Each day I receive hundreds—no, thousands!—of emails from readers hungry for more posts and wondering why I haven’t posted in a few months. The explanation is that I have some articles in the hopper and ideas for a lot more, but I’m waiting for all of the data from the 2021 Census to be released so I can incorporate the… Read more »
One of the more obscure data points in the Census is what Statistics Canada calls “mobility,” the number of people who moved or didn’t move. In the Census this is measured as the number of people who were living at the same or a different address one year before or five years before, and, if they moved during that period,… Read more »
In the first post on this website I described how the Census counts the total number of dwellings and households, and how one household equals one dwelling (the number of unoccupied dwellings, those without a household, is too small to take much notice of). In this post I want to see how the total number of households has grown over… Read more »
In my two previous posts on the topic of non-purpose-built or unofficial rentals I showed that in the ten largest cities in southern Ontario the number of non-purpose-built rentals can be quite large, often thousands of dwellings, and I discussed the different types of non-purpose-built rentals and why it’s important they are included in market surveys. In my first post,… Read more »
Any market survey intended to be used as a guide for setting rents should compare total monthly renting costs versus total monthly home ownership costs. After all, if it costs more per month to rent than to own, why would households rent a house or apartment if they can own a condo or house for less? Answering this question properly… Read more »
In my first post in this series I examined the size of the non-purpose-built or unofficial rental supply in Ontario’s ten largest cities. In this post I discuss the three main types of non-purpose-built rentals, comment on their importance, and explain why knowing all of this is important. The non-purpose-built rental supply can be separated into the following three categories:… Read more »
In my first post on this website I explained how the housing market breaks down, identifying the categories of housing into which it can be separated. Readers should go back and read that post. In it I described the difference between purpose-built and non-purpose-built rentals, what I tend to refer casually as “official” and “unofficial” rentals—or de jure and de… Read more »
Before digging deeply into rental housing, I want to make sure readers understand how the housing supply breaks down. First, the Census (conducted by Statistics Canada every five years) counts the total number of “occupied private dwellings”, which are all dwellings of any kind being occupied by households. In the Census, one dwelling is occupied by one household, and dwellings… Read more »