, compared with 44.1 per cent of units measuring 800 square feet or more. Statistics Canada also found that the median size of newly built Toronto condominiums had fallen dramatically, from 947 square feet for those built in the 1990s to 640 square feet for those built after 2016.[5]
Those figures require context. Ontario’s overall figure includes some condominium buildings owned entirely by a single investor and effectively operated as rental buildings. Statistics Canada reports that excluding those properties reduces Ontario’s proportion to 37.8 per cent.[5] The relationship between smaller units and investor ownership nevertheless deserves attention.
None of this proves that Base31’s smallest homes will be purchased by investors. Prince Edward County is not Toronto, and Base31’s housing program is substantially broader than small condominiums. What the evidence establishes is that asking who actually buys very small ownership units is a legitimate housing-policy question rather than speculation.
The bigger contradiction: homes have also been leaving the permanent housing market
The Base31 debate cannot be understood without looking at what has already happened to Prince Edward County’s existing housing stock. Planning material filed with the County describes more than 850 registered STAs and more than 1,000 STA listings, including approximately 250 in Picton, and estimates that approximately 4.9 per cent of the County’s housing stock had shifted away from long-term use.[1]
The County’s 2024 Housing Plan provides additional context. It describes Prince Edward County as facing a “double bind” in which the community relies heavily on tourism for revenue and employment while also confronting the loss of permanent housing supply. The plan identifies 552 whole-home STAs with active licences and cites research estimating that approximately 4.9 per cent of available County housing had been lost to short-term accommodation, compared with 0.69 per cent provincially.[6]
Those figures need to be interpreted carefully. An online STA listing does not necessarily represent a unique whole house that would otherwise have accommodated a permanent resident, while registered STAs, licensed whole-home STAs and online listings are different measures that should not simply be added together. Some properties would have been cottages or seasonal homes regardless of the STA market.
But the underlying housing issue is difficult to dismiss. In a relatively small community, a measurable share of the existing housing stock shifted away from permanent residential use at exactly the time housing affordability was deteriorating.
Council ultimately responded by restricting new whole-home secondary-residence STAs. Since September 2022, the County has not issued new secondary-residence STA licences.[7] That policy change recognized an important economic reality: in a constrained housing market, converting conventional housing to visitor accommodation can work against the objective of maintaining housing for permanent residents.
The County is therefore trying to expand housing supply after a meaningful portion of its existing stock had already shifted away from long-term use. That should change the way housing targets are discussed, because constructing new housing represents only one side of the equation.
Then another 38 existing houses sat empty
A completely separate housing story unfolded at VineRidge/Picton Heights, along Nery and Inkerman avenues in Picton. The property contained 38 existing dwellings, many originating as former military housing.[8] These were not future units on a planning map. They were real homes in an established neighbourhood and had housed real households.
Contemporary reporting in November 2024 stated that 27 families had been evicted from rent-controlled homes the previous year and that 38 houses were then sitting unoccupied amid the stalled redevelopment.[2]
That matters because these homes illustrate a type of housing loss quite different from an STA. The houses had not disappeared physically. They had not yet been replaced by new construction. They were simply no longer housing people.
The planning history also needs to be described accurately. County First has found no evidence that Prince Edward County Council itself ordered the evictions. The redevelopment subsequently proceeded through an Ontario Land Tribunal process.[8] The point is therefore not to attribute the eviction decisions to Council; it is to examine what the episode tells us about the way communities measure housing supply.
The eventual redevelopment proposes hundreds of new homes and could ultimately create substantially greater residential density on the property. Current County planning information describes 432 proposed residential units.[9] That may be good planning. If dozens of existing houses are ultimately replaced by hundreds of new homes, the long-term result could be a very substantial net increase in housing supply.
But housing shortages operate in real time, not only in completed subdivision plans. An existing house does not need to be designed, financed, approved, serviced and constructed before someone can live in it; it already exists. Once an occupied house is emptied in anticipation of redevelopment, however, it disappears from effective housing supply immediately while the replacement homes may arrive years later.
That period between subtraction and addition deserves far more attention than it receives.
We count future homes far more carefully than homes that disappear
Put the STA experience beside VineRidge and an overlooked weakness in municipal housing policy becomes visible. The two situations are fundamentally different and their numbers should not be combined, but they expose the same accounting problem: governments are exceptionally good at counting homes they intend to create and much less focused on counting housing that disappears from active residential use.
Municipal reports announce 120 units, 432 units, 450 units or potentially thousands of homes. Governments establish housing targets and celebrate planning approvals, building permits, starts and completions. Yet residents experience something different: net housing supply.
