2y ago

Canada's landlords now asking a record-breaking average of $2,078 per month: rental report

www.ctvnews.ca Canada's landlords now asking a record-breaking average of $2,078 per month: rental report

According to a new report from Rentals, In July, the Canadian rental market hit a record high with an average asking rent of $2,078, marking an 8.9 per cent annual increase.

142 comments

Here's your reminder that Ontario expects disabled people to live on 13k a year.
- If they are lucky. Getting disability anything requires 90% luck and a doctor who "has the time" to sign a few documents.
  
  In the US, they assign doctors to evaluate you, only to see you literally struggling to walk/balance yourself, and be told you could “probably work at least 4-8 hours a week, no disability for you, moocher”.
  Nevermind that even if said mythical 4-8 hour/week, remote job existed, the pay wouldnt cover jack shit…
- And our retirement pension is 760$/month in Canada, lol? At 65yo we will all live in the street
- In BC it’s 18k a year for comparison.
  
  That's interesting, thanks

There is such a big divide between homeowners and renters. The average mortgage is 12.5years in, meaning payments are based on home prices from 2010, when canadian homes were 300k on average. That means that homeowners probably pay on average, 1200 a month while renters are paying double that amount. Younger generations are fucked.
- The consequence of Boomer "I got mine" mentality
  
  Mostly millennials and GenX. It's easy to blame boomers but they aren't the ones buying most of the houses.
  Edit: looks like this hit close to home with the "muh boomers are the root cause of all evil" crowd. This is your reminder that the youngest boomers are now 60 years old. You're also out of your mind if you think homeowners aged 35 to 59 wouldn't scream bloody murder if the government somehow managed to suppress home prices.
- My landlord pays 1200$ for her mortgage and I pay 1000$ fir renting the mold infested basement !
  
  In the last year my mortgage has ballooned by over 1k a month from 1600$ to 2700$. In that same period my basement tenant has seen her rent increase 0$.
  Why? Because mortgage rates and affording my house are not her problem. That's the responsibility I assumed when I bought the house. I don't intend to raise her rent now or any time in the future.
  Sadly, I keep being painted with the same brush as all the other quite frankly shitty people that call themselves landlords.

What we need to do is de-incentivize the commodification of housing entirely. Really make it unprofitable to deal in homes while passing the risk for your "investment" on to the people you're exploiting.
I'm talking about an outright ban on all corporations, foreign and domestic, from owning single family homes — corporations need offices, not homes, and shell corporations and LLCs don't even need those. Give a one year grace period, then tax all rental income collected from single-family homes at 100%. Maybe fine them each year too until they shape up.
I'm talking about regulating rental prices on short-term rentals, and capping the annual income allowed from short-term rental units to a value indexed against minimum wage (or preferably the area's living wage, determined not by any level of government itself but by valid third party organizations).
I'm talking an annual federal tax on properties not occupied full time by the owner or their immediate blood relative. Parent, sibling, or child. Something insane, maybe 400-800% of the home's property tax. Multiply it exponentially for each hoarded home. Throw in an exception for a second home if it's far enough from the first (people who own cottages aren't the problem, and shouldn't be penalised). But only for the second home — nobody needs two or three or four "vacation homes".
That's how we force land-rich boomers out of the housing "market" and get homes into the hands of people who need them, who should have a right to stable housing, who are currently being blocked from the market by vampiric land leeches.
- Rental income is taxed at 100%, FYI.
  I think carrot works better than stick. Instead of punishing everyone who made an investment, and spending god knows how much money to enforce it, just offer a one time capital gains exemption on any investment single family dwelling that has rental income for more than a year. But make that exemption dependent on the sale going to someone who doesn't already own a home. (No landlords scooping up extra properties) this puts sellers in connection with buyers and since the seller is getting a big payout they can do the extra leg work. I bet many of the properties get sold to existing tenants.
  The government gets an easy cost effective way to free up supply, and it doesn't actually take money out of their pocket. (Just removes future tax income). Limit the program to no more than 3 years. Anyone who is a casual landlord will jump to get out. Boomers in retirement will jump at it as they will have owned these properties for years. This will free up supply in months, not years. Everyone I know who owns rentals that I discussed this with said they would sell if they could avoid capital gains.
  That's my $0.02. FWIW
  
  Instead of punishing everyone who made an investment,
  You've already lost me. They're the ones trying to treat homes as a commodity fit for investing. Investments carry risk. Passing the cost of that risk to tenants, or giving them a free pass because they're being forced to play by real rules instead of the rigged game they've been taking advantage of, doesn't sit well with me.
  They made an investment that by its very nature exploits people. They should shoulder the consequences of that decision.
  
