In Halifax, the average asking monthly rent for an individual room in the first quarter of this year was $840, according to the report. That's up from about $600 in 2019.DARREN CALABRESE/The Globe and Mail
The average asking rent for an individual room in a residence has climbed to more than $800 a month in Kamloops, Guelph, Ont., and other smaller Canadian cities, according to new data released on Wednesday.
A report by Statistics Canada and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. shows how rental rates have increased across all types of housing since 2019, prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the first quarter of this year, the average asking rent for an individual room in Kamloops was $870 a month. That was up 47.5 per cent from $590 in the same period in 2019.
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In Guelph and Halifax, the average asking rent for an individual room in the first quarter of this year was $820 and $840, respectively, according to the report. That is up from about $600 in both cities in 2019.
Today’s prices in smaller urban centres are nearing the levels seen in the country’s most expensive real estate markets, where the average asking rent for a room was $1,070 in Vancouver and $840 in Toronto.
The quarterly report is the first of its kind from Statscan and CMHC. It is designed to reflect current rental rates by looking at “asking rents” for available units on multiple housing rental platforms.
In contrast, the government’s other rental reports include rates for housing units that are already occupied, which skews the current state of the rental market.
The asking-rent report is the latest attempt from the federal government to understand the country’s housing market.
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CMHC recently issued a report that quantified how much more home building is needed in Canada to make housing costs more affordable. And Statscan’s Canadian Housing Statistics Program has done extensive work on foreign ownership of residential real estate.
This week’s report shows that the trend in the rental market is similar to what occurred in the home ownership market, where property prices have risen at a faster pace in the country’s relatively more affordable regions.
In Sherbrooke, for example, the average asking rent for a two-bedroom housing unit was $1,250 in the first quarter of this year compared with $660 in the same period in 2019.
In St. John’s, the average asking rent for a two-bedroom was $1,630 early this year compared with $900 in early 2019. In Montreal, the asking price was $1,930 a month compared with $1,130 in 2019.
Over the past year, rental rates have been on the decline, in part owing to the slowdown in immigration.
The survey only looked at the country’s census metropolitans areas, or regions with a population of at least 100,000 residents of which a minimum of 50,000 live in the city’s core.
Of the 42 areas surveyed, the majority had two-bedroom units near or above $2,000 a month. That includes Kelowna and Nanaimo in B.C. along with Kitchener, Hamilton, Barrie and Oshawa in Ontario.
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