rental housing in Metro Vancouver: what you need to know?

The rennie podcast is about the real estate market and the people connected by it. Tune in for monthly discussions making sense of the latest market data.
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⁠Episode #77: RENTAL HOUSING IN METRO VANCOUVER: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW?

Step aside, ownership: the new (or not-so-new) kid on the housing block is rental. In this episode of the rennie podcast, Head Economist and Vice President of Intelligence Ryan Berlin and Lead Analyst and Market Intelligence Manager Ryan Wyse sit down with rennie’s Director of Leasing, Sydney Robinson, to unpack what renters are looking for, how purpose-built rental differs from investor-owned units, and how developers are responding to shifting market conditions.

Featured guests:

Ryan Berlin, Head Economist and Vice President of Intelligence

Ryan Wyse, Lead Analyst and Market Intelligence Manager

Sydney Robinson, Director of Leasing

Purpose- built rental projects mentioned in podcast:

Signal at Marine Gateway
Kovo Kelowna

Thank you for tuning in to The rennie Podcast, where we share our passion for homes, housing, community, and cities. We hope today’s episode sparked the same curiosity in you that drives us every day. If you enjoyed the conversation, don’t forget to subscribe and follow us on your favorite podcast platform. And if you have a moment, we’d love for you to leave a review—it helps others discover the insights, analysis, and perspective we bring from the rennie Intelligence division. For the latest market updates, be sure to register at rennie.com.

Have a real estate question? You can either email us at intel@rennie.com, or leave a voicemail at speakpipe.com/therenniepodcast, and we’ll try to respond in our next episode.

Transcript

Welcome to The rennie Podcast, where we talk about the real estate market and the people connected by it. Our goal is to empower you to make informed decisions and provide context for the real estate world around you. We hope that with every episode, you will become a little more knowledgeable and a lot more curious.

Ryan Berlin: Welcome to The rennie Podcast. I'm Ryan Berlin, Head Economist and Vice President of Intelligence here at rennie.

Ryan Wyse: And I'm Ryan Wyse, Market Intelligence Manager and Lead Analyst at rennie.

 Ryan Berlin: And we are delighted to be joined today for the first time by Sydney Robinson. Syd, how are you?

Sydney Robinson: I'm doing great.

Ryan Berlin: Super, thanks for being here. You've been in property management and leasing for over a decade.

Sydney Robinson: Yes, yes.

Ryan Berlin: You were at Bosa Properties in leasing before you came to rennie in 2020.

Sydney Robinson: Yep.

Ryan Berlin: And now you're our Director of Leasing.

Sydney Robinson: Yes.

Ryan Berlin: So, what is that and what do you do?

Sydney Robinson: I work on the developer services side of rennie. I specialize in all things rental, but I do primarily work on the strategy and execution of the lease-up of new rental projects.

Ryan Berlin: Awesome. And you're keeping busy?

Sydney Robinson:Yes, very busy.

Ryan Berlin: Which is why you're here, so thank you for taking the time.

Sydney Robinson: Yes.

Ryan Berlin: We wanna spend some time today, I think for the first time ever, actually dedicating some airtime to rental, which we probably should have done earlier. It is a fundamental cog in the housing machine here in this region.

 Ryan Wyse: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Berlin: So, today we will get to that. We'll talk about the state of the rental market in this region, Metro Vancouver. We'll discuss what renters are looking for and how developers are responding to current conditions, which have been evolving fairly rapidly. We'll talk a bit about how purpose-built rental differs from investor-owned rental. And then we'll share a forecast of rents and talk about what that means for renters. So, we'll get to rental. That's not all we're gonna talk about today. Let's start with you, Mr. Wyse, to give us a bit of an overview on what's happening in the for-sale market here.

Ryan Wyse: For sure. So, resale, quite similar in June to what we talked about, if you listened last month, to the May numbers. We talked about how things had kind of  bottomed out in March and April. We had such a loss of consumer confidence. I think April was probably the bottom in terms of sales activity, and so they picked up a little bit in May. And they were kind of flat in June at just over 3,300 sales for the Vancouver region. So, that's similar to May, much less than last June, 32% below average, but still much higher than those lows of March and April. And typically, the busiest time of the year is March to May, and then sales start to drop off in June.

