Province has the highest rent growth rate across the country
The annual growth rate for rents in Canada dropped for a fifth month in a row year over year, but there’s one place really bucking the trend that may be surprising unless you live there: Saskatchewan.
The soaring rates in Saskatchewan can be attributed in large part to people coming from other jurisdictions, also known as in-migration, said Giacomo Ladas, a spokesperson at Rentals.ca.
The average rent in the province is still the lowest in the country, which makes it attractive to some people living elsewhere. Nationally, the average asking rent for an apartment was $2,193 in September.
“If you were paying $3,500, $3,600 a month in Vancouver and you can still keep your job working from home, well, Saskatchewan looks pretty good,” he said.
Ladas said similar trends have been seen in Alberta, where the asking rent rose 10.3 per cent year over year in September, but that’s still lower than in previous years.
“Alberta for so long, especially when COVID started, was seeing these 20-point increases year over year,” he said.
“When those three things kind of happen in conjunction, we typically start to see a moderation (of) rental increases,” he said.
NDP leader Carla Beck said they would also look at capping how much rents can be raised.
“One of the pieces of that was striking a maximum rent increase in the province to deal with some of those pressures,” she said while announcing her party’s election platform on Oct. 11 in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party, meanwhile, is highlighting the Saskatchewan Housing Benefit that provides support to low-income people to help pay their rent.
A party spokesperson said it believes the most effective way to deal with rising rents is to increase the supply of rental housing, pointing to the introduction of the Saskatchewan Secondary Suite Initiative as a specific policy aimed at increasing the supply of rental units.
Despite the recent declines in rental prices nationally, Ladas said they are still about 25 per cent higher than they were three years ago, and unit turnover rates are very low.
There has been some softening in the past year, but he said rental housing is still expensive because many people are in the market for rental housing.
“Rent is still obviously really inflated and demand is still quite high,” he said.