A new report says while rental prices are decreasing nation-wide, so too is the size of available units.
Using data from Rentals.ca’s national rent report, analysis by Urbanation found that the average size of rental apartments and condos in Canada has decreased in recent years, while the average rent per square foot remains high in big cities.
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Giacomo Ladas, the associate director of communications for Rentals.ca says data shows the average available apartment is down 35 square feet over the past two years.
He tells 1130 NewsRadio that some of the change can be attributed to a “multi-decade-high” rate of apartment construction completion.
“in a city like Vancouver, there’s also been the inclusion of all these condos that have been built to sell that are now being placed for rent. So what all this has led is many reasons why new apartments are getting smaller: new housing supply has skewed towards smaller units,” Ladas explained.
Other economic factors, like developers maximizing profits across less space, and Canadians returning to city centres with less opportunity to work from home, also play a part in the change.
Ladas says average rent in Vancouver has reached an a nearly four-year low, but per square foot, it remains the highest in the country.
“Vancouver has the most expensive rent per square foot across Canada of over $4 a month — which is about 60 cents more per square foot than Toronto. And of course, the shrinking unit size is where the average unit in Vancouver is 650 square feet, which is 50 square feet less than Ottawa, but 60 square feet less than Toronto.”
While the rent decrease is the result of increased housing supply, he says it’s now time for governments to incentivise developers to build some bigger units to meet the demand for size.
“We are seeing still the need for larger units for many Canadians who work from home, who have families and are planning on staying in their apartments longer,” said Ladas.
“We need to find a way to bring these charges down because it’s very expensive to build. It takes so long to build, especially in a city like Vancouver, that we have to shrink these unit sizes in order to speed up the most amount of housing supply and the time given.”
