Nowhere to live: Rents in Canada surge as home prices fall
By Julie Gordon and Shreya Jain
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian home prices are dropping fast after surging during the coronavirus pandemic, but that is offering little relief for consumers who face sky-rocketing rents and fading buying power as interest rates rise.
Desperate would-be buyers found themselves caught in a frenzy of bidding wars for real estate during the pandemic, when home prices in Canada rose more than 50% in just two years.
Now the competition has moved to rentals, with landlords demanding months of rent upfront and at times, even pitting tenants against one another to see who will pay more, according to real estate agents and media reports.
The average rent on a 1-bedroom apartment in Canada is up 13.7% from the start of the year, data from Rentals.ca shows, with year-on-year rents surging 18.5% in Toronto and 19.2% in Vancouver.
(GRAPHIC: Canada rents up sharply so far this year -
The shift from frantic demand for homes-to-buy to homes-to-rent makes plain a broader issue with Canadian housing: that there simply is not enough of it, said Dan Scarrow, president of Macdonald Realty in Vancouver.
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