Ryan Berlin: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Wyse: And so, it's a bit of a different path this year as things have been quite different for us. So, the first six months of the year, sales were fewer than 18,000, so that's the third-lowest sales count for our first half of the year going back two decades. So, 2019 and 2020 were the only years where we saw fewer sales-

Ryan Berlin: Hmm

Ryan Wyse... January through June. And of course, you can throw 2020 as being such an outlier year. Uh, so really just only 2019 had fewer sales to start a year than we had this year. You know, obviously everything that was going on, international trade, stuff with the US, still rates are a little bit higher than they used to be. All that stuff kinda sort of came together for a pretty slow first half of the year on the sales front. And then new listings, we've been talking for months about how they've been elevated. They were elevated again in June, still 14% above average on new listings. First half of the year was the second-highest going back two decades, only higher than 2021 when the market was so busy that so many people were listing because there was so much buying activity that was going on. And so, all of that new listings' activity, such few sales, we're in a point where there's more active listings at the end of June than at any point in the last 13 years, uh, more than 26,000-

Ryan Berlin: Yeah

Ryan Wyse: ... homes for sale.

Ryan Berlin: That's a big number.

Sydney Robinson: Interesting.

Ryan Wyse: Which is a lot.

Ryan Berlin: So yeah, I'm curious, on the new listing front, it's something for us, off-camera, to look into, how many of those new listings are re-lists?

Ryan Wyse: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Berlin: Because we're not seeing the downward pressure on prices. I am, quite frankly, surprised that the new listings continue to trend above where we were last year, and that that hasn't leveled out.

Ryan Wyse: So, there's another metric that makes me think there's a lot of relisting. So, we can try and measure that directly, but indirectly, the days on market of active listings is falling-

Ryan Berlin: Ah.

Ryan Wyse: And so, it's less than it was last June.

Ryan Berlin: Yeah.

Ryan Wyse

So, there's probably a lot of expiries or cancellations and relisting coming into that metric. And there's such a flow of, quote, "new listings" coming in-

Ryan Berlin: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

Ryan Wyse: ... that, uh, I think there, uh, is a good chunk of that is relistings, yeah.

Ryan Berlin: Interesting. So, what's the latest on presale? 'Cause we all know that the Q1 numbers were somewhat less than inspiring, but it feels like Q2 has, activities picked up.

Ryan Wyse: It has. We get full Q2 numbers any day now. We don't have the full results, but we're trending probably over 2,000 for this region. Again, final numbers to be determined. Last quarter was four- just over 1,400.

Ryan Berlin: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Wyse: That was an all-time low. And-

Ryan Berlin: 2,000 sounds great right now.

Ryan Wyse: Yeah. [laughs] Yeah, which-

 Ryan Berlin: I mean, 2,000's not a good number in the grand scheme of things.

Ryan Wyse:  Historically speaking, that's very low for this market. But we saw some Toronto numbers come out from some horrifying context.

Ryan Berlin: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Wyse: Q1 in Toronto was like 550 for just condos, not, uh-

Ryan Berlin: Just condos, yeah

Ryan Wyse: ... excluding townhomes. That was their lowest quarter ever. And Q2, according to Urbanation, was 500, so a decline from Q1 to Q2-

Ryan Berlin: Mm-hmm

Ryan Wyse: ... and seasonality, typically Q2's a lot busier. They include Hamilton, so that's like a region of close to eight million people, whereas we're three million people and doing probably three times that on the condo side.

Ryan Berlin: Yeah.

Ryan Wyse: So, of those roughly 2,000, I expect like 15,000 condo. So, we're seeing like three times as much activity, and we're a third, roughly, of their size.

Ryan Berlin: Yeah.

Ryan Wyse: So, um, things are very different here than- than they are in Toronto.

Ryan Berlin: Fortunately, yes.

Sydney Robinson: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Berlin: As difficult as it feels. So, I think in the next episode, the next recording of this podcast, we'll have a more fulsome picture of the presale market.

Ryan Wyse: Definitely.

Ryan Berlin: We'll dig into that then. Syd, I wanna bring you into this conversation in a moment so we can actually talk about rental. But couple things for you Wyse, uh, we can't ignore.... jobs data release last week.

Ryan Wyse: Yep.

Ryan Berlin: And consumer price index data released this week, and what it means for the Bank of Canada.

 Ryan Wyse: So the jobs release was very strong, but we need to start off with a caveat. So the labor force survey that we get the jobs data from, which Stats Can administers, is a really small sample size. So month to month it can be really noisy, and so, you know, we'll see in the coming months whether June was the beginning of a new trend, or whether it was partly some of the noise that co- you know, traditionally comes with LFS. Before COVID, we didn't actually look at this stuff on a month-to-month basis.

Ryan Berlin: No.

Ryan Wyse: We used a lot of rolling averages.

Ryan Berlin: You're not really supposed to, right? [laughs]

 Ryan Wyse: [laughs] Yeah, but we're always looking for as real-time data as we can possibly get, 'cause things are changing so quickly. And so all of those caveats aside, Canada added 83,000 jobs in June on a seasonally adjusted basis, which is a lot.

Ryan Berlin: Yeah, that sounds good as a headline number.

Ryan Wyse: It's great. The number of unemployed persons fell by 20-something thousand, that's great.

Ryan Berlin: Great.

