Halifax ‘asking rents’ climbed in February as other Canadian cities saw decreases

A new study shows the average price of rent in Canada has dropped, but not as fast in the Maritimes.

Average asking rents in Halifax continued to climb in February, as other provinces are seeing a decline, according to a recent report by Urbanation and rentals.ca.

The report says the average asking rent in Canada fell for the 17th consecutive month in February to $2,030. Rents were down 2.8 per cent from last month, as prices also fell 1.3 per cent on a month-over-month basis.

“When COVID started, through 2021 to about late 2023, we saw 15 to 20 per cent year-over-year increases in asking rent,” said Giacomo Ladas, with rentals.ca.

“The pre-Covid average rent in Canada was just over $1,700 a month, right now we’re over $2,000 a month, so it is still heavily inflated.”

In February, the average rent represented 29 per cent of household income for renters, falling below the industry’s 30 per cent affordability benchmark for the first time in more than six years, the report said.

“The reason why asking rents increased so much is, we didn’t have enough supply for the demand that we were seeing. Of course, Canada saw a long period of huge international population growth of which, of course many of those new Canadians are renters and we never had the supply,” said Ladas.

“Canada hasn’t been building purposeful rentals at mass scale for decades and we got to a point where supply just wasn’t there for the amount of renters we saw.”

However, the report says Nova Scotia saw average apartment rental prices rise in Halifax to $2,268, the most expensive market in Atlantic Canada. Halifax continues to rise on the national list, now overtaking Kingston ($2,254) and East York ($2,243).

“A lot of new supply is coming into Halifax, what that does is actually exaggerate the swing in asking rent because a lot of supply in Canada was very old stock. We have built a lot of new stock in the market and of course new stock is a little bit more expensive,” said Ladas.

The report says national rents are now at their lowest level in 33 months, down 7.4 per cent compared with two years ago, however average asks are still 2.3 per cent higher than three years ago.

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