Image: PadMapper
Kelowna is creeping toward a place among the Top 5 most expensive cities in Canada for renters.
According to the PadMapper Canadian Rent Report, the city is now the sixth most expensive in Canada for renters, with the average one-bedroom apartment renting for $1,100 a month.
The new benchmark represents at 3.8 per cent increase in rent prices in the city compared to last month, and a 14.6 per cent increase since the beginning of the year.
In February, rent in the city passed $1,000 a month for the first time since PadMapper began publishing its data. At that time, Kelowna sat as the eighth most expensive city in Canada for renters.
Since then the city has been climbing the list, and that upward trend may not be stopping anytime soon.
James McCullough, a licensed property manager with Kendall Property Management, explains that rental prices in Kelowna follow the same supply and demand trends as just about everywhere else.
A limited supply of available units causes rates to rise, and those rates will only go down when more units become available.
Kelowna City Council has been pushing hard for new residential developments, and more than a thousand units are under construction right now.
McCullough says even though council is “doing its best” to get more units built, all the new apartments in the pipe won’t be enough to permanently fix the city’s rental crisis.
He says rental rates will likely drop after those buildings are finished, but will climb right back up again unless there is “continuous development” of rental properties in the city.
“The city is going to have to keep building more or we will end up in our current situation again within five years,” he told Okanagan Edge earlier this year.
However, things could be worse for the city’s renters.
In Vancouver, which has sat at the top of PadMapper’s list for months, the average one-bedroom apartment rents for $2,020. Toronto, Barrie, Montreal and Victoria round out the Top 5 most expensive cities for renters.
Saguenay, QC is the least expensive city for renters on the 25-city list. There, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $640.
All Biz Releases Stories