Ryan Wyse: Unemployment rate fell from 7% to 6.9% nationally, in BC to 5.6%. Good news, good news. Participation rate increased, good news. Employment rate increased, good news. The only sort of mixed picture there was most of those job additions came in the form of part-time positions.

Ryan Berlin: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Wyse: And if you dig a little deeper, the biggest group within that part-time increase was people who wanted to work full time. And so there's still a good chunk of people that maybe weren't getting their desired labor market outcome, but instead of being unemployed, they're just working part time when they'd rather be working full time. So not quite as good as if all those jobs were full time.

 Ryan Berlin: Yeah.

 Ryan Wyse: But still a really positive one month. Let's not overstate one month of LFS data, but it was certainly a good bit [laughs] early.

Ryan Berlin [laughs]

Ryan Wyse: Still, headline inflation looks pretty good. It- it ticked up from 1.7% to 1.9%.

Ryan Berlin: Yeah.

Ryan Wyse: Target is 2%, so we're just under target, great. But core measures are still elevated. Part of the reason that headline is- is quite good is the removal of the consumer carbon tax. We've talked about how we sort of get the benefit of that for a full year, because it's a year-over-year percentage calculation.

Ryan Berlin: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Wyse: Core measures, which strip out, like the most volatile elements like gas, which gas prices are always volatile. And we're seeing again lower gasoline inflation because of carbon tax reasons. So the core measures are all around 3%, that's on the high end of where the Bank of Canada would like to see it. And ultimately, I think the, you know, just real quick, the combination of these two data releases, where we're at on inflation, where we're at on jobs, and the fact that the Bank of Canada's current policy rate is right smack in the middle of neutral.

Ryan Berlin: Mm-hmm.

 Ryan Wyse: We've got ongoing trade discussions with an August 1st deadline, and the next Bank of Canada announcement's July 30th. All of that says they're gonna hold. I think there's a pretty broad consensus that they're just gonna wait and see. Let's get some more jobs data. Is this a real pickup in hiring or is this some month-to-month noise? Let's, you know, keep our eye on this core inflation stuff, and then let's see the outcome of a potential trade deal or tariffs-

Ryan Berlin: Yeah

Ryan Wyse: ... and model those new scenarios.

Ryan Berlin: Yeah, so we need time.

Ryan Wyse: Yeah.

Ryan Berlin: Everybody needs time. The chaos that has been sown by the US administration and what that means for us, it's very difficult to read right now. Like there's no agreement that has been put into place, so we have no certainty on that front. And then you layer in some of these sort of short term changes in the labor market and in prices, and we need another two to three months before there's a clearer read on things.

Ryan Wyse: Yeah, so July 30th we'll get a hold-

Ryan Berlin: Yeah

Ryan Wyse: ... and then it's early September, the next announcement is, and there'll be a lot more clarity on some of the stuff by then.

 Ryan Berlin: I would be surprised, based on what we know now, unless the jobs reading is very poor for August, and I believe that September meeting is early in the month?

Ryan Wyse: It's early in the month.

Ryan Berlin: I'm not sure how that lines up with the jobs data release, but it would have to be a couple of poor readings for the labor market, a plateauing at most in consumer prices, to see a cut there, I would think. We want to talk about rental.

Ryan Wyse: [laughs]

Ryan Berlin: That's why we're here.

Ryan Wyse: That's why we're here.

 Ryan Berlin: Okay, that's why you're here. You're like, okay, whatever, for sale, pre-sale, like yada yada.

Ryan Wyse: [laughs] Yeah, yeah.

Ryan Berlin: I have a lot to ask you, we have a lot to ask you, and we wanna cede the floor to you. I just wanna start with a little, I don't know if it's a primer on the rental market, but just for some context for listeners or- or viewers, because we do mostly talk about the for-sale market. Talk about resale and we talk about pre-sale. If you look at all the households in metro Vancouver, that's two thirds of this region. Two thirds are owners, but a third are renters. Renting is a more accessible form of housing than ownership is, on account of there not being a sizable down payment. Like there is a deposit, typically one month's equivalent of rent, but nothing like what you see in ownership. And to rent a unit versus own it, you're likely paying quite a bit less, which is why the math doesn't work for investors right now. A third of the households are renters in metro Vancouver, more than half are in the city of Vancouver, so it takes up a lot of space. And you look at city of Victoria is, the numbers are huge too.

Ryan Wyse: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Berlin: I think they're closer to three quarters or something like that. The thing is, our purpose built rental stock is pretty old.

Ryan Wyse: Yeah.

Ryan Berlin: Like two thirds of it was built before 1980, so like we're coming up on that part of the rental stock being 50 years old and in need of improvement. So two thirds of the purpose built stock in this region is almost 50 years old. Almost nothing was built between 1990 and 2015, and over that period, the population of metro Vancouver almost doubled.

