Image: Contributed
There’s relief on the horizon for Kelowna’s ever-squeezed apartment renters, but that relief will only be temporary.
A recent report from the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation predicts the ultra-low apartment vacancy rate in Kelowna will ease over the next two years, but go back down again in 2019.
With a slew of major new apartment complexes set to complete in the city over the next couple of years, the CMHC predicts Kelowna’s rental vacancy rate will rise to approximately 2.5 per cent by the end of 2018.
The last time the CMHC officially calculated Kelowna’s vacancy rate was in 2016, when only 0.6 per cent of the apartments in the city were empty.
A lower vacancy rate usually translates into higher rents, because there is more competition for the few available spots. Higher vacancy rates, meanwhile, generally correspond to lower rent prices.
Most consider a vacancy rate of about three per cent to be healthy.
The CMHC believes things will get easier for Kelowna renters in 2018 “as new supply of apartment rentals enters the market.”
However, that short-lived relief will start to reverse in 2019, when the CMHC says the city’s “steady population growth” will see more people flood in, keeping the demand for new homes high.
As a result, vacancy rates for that year are expected to go back down, to somewhere between 1.5 and two per cent.
“Population growth, continued improvement in the local economy and ongoing demand from postsecondary institutions in the Kelowna CMA will be supportive of rental demand through 2019,” the report says.
Image: The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation
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