If a community builds 100 homes while 30 existing homes disappear from permanent residential use, it has not gained 100 effective homes. It has gained 70.
Affordability complicates the equation further. If an older rent-controlled home disappears and its eventual replacement is a much more expensive market-rate dwelling, the physical number of homes may eventually increase while the supply accessible to the displaced household may not. New construction and affordable housing are connected, but they are not synonymous.
This is where Prince Edward County’s housing story begins to look almost circular. Existing homes migrated into the tourism economy. Elsewhere, rent-controlled homes were emptied as a redevelopment moved forward and replacement housing remained somewhere in the future. Meanwhile, population change, migration, construction costs, land values, labour shortages, interest rates and infrastructure constraints were also making housing more expensive.
Government responded by demanding more construction. Developers now confront today’s much higher cost of producing each home, and one of the most obvious ways to get the selling price back down is to make the home smaller.
Prince Edward County can therefore find itself replacing conventional housing that disappeared from active use with newly constructed housing that costs substantially more to produce and, at the attainable end of the market, may provide substantially less space.
The cheapest affordable home may be the one already standing
None of this means redevelopment should stop. Replacing a relatively small number of low-density houses with hundreds of homes can be good urban planning and could ultimately produce a dramatic increase in housing supply. Nor does it mean STAs caused Prince Edward County’s housing crisis. Tourism, population growth, pandemic-era migration, land costs, interest rates, servicing limitations, construction costs and decades of inadequate rental development all matter.
But there is an important lesson buried in the numbers. Preserving existing housing can sometimes be cheaper and faster than replacing it.
Governments can spend enormous sums subsidizing the construction of a new affordable apartment while an older, less expensive apartment disappears elsewhere. Municipalities can celebrate the approval of several hundred future homes even while existing houses remain vacant for years awaiting redevelopment. A conventional house can shift into visitor accommodation, and governments can then spend public money trying to replace the housing capacity that disappeared.
The most affordable home in the community may therefore not be the subsidized unit planned for completion several years from now. It may be the modest house or apartment that already exists today.
A serious housing strategy needs both approaches operating simultaneously: build much more housing while paying much closer attention to the housing already built.
Could Base31’s smallest homes become STAs?
Prince Edward County’s large tourism economy inevitably raises another question about Base31. A compact home close to restaurants, entertainment, arts and visitor attractions could theoretically look attractive to an STA investor. At approximately $299,000, the capital cost is dramatically lower than purchasing a conventional detached home, while a one-bedroom dwelling can accommodate much the same visitor market as a hotel suite.
It is therefore reasonable to test the hypothesis rather than simply assume it.
The County’s current regulations substantially weaken it. Prince Edward County stopped issuing new secondary-residence STA licences in September 2022, meaning a purchaser cannot simply buy a newly constructed Base31 home and assume it can legally be operated as a conventional whole-home STA.[7]
County First has also found no evidence that Base31’s compact homes were designed as STAs. The available evidence therefore does not justify describing them as future short-term rentals or privately owned hotel rooms.
But rejecting the STA hypothesis does not eliminate the investor question because an investment property does not have to be rented by the night.
Investors can still own homes without operating STAs
A purchaser might buy a compact home and rent it long-term, which would add desperately needed rental supply. Parents might buy one for an adult child. Someone could buy one as a second residence, while another purchaser might hold one partly for long-term appreciation. A retiree from elsewhere could buy one and become a permanent County resident, while a local worker or young first-time buyer could finally get onto the property ladder.
Those outcomes have very different implications for Prince Edward County. An owner-occupied home increases attainable home ownership. A long-term rental increases rental supply. A second or occasional residence adds to the physical housing stock but contributes less to year-round occupancy.
Yet conventional housing statistics generally count all of them as one new unit.
That is why the Statistics Canada evidence on small condominiums matters. It does not predict what will happen at Base31, but it demonstrates why ownership and occupancy should be measured after the homes are built rather than assumed when they are approved.[5]
$489 or $664 a square foot changes the affordability story
The unresolved difference between 450 and 612 square feet materially changes the economics. If the approximately $299,000 home contains 612 square feet, the purchase price works out to roughly $489 per square foot. If it contains 450 square feet, the corresponding figure is approximately $664 per square foot.
Neither calculation proves that the home is expensive or inexpensive. New construction, servicing costs, land, a garage, location and community amenities all matter, while price per square foot is an imperfect method of comparing different forms of housing.
But the calculation illustrates something important about the language of affordability. One way to reduce the total purchase price is to reduce the quantity of housing being purchased.
