Toronto’s still one of the most expensive cities for renters in Canada, but prices decreased by 5.1 per cent in April compared to one year prior, a new report has found.
Units up for rent in Ontario’s capital averaged $2,618, according to the latest National Rent Report by Rentals.ca and Urbanation.
Two-bedroom units dropped most significantly year over year — by 9.3 per cent — while prices for one-bedroom units dipped 5.8 per cent, and rents for three-bedroom units decreased 5.9 per cent.
“Toronto rents have been going down for over a year now,” Rentals.ca spokesperson Giacomo Ladas told the Star. The city has seen 15 straight months of rent decreases on an annual basis.
“As we get into the summer months, this is where it’s really going to be interesting, because if they continue to decrease, then we’re not really sure how low they’ll go,” he added, since rents usually rise in the summer.
Despite the decrease in asking rent prices compared to 2024, Toronto prices in April actually increased compared to March by 0.8 per cent, according to Rentals.ca and Urbanation data.
Nationally, prices dropped about 3 per cent annually, but have been trending upwards for a few months.
Across the country, prices in April averaged $2,127, down 2.8 per cent compared to one year ago, but up 0.4 per cent from March.
The report noted “rents have started to show signs of stabilization,” and said price growth during the spring is a normal trend.
The rent growth between March and April across Canada brought asking rent prices to a five-month high, it added. It also brought the cumulative growth of the last three months to 1.3 per cent — the largest increase in rents over three months seen nationally since December 2023.
“Rents are slowly starting to increase, which is something we haven’t seen very often in quite some time on a national average,” Ladas said.
A price increase of about 3 to 4 per cent is typically a sign of a “healthier market,” Ladas added, but “because rents have been so inflated, they had nowhere to go but down.”
Rents were still 28 per cent higher in April than the average rent of $1,662 seen during the pandemic low in April 2021, the report noted.
“Because of that, we do think it’s going to take a lot more supply coming into the market to restore affordability,” Ladas said.
The report found rents in Vancouver to be the highest in Canada at $2,831 on average — even though priced dropped more than 5 per cent year over year.
North Vancouver, Coquitlam, B.C., and Burnaby, B.C., trailed Vancouver in rents, but were more expensive than Toronto.
Compared to April 2024, national condo asking prices fell by 5 per cent on average, across unit types, to $2,210. Studios cost $1,780, one-bedroom units cost $1,997, two-bedroom units cost $2,344, and three-bedroom units cost $2,812 on average.
Prices for purpose-built rental apartments across the country only dipped 0.9 per cent annually to $2,105, but they were lower on average than in condos. Studios cost $1,605, one-bedroom units cost $1,894, two-bedroom units cost $2,304, and three-bedroom units cost $2,757.