  This is actually a great idea.
- But then how would we generate GDP?
  
  This is fake GDP. Investing in land value is unproductive. Unlike a business, nothing of value is added.
  In Canada, spending a million dollars to open a restaurant or found a tech start up is a worse bet than just buying a house. Not to mention these businesses are simply harder to keep open when real estate expenses are so high. This is terrible for our economy and one of the biggest reasons why our GDP-per-capita is falling behind peer countries.
- Your solution focusing on increasing the supply of single family homes is questionable. Single family homes are incapable of supporting affordable housing markets in high demand areas like Toronto, Quebec, Ontario, and Vancouver, which are where most Canadians live. North America needs more flexibility and capital to support upzoning the housing supply we already have from the overused SFH to missing middle multiplexes, or from those to low rise apartments, or from those to 5 over 1 style buildings, or from those to towers. The rigid Euclidean zoning policies of North America mean that even if all housing stock was privately owned by residents, there would still be a shortage in the high demand places where most people live, leading to continued high prices. Especially because we have so much trouble building quality public transit that would open up more land as desirable for development. High speed rail between Windsor and Quebec City could spread out the demand to existing supply in smaller low-cost cities while providing a boon to those cities' economies, but Via Rail has pretty definitively shut that down in favor of HFR at this point for cost reasons
- This is the only idea aggressive enough to work which is why they will never let it happen
- Or at the very least, the focus could go into de-commodifying rentals so that everyone always has a fall-back option for safe, clean, affordable places to live even if they can't buy a house/condo. Nobody should be seeking profit in a manner that endangers people's safety.
- So what happens to a rental highrise in your policy idea?
  
  Rental highrises are not single-family homes. What we need there are more stringent rent control and to move the majority of such rentals from for-profit property developers to non-profit housing cooperatives.
  We could also prohibit property developers from purchasing highrises from each other altogether. You want a new high-rise? Build one. You don't want one of the ones you own? You get to sell it to a cooperative for a heavily regulated maximum price, and might get to break even.
- So Bob sees your tax, looks at the Ahmed family renting his unit. Says "oh crap, uh, Ahmeds, you're out, I need to put my brother Doug in there to dodge this tax!"
  Result: Brother Doug moves from a tiny apartment to living in Bob's house.
  The Ahmeds cannot find another place, because half the Bobs are doing a similar scam, and the other half the Bobs are doubling their rents because they can see they now have a good that's in even shorter supply and they don't feel guilty at all for this because they're now paying triple property tax.
  The Ahmeds now live in their car and eat cat food.
  You know when the number of rentable units goes down, rental prices go up, right? I'm all for going after people who leave units vacant, and for taxing the income people get from these investments, but taxing rental units means making the rent price worse.
  
  But if Bob moves Doug into his second house, then he's now either a) exploiting his brother instead of a stranger, which most landleeches are less likely to want to do, or (more likely) b) giving his brother a better rent to avoid exploiting his brother... and is thus making a much smaller profit than when he was exploiting the Ahmed family. And if not, then at least Bob only has so many brothers he can rent to, so the worst kinds of Bob will eventually have to sell off some number of properties.
  But the goal of the immediate family exemption is to allow families to help each other own homes that aren't beholden to some shit stain developer or daywalking asshat. Specifically to let boomer and gen-x parents provide struggling millenial or gen-z children with homes, but I'm sure I could come up with a handful of other semi-likely relevant situations as well.
  Back to your example though, the lack of profit he's now making pushes Bob to sell the place. And because all his landleech buddies are making less and less money per hoarded home, they're also more likely to be unloading their surplus stock at the same time. And if these people all lose money on the sale of their extra homes as prices come crashing down, fucking good.
  And as prices come down, more people who are currently renting because buying is prohibitively expensive are able to stop renting and move into a place they own, this freeing up rental spaces.
  Of course I'd also support going much more simple and literally forcing landleeches to give their hoarded homes on pain of prison time, but I figured that's a little more radical than the general population could ever come close to supporting.