That may be entirely appropriate. Someone who cannot afford a $500,000 home may be delighted to buy a smaller home for $299,000. Smaller homes may be one of the few practical ways of creating new ownership opportunities at prices many people can reach.
But reducing the price of a comparable house and reducing the amount of house contained in the purchase are not quite the same thing. A $299,000 one-bedroom home and a $500,000 three-bedroom home solve very different problems.
Council asked the more important question: how many bedrooms?
A useful moment during the Base31 discussion came when Councillor Brad Nieman asked about the separate proposed 120-unit purpose-built rental building, including what rents would be charged and whether the apartments would contain one, two or three bedrooms.[3]
The bedroom mix is now identified in County site-plan material: 14 studios, 40 one-bedroom apartments and 66 two-bedroom apartments.[10] That means 55 per cent of the building would consist of two-bedroom homes. No three-bedroom units appear in the current mix.
Those numbers tell us far more about the project than “120 units.” A 120-unit building consisting almost entirely of studios would address a very different housing need from a 120-unit building containing mostly two- and three-bedroom homes, yet both would look identical in the headline housing statistic.
The same problem applies across the County. Municipal housing discussions regularly refer to hundreds or thousands of units, but people do not live in housing-unit totals. They live in bedrooms.
Imagine two new developments containing exactly 1,000 homes. One has 700 studios and one-bedroom apartments and 300 two-bedroom homes, while the other has 200 one-bedroom homes, 400 two-bedroom homes and 400 three-bedroom homes. The municipal housing target records exactly the same achievement—1,000 units—while the two developments could accommodate radically different populations.
If Prince Edward County genuinely wants to retain nurses, teachers, tradespeople, hospitality workers, entrepreneurs and families with children, one useful new measure might therefore be surprisingly simple: bedrooms created per 1,000 new homes.
Base31 is much more than its smallest home
It would be unfair to judge the entire Base31 housing program by its least expensive proposed dwelling. Hilltop is expected to include a range of housing forms, while the broader Base31 redevelopment contemplates thousands of homes over many years.[4] That diversity could become one of its most important contributions to Prince Edward County.
A senior moving from a three-bedroom house into a compact home can free a larger property for another household. A young person purchasing a smaller dwelling can begin accumulating equity rather than concluding that home ownership in the County is permanently beyond reach. A purpose-built rental apartment can house someone who might otherwise compete for one of the community’s scarce existing rentals, while larger houses can accommodate households for whom a one-bedroom home would plainly be unsuitable.
The real issue therefore is not whether 450 or 612 square feet is inherently “too small.” For some households either size could be perfectly sensible, while for others neither would be remotely adequate. The more useful question is whether the County is creating the right mix of homes for the households it needs.
Prince Edward County needs a housing ledger, not just a housing target
Instead of measuring success primarily through the number of units approved, Prince Edward County could publish an annual housing ledger showing what is actually happening to the community’s residential stock.
The addition side could identify homes completed by bedroom count and approximate size, actual selling prices and rents, purpose-built long-term rentals, affordable units and, where reliable information can legally be obtained, broad patterns of owner occupancy and investment ownership. The subtraction side would be just as important, identifying long-term rental homes lost through demolition or conversion, significant redevelopment-related vacancies, housing shifted into STAs and other measurable reductions in housing available for permanent occupation.
That would produce a number far more useful than gross construction alone: the net amount of usable housing Prince Edward County actually added.
If Base31’s least expensive homes are predominantly purchased by first-time buyers, workers and downsizing residents, that would be a genuine housing-policy success. If many become long-term rentals, that too could make an important contribution. If a significant share becomes occasional-use or investment housing, Council would have evidence showing that gross unit production was translating into permanent housing at a different rate than anticipated.
The point is not to prejudge those outcomes. It is to measure them.
The number that matters is what remains after subtraction
Prince Edward County should want developers experimenting with smaller, different and less expensive forms of housing. A newly constructed home beginning around $299,000 represents something increasingly unusual in the County and could provide an ownership opportunity that simply does not exist for many residents today.
But the County’s recent history reveals another side of the housing equation. Planning material reports more than 1,000 STA listings and estimates that approximately 4.9 per cent of the County’s housing stock had shifted away from long-term use.[1][6] Separately, contemporary reporting found that 27 families were evicted from rent-controlled homes at a Picton redevelopment and that 38 existing houses subsequently sat unoccupied.[2] These are different phenomena and should not be conflated, but both show why counting only the homes being added can give a misleading picture of housing supply.
