residential
ADDING MUCH-NEEDED RENTAL SUPPLY
Recently, Metro Vancouver has been an outlier among its peers in its high proportion of new housing that is being constructed as rental. This is good.
When compared to Toronto, Calgary, and Edmonton, Metro Vancouver does share a few common traits—like, none of us have won a Stanley Cup in the past 30 years, and… Maybe there’s more, but each of these four housing markets are unique in their own right, growing at different rates and in different ways, all against local economic backdrops that create a unique set of housing conditions and needs. It is therefore not surprising that Metro Vancouver has stood alone in its share of housing starts that are destined for the purpose-built rental market, most recently at 26% (as a four-quarter moving average); this compares to only 9.2% for Edmonton, 7.3% for Toronto, and 6.7% for Calgary. Additionally, Metro Vancouver’s share
of starts in rental has been increasing over the past two years, taking it above the past five-year average share of 20%. It is easy to argue that these rental homes are greatly needed. With a purpose-built rental stock that has shrunk by 7% since the early- 1990s as the regional population has grown by 60%, and with a regional unemployment rate currently at 4.2%—meaning growth in the local labour force is being driven by in- migrants, the majority of whom rent— Metro Vancouver’s rental stock of housing is in some senses facilitating economic and population growth. The region has a long way to go to bring its stock of purpose-built rental housing to an adequate level, but this trend is encouraging.
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