A surge in demand pushed Canada’s rental market to its tightest level in two decades last year, with the vacancy rate in purpose-built apartments dipping below two per cent and rent for new tenants going up by 18 per cent.
Those were some of the main takeaways from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s annual report on the state of Canada’s rental market.
The figures cited above were for purpose-built rental apartments, so they don’t include what’s happening in condos, or in apartments built out of occupied family homes.
For purpose-built rentals, the national vacancy rate fell to 1.9 per cent last year, its lowest level since 2001.
Booming demand for apartments pushed up the price to get one, too, with the average rent hitting $1,258 a month. That was up by 5.6 per cent from the previous year’s level, and roughly twice the annual average seen for the past 30 years.
But rent didn’t go up at the same pace for every unit.
Apartments where there was a change in tenants saw the rent go up by 18.9 per cent. Those where there was no change in tenancy saw rents go up by only 2.9 per cent, on average. “This reflects the fact that, once a tenant vacates a unit, landlords are generally free to increase asking rents to current market levels,” the CMHC said.
That gap was even more stark in two of Canada’s biggest cities, Toronto and Vancouver, where average rents for a unit that saw a tenant change went up by 29 and 24 per cent, respectively.
More to come.