There is a striking circularity to the story. Prince Edward County can approve thousands of future homes and still misunderstand its housing problem if it carefully counts every proposed addition while paying insufficient attention to housing that disappears from active residential use. The community undoubtedly needs new construction—probably a great deal of it—but it also needs to recognize the economic value of preserving and occupying the housing it already has.
The question for Base31 is therefore bigger than whether its least expensive home contains 450 or 612 square feet. The larger question is whether Prince Edward County’s housing strategy is ultimately producing more permanent, useful and affordable housing for the people who live and work here.
That requires a different calculation from the one municipalities usually make: How many homes did we add, how many did we lose, and how many did we keep?
Until Prince Edward County measures all three, a rising housing-unit count may tell us considerably less about solving the housing crisis than we think.
Footnotes and Sources
[1] Prince Edward County — Planning and Urban Design Rationale. Planning material reports more than 850 registered STAs, more than 1,000 STA listings, approximately 250 in Picton, and an estimated 4.9 per cent of housing stock shifted away from long-term use.
Read the Planning and Urban Design Rationale
[2] Contemporary reporting — VineRidge/Picton Heights, November 2024. Reports that 27 families had been evicted from rent-controlled homes the previous year and that 38 houses were then unoccupied.
Read the VineRidge report
[3] Contemporary reporting — Base31 Hilltop presentation, August 2026. Reports the approximately $299,000 starting price, the 450-square-foot one-bedroom description and Council discussion concerning the separate rental building.
Read the Base31 Hilltop report
[4] Prince Edward County — Base31 Draft Plan of Subdivision. Provides the subdivision configuration, residential lots, townhouse blocks and higher-density blocks but does not independently establish the floor area of the approximately $299,000 dwelling.
View the Base31 Draft Plan of Subdivision
[5] Statistics Canada — “Investors in the condominium apartment market, 2022,” October 3, 2024. Provides Ontario and Toronto investor-ownership data and the relationship between condominium size and investment ownership.
Read the Statistics Canada analysis
[6] Prince Edward County — 2024 Housing Plan Update. Discusses the County’s tourism/housing “double bind,” whole-home STA licences and research estimating the share of housing lost to short-term accommodation.
Read the 2024 County Housing Plan Update
[7] Prince Edward County — Secondary Residence Short-Term Accommodations. Sets out the County’s current restrictions on new secondary-residence STA licences.
Read the County’s STA licensing rules
[8] Ontario Land Tribunal — VineRidge planning proceeding. The Tribunal record provides independent planning context for the property, existing dwellings and appeal.
Review the VineRidge OLT decision summary
[9] Prince Edward County — VineRidge development material. County planning information describes the proposed redevelopment and approximately 432 residential units.
Prince Edward County planning website
[10] Prince Edward County — Base31 Site Plan SP-01-26. Current site-plan information identifies the separate 120-unit rental building as containing 14 studios, 40 one-bedroom apartments and 66 two-bedroom apartments.
View Base31 Site Plan SP-01-26
Disclaimer
Public reports differ on the size of Base31’s approximately $299,000 entry-level home. One local report stated that the offering would be a 450-square-foot, one-bedroom unit with a garage, while another subsequently reported 612 square feet. County First has not identified an individual dwelling floor plan in the County’s published subdivision material that independently resolves the discrepancy and therefore does not represent either floor-area figure as definitively established.
References to more than 850 registered STAs, more than 1,000 STA listings and approximately 4.9 per cent of housing stock shifting away from long-term use are drawn from planning and housing material filed with or published by Prince Edward County. These measures are not interchangeable: an online STA listing does not necessarily represent a unique whole home removed from permanent occupancy, and County First does not suggest that every STA would otherwise have housed a permanent resident.
VineRidge/Picton Heights is entirely separate from Base31. Contemporary reporting stated in November 2024 that 27 families had been evicted from rent-controlled homes the previous year and that 38 houses were then unoccupied. County First does not suggest that Prince Edward County Council ordered those evictions. The redevelopment proceeded through a separate planning and Ontario Land Tribunal process and could ultimately produce substantially more housing than previously existed on the site.
This article examines housing supply, affordability, ownership and occupancy using publicly available planning material, government statistics, municipal regulations and contemporary reporting. County First is not suggesting that Base31, Rockport Group, its stakeholders, shareholders, directors or future purchasers intend to operate the proposed homes as STAs, nor that those homes were designed for that purpose. Prince Edward County’s restrictions on new secondary-residence STA licences substantially weaken that hypothesis, and future ownership and occupancy patterns at Base31 are not yet known.
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