TORONTO – When Meaghan Hines moves into a rental apartment before her fifth year at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, it will be a huge relief.
After months of searching, the biology student thought she finally found a place in mid-July, but once she put down a deposit and signed a lease, she discovered the landlord had hired too many tenants.
Hines restarted the search, but found the market even more choppy, so she settled on an unfurnished place from the same landlord that cost $100 more a month and was further from the school than her last rental.
“I had no choice but to find a spot and knowing that all the prices are going to be much higher than usual due to demand, it made me take extra shifts,” he said. “It’s pretty stressful.”
Hines’ experience is a sign of a booming rental market, which came to life after the first two years of the pandemic saw landlords cut rents and offer incentives to keep tenants.
Part of the increase is attributed to a spike in immigration rates and people returning to city centers to work, just as the drop in home sales and prices has scared some sellers into renting out their properties. .
The increase coincides with the return to school in September. That means the market is seeing the usual influx of freshmen alongside seniors swapping houses, but also a wave of people eager to have a place of their own, after living with their parents when the pandemic hit and classes they were remote.
“Everyone panics when signing leases,” Hines said. “(My friend in Waterloo) is paying like $980 a month, which is crazy, but everyone is taking what they can get, even though it’s very expensive.”
Research firm Urbanation recently reported that falling vacancy rates in Toronto in the second quarter pushed median rent to $2,533 to a record $3.57 per square foot, up 5.9% in the second quarter compared with the first.
Rentals.ca found that median rentals in Canada totaled $1,934 in July, an increase of 10.4 percent from last year and just $20 below the pre-pandemic peak of $1,954 in September 2019.
Those renting one-bedroom units paid up to $2,500 in Vancouver last month, up 14% from the previous July, and as little as $836 in Lloydminster, Alta, an increase of 16% from July 2021. In Kitchener, Ontario ., Not far from Hines in Waterloo, median rent stood at $1,829, up 23 percent from last July.
“The rents are through the roof,” said Omkaar Kamath, a second-year management engineering student at the University of Waterloo.
Meet students who have been looking for a place to stay since May and have had little luck.
Kamath turned to Facebook groups that advertise rentals, but found that listings were picked up a day after they were posted.
While he recently found a friend who will sublease him a place to stay, if that deal falls apart, he knows it will be costly.
“I will have to negotiate even more for a higher salary or find a co-op that provides more just because I don’t think I can afford the rent,” he said.
Sawda Jamil Ramisa, a third-year industrial engineering student at Dalhousie University in Halifax, knows these stressors well.
Before securing a rental, he visited at least 12 houses. She found a place for $1,190 a month, but the rent has since increased by $50.
Her brother, who juggles classes with a full-time job, often pitches in whatever amount Ramisa can’t cover after working 20 hours a week with their school’s student union.
“Because I work night shifts, there are times I was there until 4 am and the next morning again, I had to go to school,” he said.
While most students struggle to cover rent, the market can be even tougher for international students who pay higher tuition rates and don’t know the region well, said Umme “Mim” Mohsin, who is completing a master’s degree. in international development studies at Dalhousie University.
She had a hard time finding a rental last year, when she came from Bangladesh, and has since noticed that other international students face higher rates.
Mohsin was house-sitting for a friend from Bangladesh recently, when a letter arrived that increased his friend’s rent by $100 to $1,100. Based on that experience, he told a couple coming to Canada to attend school that they expected rent to be around $1,100, but found $1,250 to be as close to the norm as possible.
Many students from Canada and abroad turn to their parents for help with rent, but others are eking out the payments through minimum-wage jobs that take “an enormous mental toll,” he said.
“We came here to study, but they can’t fully concentrate because they have so many other worries,” he said.
“They have rent, food and everything is very expensive now with inflation, so as international students we are stuck struggling.”
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on August 15, 2022.