Canadian Apartment (Magazine?) posted last week an article about “rent slippage” among multifamily rental properties caused by the pandemic. The article was written by Barbara Carss of Canadian Property Management. The article can be read in full via the following link. https://www.reminetwork.com/articles/multifamily-rent-slippage-deemed-temporary-blip/ Most of the article reports on the findings of an index prepared by MSCI which tracks net operating… Read more »
One thing that developers often wonder about is the effect new rentals have on vacancies. Does delivering a bunch of newly constructed rental units to a (housing) market cause vacancies to increase? Or will there be no affect? Everyone will agree that delivering a relatively small number of new units to a large housing market will probably have little or… 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 »
Back on May 5th I wrote a post in which I speculated about the short, medium, and long term affects of the pandemic on Ontario’s rental housing industry. Do I stand by my predictions? Do I think something else might happen? Generally speaking, I stand by what I wrote… mostly. I think my short-term predictions were fairly sound, even if… 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 »
Last year, in November, I wrote a post asking “Is the rental housing industry recession-proof?” In that post I mentioned that the industry didn’t seem badly affected by the 2008-2009 recession, which was probably a fair conclusion, at least based on what I saw at the time. In that post I also speculated about how the industry might fare in… Read more »
Recently, while fiddling around with some CMHC data for London, I put together the following charts based on some calculations I was making with the data. These charts compare the growth in the supply of purpose-built rental apartments and townhouses versus average vacancies and average rents, by building age, for the period 2004 to 2019. Building age is separated into… Read more »
In a previous post I referred to a report on rental housing (released by RBC’s economics department) which claimed that vacancies need to be increased if rents are to stabilize or increase at a slower rate. In my comments I said that even in a high vacancy rental housing market there are reasons why landlords would increase rents by significant… Read more »
In a previous post I referred to a report on rental housing released by RBC’s economics department which claimed that enough new rentals need to be constructed (in Toronto, primarily) to increase vacancies so that rent “sustainably stabilize”. In my post I commented on the report, explaining that higher vacancies do not necessarily mean lower rents nor a halt or… Read more »
Regular readers will recall that in September I wrote a post about taxing vacant homes in St Catharines in which I discussed a number of reasons why it wasn’t a good idea and wasn’t practical. I wrote that post in response to a local newspaper article which reported on suggestions made by a local councillor. This past Sunday (November 10th)… Read more »
