this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2025
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You must be in ON, cause I can assure you that in provinces where the Landlord-Tenant board actually functions, like Alberta, thats NOT happening. Its not a Canadian problem, its largely an ON and BC problem and the reason its a problem in those two provinces is because of their restrictive rent controls. They SOUND like a good idea at first but when the rubber hits the road, you cant tell a landlord they can only raise the rent by 2% when inflation has been rising by 4% to 8% and expect them not to use any means possible to raise the rent. Maintenance goes up, supplies go up, appliances go up, trades go up, taxes go up, insurance goes up, but the landlord can only absorb so much and then something's gotta give and 2% doesnt cut it.
Here in Alberta we can raise the rent by any reasonable amount we like and it works. Rents go up in times of shortage but they also go down when there is an oversupply. So in the last year, the rents in Calgary have DROPPED by 9% because there have been a lot of new rentals come on the market. It works. Rent controls do not.
BC.
Rent controls don't work, I agree. As do most economists.
The rents in Calgary haven't dropped because of new rental supply though, you have that idea wrong, the rents have dropped because the economy is down. Rents are down in Vancouver too by almost 7%. The supply has barely changed in either location.
Everyone keeps talking about supply solving the issue, but the market keeps actually changing because of demand, it's impossible to build enough supply fast enough to impact the markets significantly, only by changing the demand can you have a significant impact.
Which is where the government owning the property comes in, the demand for housing isn't actually coming from people needing places to live. It's from investors who are buying up properties because they know that people HAVE to live somewhere. If the government owned the land, that speculation goes away almost entirely because it's no longer profitable. The land values all drop off a cliff, and housing becomes affordable again.
If there's one thing we don't lack in Canada, it's space. The problem is the allocation of it, when Bob and Jane own 3/4 of an acre downtown, and live in their 5 bedroom place by themselves now that the kids all left. That's the problem. Fuck them, force them to either pay to have that privledge or give up the property so it can be redeveloped to fit 8 families. If they want 3/4 of an acre they can live outside the city.
Nope. Its not the economy. Its supply. There are charts that track available units for each type (apartment, main floor, basement suite, whole house, etc) on the landlord menu of Rentfaster.com. I can look at almost every category and see that the supply is up from what it was a year ago.
eg. Last year on Sept 1 there were **1066 **two bedroom apartments available This year on Sept 1 there were **1468 **two bed room apartments available
Therefore, average rent for those apartments last year was 2335. This year its **2251 **and dropping. Currently the average has now dropped to **2137 **as of last week. Thats down 8.4%
The rental market is pretty simple. When there's more supply prices drop. When there's more demand, prices go up.
You clearly don't understand how demand works. If demand drops, it looks like there's more supply.
If you look at the change in population (it increased) and total units in the province(it increased, but not as much) total units per capita has gone down (a decrease in supply)
No those supply numbers are hard numbers. There were 402 MORE two bedroom apartments this year than last year, a 38% increase over last year. Calgary's population has gone up but only about 5%.
Thats an EXCESS SUPPLY of apartments because the number keeps rising. If people were snapping them up as fast as they were coming available that number would be steady or dropping and rents would be rising. They're NOT rising because there is excess supply and renters can shop around and negotiate on rent prices. which is why rents are 8 to 10% LESS than last year at this time even though there were still 100,000 people moving to Calgary.
Many out of province investors have flooded into Calgary in the last couple of years, which means many more rentals on the market as they snap up any housing they can find and turn them into rentals.
So your last statement is incorrect. Population has increased but rental supply has increased even more than the demand.
I have been a landlord in Calgary for over 40 years now and we've been through several excess demand and excess supply cycles because of our variable economy. We are obviously in an excess supply cycle.
Do you not understand percentages? Do you think there are only 1400 total two bedroom apartments in Calgary? The percentage change in available listings for sale does not in any way show you how many new units were created. Those are just how many people are currently trying to sell and don't reflect net construction at all.
Calgary grew it's population by 100,179 people in 2024 but it's total housing completions were only 21,084 total units. Given that the average housing unit doesn't even come close to having 5 people in it (the average is usually somewhere in the high 2s) that means the total supply per capita went down.
Those stats are from the city itself: https://www.calgary.ca/content/dam/www/cfod/finance/documents/corporate-economics/housing-review/Housing-Review-Q4-2024.pdf
I really don't know how you've managed to get so far in life given how bad you are at understanding math. I suspect you're just lying to be honest.