Report says rent in Toronto has actually become more affordable
You’d be hard-pressed to find a renter in Toronto who isn’t paying a preposterous amount for what they’re getting — and devoting all of their income to keeping a roof over their head in the process — but one new study says that despite prices continuously pushing to new heights, renting in Toronto is actually more affordable now than a few years ago.
The report, from Online Mortgage Advisor, compared average monthly rent bills in cities across the globe in 2022 to the same figures from 2018, then did the same for the average salaries of residents.
The findings, released last week, indicate that while the typical tenant in Toronto was allocating 45.51% of their income to housing last year, things were actually worse in 2018 when they would have been handing over around 57.26% of their earnings for rent alone.
This change over four years marks “the biggest positive change in rental affordability in Canada, as well as the biggest in North America” versus other major cities, the firm writes.
But there’s no doubt most who live here would scoff at the assertion.
In North America, Toronto was said to have the highest increase in affordability between 2018 and 2022 as far as rent prices and salaries are concerned. (Online Mortgage Advisor’s Priced Out Property report)
Given the unprecedented inflationary environment Canadians have been struggling through for many months now, it would be interesting to see how annual stats for 2023 would measure up to analysis.
While these more amplified pressures began in 2021 and peaked at the most accelerated rate of inflation in many decades in mid-2022, rent, in particular, was 6.5% higher in August 2023 than it was in the same month of 2022, and is now a top cause of our sky-high Consumer Price Index even though headline inflation has eased somewhat.
Add to this the fact that the cost of other necessities has risen to untenable levels — grocery bills, for example, were up 8% year-over-year in August — and it seems doubtful that the cost of living is any more affordable for the average citizen, even if the average rent price in Toronto technically is compared to the average income.
Other interesting takeaways from the report include that 45.5% of cities became less affordable to rent over the years studied and that Toronto came in eighth in North America for increase in affordability for purchasing property (the average local’s wages could afford them a hilarious four square metres of property in 2019, and 4.6 in 2022).
Also, Moncton, New Brunswick had the most drastic reduction in affordability in Canada by the metric employed, with locals having to put 36% of their paycheque toward rent in 2022, but only 25% in 2018 — numbers that are, of course, nothing compared to Toronto.
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