Toronto may still be one of the worst places in the country to live as a tenant, but apartment prices in the city are now on a months-long downward trajectory that is providing renters with a bit of a leg up in what used to be a flustering, ultra-competitive market.
Rents in multiple major Canadian cities dropped last month for the first time since the COVID era, and it’s the most expensive places — like T.O. — that are seeing the biggest declines.
Zumper is the latest rental platform that has released promising (for tenants) stats on the market.
The firm’s new National Rent Report, published Wednesday, shows median one-bedroom apartment prices in Toronto at $2,400 as of last month, which is two per cent cheaper than they were just one month prior and 5.9 per cent less this time last year.
The median price for a two-bedroom, meanwhile, is $3,100 per month, down one per cent month-over-month and 7.5 per cent year-over-year.
The 15 least affordable places to rent an apartment in Canada and how median rents have changed over the last month and last year for one- and two-bedroom units. Data and chart from Zumper.
These are some of the most substantial rent decreases in the country, whereas apartments in Quebec City, Montreal, Winnipeg, Halifax and other locales are actually on the rise: in Barrie, a one-bedroom unit is now 8.9 per cent more expensive than in October 2023.
“Rents are dropping in pricey cities while more affordable markets see sharp increases,” the report states, adding that for Toronto, this is now the third consecutive month where median rents have fallen. It is also the first time that Zumper has seen the median price for Canadian apartments overall fall in its Canadian National Rent Index, which was launched in summer 2022.
Graph of Canadian rent index changes over the last year from Zumper.
This change is, the experts say, largely due to an uptick in apartment completions, with “new supply becoming available to help meet demand across the country helping ease the national prices from the double-digit growth rates they previously experienced in 2023.”
More than 15,000 new condo units have hit the market so far this year, with investors no longer snapping them up, while another nearly 4,000 rental homes were also built.
The fact that so many homes are sitting on the real estate market unsold, and for longer that they used to is also pushing rents downward. Fewer homes are changing hands in both the real estate and rental markets, and homeowners are accepting lower rent prices to secure tenants and cover mortgage and other costs ASAP.
Now way! Any idiot could have predicted this 10 years ago, any piece of land, warehouse space, loft has been given over to the developers to build there tacky cookie cutter units. Every where you look condos are still under construction.
— NEIL MOONEY (@neil_creates) September 12, 2024
The report comes on the heels of another from Rentals.ca and Urbanation that similarly showed that average asking rents for purpose-built rentals and condo apartments in the city down nearly 10 per cent compared to the same time last year.
Still, Toronto remains one of the most exorbitant spots to rent an apartment in Canada, recently re-surpassing Burnaby for the second-place spot.
