Sure, Toronto will likely never be regarded as an affordable place to live by any means, but if it’s any consolation, housing prices in the rental market are somewhat easing up.
A new survey from Rentals.ca and Urbanation shows that although Canada’s biggest hub is still the second-priciest major city in the country to rent an apartment, prices for all unit sizes are on the decline, reaching their lowest point in more than two years.
Compared to the same time in 2023, rent rates in the city last month were down an average of 9 per cent, marking a 28-month low.
Not low enough. Keep it going.
— Johnathan Snow (@DaxterDude2) November 17, 2024
Two-bedroom units saw the biggest year-over-year drop in mean price — of 10 per cent, to $3,115 — followed by one-bedrooms (down 8 per cent to $2,385) and studio apartments (down 7 per cent to $1,932).
The cost to lease the typical three-bedroom apartment, a type of home that is becoming increasingly scarce in Toronto, stayed about the same last month as it was last November, at $3,710.
This is while home sales in the region, particularly condo sales, have been stagnant or on the decline for much of the year with a mountain of listings available.
Tenants in a few parts of the province are likewise seeing dips, like in Mississauga, Kitchener, Hamilton, Barrie and London, where rents have now fallen an average of 4 per cent over the course of a year.
In Burlington and Windsor, this figure was 3 per cent, whereas in Kingston, it was down an even more dramatic 7 per cent.
Conversely, locales like Waterloo, Niagara Falls and Guelph are seeing overall rent rates actually spike, by 7 per cent, 9 per cent and 1 per cent, respectively. But, all of these areas remain, of course, cheaper than Toronto.
While an apartment in our city will run you around $2,640 per month, the cost for a comparable unit in Niagara Falls would be only $1,992. Of course, one could always move to Regina, Saskatchewan, where the latest rents average out to be only $1,368.