That's substantially more than my mortgage payment.
- $2000+ a month for rent on average is crazy, but rent has always been higher than most mortgage payments, though. Often by a lot.
  The biggest benefit to renting is that it doesn't require a $50,000+ down payment and $10,000+ "repair bombs" every once in a while 😵
  
  Yeah, it wouldn't even make sense for renting to be cheaper than buying. Most renting is from for-profit landlords. Obviously they have a mortgage, too. They're obviously going to try to make a profit. Plus mortgage is only part of the cost of owning. There's also property taxes and maintenance, which renting includes in the rent price.
  The problems are mostly that there's not enough supply (most commonly due to bad zoning), homeowners oppose anything that could help (cause that would reduce the value of the home they already own), and that most of these landlords are for-profit. Being for profit means they aren't just going to charge more, but they also have a vested interest in making sure it's more expensive and less tenant friendly.
- Almost double mine. Meanwhile, my home's value has increased by like 50% since 2019. It's insane, untenable, and unjust.
  
  Right? Basically everything you buy to actually use does not appreciate in value over time. I get that mortgage is lower than rent because every problem with the house is your problem which also cost money. But it's insane to me that after you payed your mortgage you basically have more value than you paid for.
  But honestly, good on you.

Landlords should be outlawed. They provide no service to society, only harm
- They're supposed to fill the gap for people who can't afford to buy, or for whom it doesn't make sense to do so (i.e. people in town on a temporary job).
  The problem is that "landlords" these days are more towards the class of "investors" who expect rents to cover the cost of their mortgage plus additional profit
  
  Public housing in the Viennese style is the proper way to handle this.
  
  There are lots of ways that gap could be filled. Landlords exist to make profit by filling that gap. They have a financial incentive to maximize returns and minimize expenses, and have the leverage to do so to an exploitative degree.
  Another way to accomplish that would be through cooperatives, which are non-profit corporations that exist to provide housing. They have a mandate to maximize utility to their tenants, and have no profit incentive leading them to exploit their tenants.
  
  Always has been.
  If you buy a 4plex for 2 million now, you have no choice to charge a high rent. But all the 8plex or 16plex from the 80s that are paid in full for years, there is no reason to go from 500$/month to 2000$/month just because
  
  They are the reason why people cant afford to buy. Thats a looot of buildings going for sale if you get rid of landlords. Plummeted prices and mortgage payments. Then we should be focusing from the bottom up afterwards, make sure everyone has some place to live with public housing.
- While I don't completely agree with an outright ban imo there should be strict limits to the amount of residential property a person or corporation can own.
  No one should be making significant profit off of something so essential.
  
  Make property ownership a shit investment.
  Cap revenue from rent to 5-10%. Tax the living fuck out of empty properties so they'll take someone, anyone. Tax higher the more properties they own.
  
  We should really crack down on Airbnbs. Why make $2000 a month by providing a place for someone to live when you can make $500 in one night from a tourist?
  
  Landlords only buy property as an investment vehicle. You cant keep landlords and not have housing being a money making scheme.
- So in your mind all those new grads out getting their first jobs should just be homeless for 30 years until they can afford to buy a house? That's a pretty harmful idea.
  
  Youre looking at this from the current situation, corporare landlords are running amok buying all the property and only renting, decreasing the supply of houses available to buy instead of rent.
  Outlawing landlords means all rental property goes up for sale, and only for people that will live there. Add on some pressure that current landlords have to sell within a few years or it goes to the state, and youre gonna have plenty of cheap houses for sale.

Conservative premiers across the country have abolished rent control and created a situation where the wealthy have several income properties ruining everything. Liberals are totally cool with it too. Tax domestic speculators. Encourage public housing at federal and provincial levels. Never vote Conservative.
- Tbf rent control doesn't solve the problem of scarcity.
  
  What scarcity? Nobody is homeless waiting for housing to be built. Redistribute what has been hoarded.

How are people not just breaking into the empty places and just living rent free? Like Canada is probably as cold as here and I would die in the winter if I didn't have a home.
- Exactly what's going on in Spain. And if it's your main place of residence it's legal.
  
  Based Spain
- The number of empty places is vastly overstated by people looking for somebody to blame instead of market forces.
  
