Cooling Rents Offer Short-Lived Break for Canadian Tenants
Last winter, Eric Shingleton-Smith, a 29-year-old Toronto resident, effectively doubled his rent when he moved from sharing a two-bedroom condo with a roommate to living alone in a one-bedroom condo on the city’s waterfront.
His old place cost $2,500, split two ways; he now pays $2,400 on his own.
He had landed his previous, relatively cheap apartment when Toronto’s rental market plummeted in 2020 during the onset of the pandemic, but was forced to move because of a deteriorating roommate situation and the landlord’s plans to sell the unit.
And yet he’s glad that he had to make the move in 2025, rather than during the market’s peak two years earlier.
He said similar one-bedroom apartments are now a few hundred dollars cheaper than they were in 2023 and the search was much easier because of the higher number of vacancies in Toronto.
“If things were different, like [if] my landlord tried to sell sooner, I’d be in a much different situation where I’d have to be way more conscious of price and would probably live with other people,” said Mr. Shingleton-Smith, who said he couldn’t have afforded to live alone if prices were as high as they were two years ago.
But it is still challenging to find affordable places to live, both in big cities or if you’re among the tens of thousands of Canadians who moved during the pandemic from expensive locales to once-cheaper markets in the Prairies and Maritimes.
In a report last month, Rentals.ca found that rents were at their lowest point in two years across much of Canada, and at their lowest point in four years in Toronto and Vancouver. Average asking rents dropped by a massive 8.2 per cent in Vancouver in September when compared with a year ago.
Renters are being wooed by landlords with promotions such as free rent for a month, free parking, storage lockers or subscriptions to services like cable, according to Giacomo Ladas, a Rentals.ca spokesperson.
“It’s safe to say that it is a renter’s market,” Mr. Ladas said. “If you were looking a couple years ago, you might be a bit surprised at where rental prices are now.”
But despite these drops in rent prices, rates are still much higher than before the pandemic. In September, the average asking rent for a one-bedroom unit across Canada on Rentals.ca was $2,123, a figure reached after 12 consecutive months of decline. In September, 2019, the average asking rent was just $1,837.
Rents are also dropping in more affordable regions that some Canadians are seeking out. Average year-over-year rents dropped by roughly 3 per cent in Western cities such as Edmonton and Regina, and by 1 per cent in Halifax. Calgary, which saw rents explode in recent years, experienced a nearly 9-per-cent decline in prices.
The drops in Alberta occurred even as 43,750 people from other parts of Canada moved to that province last year. That’s just below the record of 55,107 set in 2023.
Robust supply, new builds and fewer regulatory hurdles have helped keep rental rates low in Alberta, where year-over-year rents dropped by 7.2 per cent across the province in September.
Aled ab Iorwerth, deputy chief economist at the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, said the recent drops in rental rates across the country are owing to a sudden influx of housing completions, cuts in immigration and a shaky economy.
But the softness isn’t here to stay, because the weak rental market and economy is also delaying new housing starts, he said.
“All of this is putting damper on new construction, so the supply side is really going to be held back,” Mr. ab Iorwerth said. “In a few years, I’m concerned we’ll be back in a situation of not a lot of supply and rental prices will be going up again.”
However, for the coming year, Mr. ab Iorwerth expects that it’ll be possible to find bargain rentals in Canada.
Even better news for people who are shopping for a new rental right now: we’re headed into winter, which tends to be a period of lower demand in rental markets. It could be an ideal time for renters to find a deal.
Renters in Canada’s biggest real estate markets have been taking note of the current market. Philip Lopez, a software developer in Vancouver, recently upgraded from an 800-square-foot two-bedroom apartment in Vancouver to a 1,100-square-foot two-bedroom unit to help facilitate separate office spaces for his and his partner’s new work-from-home jobs.
His original unit, which he moved into in 2023, was priced at $3,700. The new one that he moved into this year is $3,800, but it’s 37 per cent larger for only a 2.7-per-cent price increase.
Mr. Lopez said he recently saw his old unit relisted at a lower rate of $3,500.
Moreover, the search for an apartment was much easier this time. Mr. Lopez and his partner were able to take their time and look for exactly the kind of unit they wanted and were able to book multiple viewings a week.
In 2023, they were only able to see a couple of units per month.
“It was way easier to find apartments,” Mr. Lopez said. “In 2023 we did not have many prospects.”
Mr. Lopez also found that some landlords were offering a free month’s rent, but those promotions were often for small one-bedroom apartments that seemed to be flooding the market.
Meanwhile, Mr. Shingleton-Smith in Toronto only applied for two apartments before being getting his current unit.
“I wasn’t clawing and fighting over stuff, and landlords were really trying to sell me on the unit, trying to get me to sign rather than it being the other way,” he said.
The downward pressure on rents isn’t just taking place in expensive cities like Toronto and Vancouver. Prices are dropping in cheaper cities as well.
Edmonton ranked at the top of The Globe and Mail’s first annual list of the most renter-friendly cities, largely because of its affordability. It saw rents decline by 3.1 per cent in September according to Rentals.ca data. The average one-bedroom apartment cost just $1,386. In Calgary, one-bedroom apartments prices have dropped by 6 per cent to $1,675.
Central and Northern Alberta dominated the top 10 of our ranking for the best cities for renters, with Grande Prairie, Lloydminster, Camrose, Red Deer and Spruce Grove also in the list, largely because of their affordability.
In Canada’s most populous regions, suburbs such as Surrey in B.C. and Ajax in Ontario were the best cities for renters, while Toronto and Vancouver were middle-of-the-road when compared with the rest of their regions.
This article was first reported by The Globe and Mail
