Rent prices in Canada soared last year as supply struggled to keep up with demand, leading to the lowest national vacancy rate on record since the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. began tracking that data in 1988.
The federal housing agency said in a report Wednesday the vacancy rate for purpose-built rental apartments sat at 1.5 per cent during the first two weeks of October 2023, when it conducted its annual survey.
That was down from 1.9 per cent a year earlier, which at the time had been the lowest national vacancy rate in over two decades.
The average rent for a two-bedroom purpose-built apartment, which the CMHC uses as its representative sample, grew eight per cent to $1,359 in 2023. That growth figure was up from the 5.6 per cent average rent increase recorded in 2022 and above the 1990-2022 average of 2.8 per cent.
How about banning corporations from owning single family homes or thousands of condo units? I bet that would go a long way towards solving the housing crisis. I used to live in a 200 unit condo complex and the majority of units were owned by 3 people who used that majority to push through whatever they wanted on the condo board. An absolutely massive tax on housing you don’t actually live in would help make housing more accessible. Housing shouldn’t be an investment. Nationalize it.
Given those corporations are, you know, renting those units, I’m not sure what your comment has to do with a rental unit supply issue (which is, you know, what this article is about).