One of the more common non-industry discussions about the industry has long been the renting versus owning question. Who comes out ahead over the long term? Is it the home owner who commits a huge amount of capital to home ownership and sees their house increase in value over time? Or is it the renter who rents an apartment or… Read more »
The National Bank of Canada last month released a document which they call their ‘Housing Affordability Monitor’ which tracks historical affordability of ownership housing—condo and non-condo—in ten of Canada’s largest cities. You can download the document in PDF format from the link below. https://www.nbc.ca/content/dam/bnc/en/rates-and-analysis/economic-analysis/housing-affordability.pdf Everyone knows that housing prices keep going up and up and up and keep getting less… Read more »
I remember that the first serious job I had to do when I started as a consultant in the rental housing industry (in my first week!) was to review a rent roll for a high-rise rental building in central Toronto, an older concrete slab tower almost entirely composed of 1 bed and 2 bed apartments. The landlord had kept reasonably… Read more »
Recently the Toronto Star published (on March 21, 2021) a long article examining vacancy rates and average rents across the city of Toronto. You can read the article via the link below (the article might be behind a paywall). https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2021/03/20/toronto-rents-were-supposed-to-drop-as-people-fled-the-city-during-covid-19-the-data-tells-a-much-different-story.html This article uses data gathered by CMHC and explains that in most neighbourhoods in Toronto average rents increased from 2019… Read more »
Choosing asking rents for new purpose-built rentals is one of the key tasks which developers need to get right if they want their new rentals to be successful, both in terms of being absorbed into the housing supply in a timely manner, and in terms of generating the highest possible rent revenues. If your rents are too low your building… Read more »
Here’s my guide to finding rentals for prospective renters. Probably the first thing prospective renters are going to do to find an apartment is a Google search. I’ve been using Google searches and online listing services as a market surveyor and mystery shopper for over 15 years to hunt for rental buildings. These days I don’t consider Google searches much… 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 »