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Nova Scotia has overtaken British Columbia as the province with the highest average asking rents, reaching $2,356 in August, as advocates blame fixed-term leases and corporate ownership.
Nova Scotia has held the title of Canada's most expensive province for average asking rents for four consecutive months, with landlords' average ask reaching $2,356 in August, according to a monthly analysis from Rentals.ca and Urbanation.
That marked a year-over-year increase of 3.1 per cent, even as the national average dropped 4.8 per cent, continuing a two-year fall. In May, Nova Scotia overtook British Columbia as the province with the highest average asking rents for apartments and condos. While British Columbia and Ontario have long held a reputation as some of the priciest real estate markets in Canada, Nova Scotia is now also at the forefront, especially for renters.
In Halifax, a one-bedroom apartment is listed for rent at $1,750 a month, located in a three-storey building on Tower Road, about three blocks east of Dalhousie University. Available Oct. 1, the unit of just over 500-square-feet is one of the more affordable options within walking distance of the school currently advertised on the Rentals.ca network. Other comparable spaces hover around the $2,000 mark or even higher.
Just five years ago, that would have gotten you a two-bedroom in the city. The average listing price for a single bedroom in September 2021 sat at $1,574 in Halifax, and $2,041 for a two-bedroom. Real estate watchers in Nova Scotia say rapidly rising rental prices show no sign of slowing down. They point to various factors, ranging from lack of tenant protections to high operating and construction costs.
Nova Scotia rents have risen every year since 1990, but the pace has really stepped up sharply since 2019, said Rentals.ca spokesperson Giacomo Ladas. Advocates say affordability is being held back by rules that place tenants at a disadvantage, with the balance of power tilted in property owners' favour.
For Mark Culligan, a community legal worker at Dalhousie Legal Aid Service, it comes down to two intertwined variables: Nova Scotia's system of fixed-term leases, which do not automatically renew beyond a set end date, along with the province's five per cent rent increase cap. In Nova Scotia, unlike other provinces, the tenant has no right to renew.
So once that end date happens, it is just up to the landlord to determine whether or not they are going to offer a new lease, Culligan said. If a landlord decides to rent out a unit to a new tenant rather than provide the existing one a chance to renew, they can increase rents beyond the five per cent cap. Culligan noted that figure is already above rent control ceilings set by other provinces, such as B.C.
's 2.2 per cent and Ontario's 1.9 per cent caps for 2027, that are more closely tied to the rate of inflation. Culligan said the dynamic discourages active tenants from raising issues during their terms, for instance around the need for repairs, lest they risk being punished when it comes time for renewal. That creates a real easy tool for landlords to turn over units, with a massive financial incentive for landlords to raise rents, he said.
Another contributing factor is the concentration of ownership across large rental properties. Earlier this month, Dalhousie Legal Aid published a report analyzing the ownership structure of around 1,400 large rental properties representing more than 50,000 units in the Halifax area. The Who Owns Halifax report found just 20 landlords own 56 per cent of those rental units and that financial firms alone control nearly a quarter of units, revealing a market increasingly controlled by large corporate, chain and financial landlords.
Those findings echo separate research published in July by Statistics Canada on investor-owned residential properties in New Brunswick, along with Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Manitoba and B.C. , in 2022. Author of the StatCan report and economist Joanie Fontaine said Nova Scotia was the lone province of those six in which institutional investors owned the largest share of investment properties. In the rest of the provinces, individuals owned the largest share of homes where they did not reside.
Among Nova Scotia rental properties, 38 per cent of their assessed value was owned by institutional investors. Culligan said those firms are well-positioned to profit in the province's largest city due to its concentration of rental demand. He described Halifax's downtown core as a dense area where much of the city's population, especially those who rely on transit to get to class or work, want to live.
Halifax has a huge student population, especially relative to its overall population, so there is a lot of institutional investors who are building close to our educational centres and when new people are moving in, they are often paying asking rents that are very high, he said. People are really limited in terms of how far they can live away from the universities and the medical centres and the military bases, so I think that exacerbates the kind of market influence that some of these larger actors have, Culligan said.
Rental Supply Faces Construction Delays
Compounding those issues is how long it is taking for new projects to get off the ground. Ladas said supply is lagging as rental construction in Halifax takes about 70 per cent longer than the national average, driven by rising land, permitting and labour costs. The cost to build here, I think, is potentially more expensive than it is in the centre of Canada, said Scott Moulton, a Halifax-based real estate agent for Royal LePage Atlantic.
The Halifax peninsula is not that big and the infrastructure, traffic, everything is not that sophisticated. So we can only build up and that has to be concrete, that has to be a bigger engineering product, Moulton said. Those projects tend to be geared toward more affluent renters, as opposed to Halifax's large demographic of students who have limited budgets, according to Ladas. Existing landlords face their own challenges as well.
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CTVToronto:How Nova Scotia became Canada's most expensive province for average asking rentsThis story was compiled and edited by the HeadTopics newsroom and HT AI from the reports above.
Halifax The Canadian Press Mark Culligan Dalhousie University Rental Properties Kevin Russell Nova Scotia Rents Halifax Housing Rentals.Ca Fixed-Term Leases Affordable Housing
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