Rent prices in and around Toronto plummet for yet another month

Tenants in and around Toronto have been benefiting from lower housing costs so far this year as the city's real estate market endures the impacts of tough and uncertain economic times.

Average rents across the GTA have plummeted to prices not seen in years, and the most recent figures from April show a continuation of the recent trend, with the price of a typical apartment in downtown Toronto, Etobicoke, Mississauga, North York and other areas falling further still.

According to liv.rent, one of the platforms that collects such data nationwide each month, one-bedroom renters in the 6ix are now paying about $130 less for a home than they were this time last year, and $7 less than they were even last month, based on present rates.

While Toronto remains generally known as one of the priciest places to live in Canada, it is not even listed in liv.rent's top five places in the country to rent right now, all of which are in the Vancouver area.

liv.rent

The standard unfurnished one-bedroom unit in downtown T.O., per the firm's data, now sits at $2,193 per month, which is higher than most other parts of the region (save for Markham and Etobicoke), but still quite far below West Vancouver's average of $2,595, North Van's average of $2,528, Metro Vancouver's average of $2,432, Coquitlam's $2,369, and Richmond's $2,343.

(Furnished units come at a higher cost, but being that they are rarer and considered less desirable to most long-term renters, the unfurnished stats are what we will be focusing on here.)

Parts of the GTA that have seen rental rates increase this month, albeit slightly, are Markham (where a one-bed unit went from $2,274 to $2,295) and Brampton ($1,873 to $1,918), while Scarborough remained flat ($2,129 to $2,129). Two-bedroom and three-bedroom prices for these cities, aside from Brampton, also rose.

liv.rent

While this pattern has been a boon for renters, small landlords in the city are struggling to cover the mortgage, taxes, utilities and other costs of floating their units, many of them now losing many and also unable to sell due to the poor state of the property market lately, especially for condos.

This is on top of stricter regulations surrounding renovations, and horror stories of errant tenants and a sluggish and ineffective Landlord and Tenant Board to deal with them.