  Probably a good idea to block market forces that incentiveise corpos from buying up all homes, creating a generation that can't afford to own a home.

Seriously, who tf are they renting to? There aren't that many rich people.
- People are spending most of their income on housing
  
  I'm American, but I can't find a place to rent that doesn't demand an income of 3x rent. Is that not a thing in Canada?
- It's simple! For me I either have to pay that much, be homeless, move to a tiny shitty city with no work in my field, or spend a year trying to find a decent place that isn't totally unaffordable while thousands of competing potential tenants do the same to renters with vacancies. So fun!
  My landlord upped my monthly rent $600 bucks this year because he's a cunt and knows I have no fucking choice except to pay him.
  
  I had another comment typed before I realized that they don't need to fill every room if they have a small fraction paying their rates.
  It's fucking f2p whale economics without the f2p. Nothing against you.
  
  Huh? Which province?

It’s crazy how most of my friends are paying more for their 3 bedrooms apartment than I pay for my 5 bedrooms plus basement single home. That includes all expenses for a home owner except renovations budget. The landlords are probably abusing with skyrocket profits.
- I tried explaining that a little bit back, that my house is cheaper for me to own and live in, including ALL expenses, than current apartments of much smaller size, and some person (probably a landlord) engaged in a back and forth with me basically calling me a dirty liar over and over.
  
  I bought a house (since sold, moved cross-country) literally because it was cheaper to do so. You get the asset of the house, and cheaper mortgage payment. Went from a "2" bedroom house (the spare bedroom was slanted) house from the 1930s with windows just as old, dirt foundation, no AC, and holes in the floor for plumbing (very effective for keeping mice out.......) into a 3 bedroom house for $400/month cheaper. Housing market is fucking insane over the last 5 years, if not longer.
  It's like people/companies are buying houses because "it's the smart thing to do" against high interest rates, so they need to charge more for rent, which drives people to buy houses on higher interest rates, which pushes rent higher, and it just cycles infinitely upwards.

BoC keeps raising rates so it's obvious that home owners have to raise their rental prices too. How else are they going to get more money out of their investments? Everyone's fucked unless you're rich.

Millenials and GenX are going to live on the street in their old age.
- Hah, old age. What a fever dream

“…asking”
Fuck off.
Sorry.

Fucking hell my salary isn't even enough to cover 3/4ths of that rent. Pure insanity
- $15 an hour seems to be about the minimum wage in Canada. $15x40x4.2=$2520 per month. If you're working a full-time job and you're making less than that, then your employer is breaking the law.
  
  Isn't that before taxes? Or does this work differently in Canada?
  
  Yes, and 2000/month rent is unaffordable at 85% of your income.
  
  Some people work part time tho because the companies don't want to pay benefits....

I will never rent long term ever again, thank God I bought a house.
- Sadly.. You are very lucky you were able to buy a house... Majority now, will never know that luxury which should be considered a human right.
  
  The majority were never going to own a home to begin with.

Dead country

This is the best summary I could come up with:
This coincides with a 1.8 per cent rise in average asking rents in Canada from June, representing the most substantial month-over-month growth observed in the past eight months.
These include post-secondary students rushing to secure leases before the fall term, a notable increase in the population, and a slowdown in home-buying activities, largely attributed to the Bank of Canada's decision to raise interest rates.
Data shows that in July, the average asking rents for purpose-built and condominium apartments broke the $2,000 threshold for the first time, settling at $2,008.
Analyzing the data regionally, Alberta continued to lead the provinces in annual rent growth for purpose-built and condominium apartments for the third consecutive month in July.
The report shows that Quebec maintained its position as the second-highest province for annual rent growth in the country for the second consecutive month, with an increase of 13.7 per cent.
recorded average asking rents for purpose-built and condominiums at $3,114, achieving the fastest annual growth rate in the country at an impressive 32.1 per cent in July.
The original article contains 1,006 words, the summary contains 173 words. Saved 83%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Same thing happening here in Oregon. Homeless people are everywhere.
- These homeless just lacking enough personal responsibility to do the boot strap pulling
  
  Just learn Python and buy a house.
  
  Gotta buy those boot straps first though.

How many rooms is that and how much percentage of the average wage would that be?

142 comments