Rents are down, but rent is up

Lags! Lags everywhere!

With Statcan finally publishing data on asking rents, we can put more data to a critical rental market theme: the gap between asking rents and average rents. For most, the rental you got a few years ago - assuming its rent capped - is now a very good deal. You see that in the data. Last fall, the average 2-bedroom unit across the Halifax (CMA) was rented at $1,707. But if you looked for units available last fall, you’d pay an average of $2,230. That’s a gap of about $500 a month, or $6,000 per year.

Caution: It’s likely the units available are not a 1:1 comparison to the average unit rented across the city. Especially now, with a whack of new buildings coming online, average rents of buildings built in the ‘70s should be cheaper than asking rents (which could be skewed towards new units).

$500 is actually a slight decline since 2023 - and the gap in 1-beds is also shrinking. But much of the convergence is driven by rising average rents (bad).

So, while the rental market might be getting less extreme, burdensome rents are still piling on as leases renew and folks move. One way “folks move” is by being renovicted.

Renovictions Drop

Another sign the rental market is shifting towards renters is the decline in renovictions. The CBC reported this week that renoviction hearings are down. Banned in 2021 due to COVID response measures, renovictions spiked to 123 in 2022, rose again to 152 in 2023 - before easing in 2024, and falling again sharply this year (only 19 so far - implying 38 for a full year).