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Industry Hot Topics Justin Trudeau promises “real and important change” including conversions of underused commercial space into affordable rentals; • investment into Indigenous housing and senior facilities; • renovation tax credits to add affordable residential rental space to existing units; • introducing a Home Buyer’s Bill of Rights that will regulate “house-flipping” and impose surtaxes to discourage “renovictions”, among other key measures.
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n September 20, 2021, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau was elected for a third term in an outcome that closely resembled that of the 2019 federal election. With a vow to deliver “real and important change” to Canadians, major themes on this year’s campaign trail included pandemic measures, Indigenous issues, climate change, and to a large degree, housing affordability.
Throughout recent weeks, the hotbutton topic of housing has received plenty of airtime as major party leaders actively promoted the measures they would implement to address concerns, like chronic rental undersupply. The Liberals’ platform includes: • a 2-year ban on foreign home buying; • the construction and repair of 1.4 million home units over the next four years,
According to a recent report from JLL, these proposed measures are nothing new: “They reaffirm Budget 2021’s $1.3 billion funding allocations to increase the stock of affordable units through the National Housing Co-Investment Fund and the Rental Construction Financing Initiative.” It is also likely that several key federal support programs, including the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) and the Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy (CERS) may be extended beyond the October 23 expiry date to facilitate broader recovery gains.
Popularity of small rental units back on the rise
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verage rents for all property types in the GTA increased nearly a full per cent in August over July, with small rental units climbing in popularity after more than a year of pandemicrelated declines. This is the fifth straight month average rents have increased, according to the latest Bullpen Research & Consulting and TorontoRentals.com rent report. Even with the recent uptrend, the average rent is still down 4 per cent annually from $2,184 per month in August 2020, and 14 per cent from August 2019’s average rent of $2,450 per month. Despite worries about the fourth wave of COVID-19, the return to normalcy continues with colleges and universities opening up, as well as primary schools, malls, stores, gyms, and downtown office buildings. The majority of GTA cities and neighbourhoods experienced monthly increases in average rent in August, including 24 | Canadian Apartment | Part of the REMI Network |
Whitby, 6.6 per cent; Scarborough, 3.9 per cent; Richmond Hill, 2.6 per cent; Milton, 2.3 per cent and Mississauga, 2.1 per cent. Other cities and areas with slight month-over-month increases were: North York, up 1.3 per cent; York, East York and Brampton, all up 1 per cent; Vaughan up 0.8 per cent and Toronto, up 0.7 per cent. “After several months of large rental units leading the recovery out of the pandemic-induced rental slump, smaller units were popular in August, with average rents for one bedroom units increasing by a whopping 5 per cent monthly in the GTA,” said Ben Myers, president of Bullpen Research & Consulting. “The market bottom is now clearly in the past, with many of Toronto’s most desirable neighbourhoods seeing average rents increase by $200 to $350 per month over the last six months.”