Ryan Wyse: That's true of almost every market in Canada. Like, Montreal is the one outlier to that.

Ryan Berlin: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Wyse: No one, almost no one was building purpose-built rental in this country over that period of time.

Ryan Berlin: Yep, the economics didn't support it and there was a focus on the condo market-

Ryan Wyse: Mm-hmm

Ryan Berlin: ... and condos were selling. I guess that lack of new supply, at least from purpose built, we'll talk about the investor-owned segment in a moment, has yielded vacancy rates in metro Vancouver that are essentially the lowest in the country, right? So like over the past 20 years, we've had a vacancy rate north of 2%, which is very low. It still represents an imbalance with too much demand chasing too little supply, but it's only been over 2% twice in the last 20 years. One time was in 2009 during the- the Great Recession, and then the other time was in 2020.

Ryan Wyse: Throw it out. [laughs]

Ryan Berlin: Throw it out, it's currently at 1.6%. Let's turn things over to you. I wanna focus on the purpose-built rental segment. There's been a lot more construction in the past decade, but it's only accounted for, over the past two decades, about 20% of growth in the rental stock, 'cause 80% of it was due to investor owned condos-

Ryan Wyse: Yeah, yeah

Ryan Berlin: ... uh, coming to market. I know that that is changing.... like, it's, it's been changing over the last ten years, but I think even over the past couple of years we're seeing a major shift-

Sydney Robinson: Yeah

Ryan Berlin: ... for a couple of reasons. Do you wanna talk a bit about what's driving that growth and that change?

Sydney Robinson: Well, I think we went a long time without any rental projects being built, like you said earlier.

Ryan Berlin: Mm-hmm.

Sydney Robinson: And we just kind of got to a point where people were being priced out of the market, especially in areas like Vancouver. It's just becoming too expensive to live, um, and having to move outside the city, which has, you know, been difficult for people, for employers that are looking for people to work here.

Ryan Berlin: There's, um, almost a missing piece when we talk about housing-

 Sydney Robinson: Mm-hmm

Ryan Berlin: ... and living close to work. We don't give enough consideration, I think, to the, the transportation network.

Sydney Robinson: Yeah.

Ryan Berlin: And I think if we were able to make more investments in that and we were able to make commuting further faster and cheaper-

Sydney Robinson: Mm-hmm

Ryan Berlin: ... we wouldn't have that need to all pile in-

Sydney Robinson: Yeah, definitely

Ryan Berlin: ... to where the jobs are, right?

Sydney Robinson: Yeah.

Ryan Berlin: Um, a third of, I think a third of the jobs in the region are in the City of Vancouver. The city only has 25% of the population, so we already have that imbalance. But anyway, um,

Ryan Berlin: but yeah, let, let's talk about purpose-built rental, uh, in relation to investor-owned.

Sydney Robinson: Mm-hmm. 

Ryan Berlin: Um, and so for someone who's maybe not aware of those two segments and what, what makes them different, what are some of the pros and cons to each?

Sydney Robinson: One of the big benefits of living in a purpose-built rental project is what we're seeing today, is the community aspect of it.

Ryan Berlin: Mm-hmm.

 Sydney Robinson: Today, new purpose-built rental projects are designed with shared spaces, so you have amenities like co-working space, lounges, rooftop patios, and they really encourage people to get to know each other and get to know your neighbors and really create that sense of community.

Ryan Berlin: Mm-hmm.

Sydney Robinson: And I think post-COVID, with so many more people working from home, that's just becoming much more important. I think one of the other benefits of living in the purpose-built rental project is the sense of security and stability that you get from it. You don't have to worry about your home being sold, and that you may-

Ryan Berlin: Which is huge.

Sydney Robinson: Yeah, huge.

Ryan Berlin: Yeah. Yeah.

Sydney Robinson: And, you know, you may have to move at a time that you're just as not convenient for you.

Ryan Berlin: Mm-hmm.

Sydney Robinson: And then-

Ryan Wyse: So do you see during, like, lease-ups that you're working on, a lot of people who are currently renting in a condo, like, "Hey, my landlord just listed this condo for sale and now I need a place to live, or a different place to live, and so I wanna look somewhere that's a little more secure"?

Sydney Robinson: Yeah, 100%, especially if they're, like, in a position that they have to move at a time that is just really difficult for them.

Ryan Wyse: Mm-hmm.

Sydney Robinson: I think what I'm also seeing as well is that sometimes renters aren't very educated with their rights when it comes to, you know, being asked to leave because the owner is selling.

Ryan Wyse: Mm-hmm.

Sydney Robinson: So they're not aware of their rights when it comes to that, so they kind of lean back into living in a more professionally managed building or a purpose-fil- built rental building that they could stay in.

Ryan Berlin: So while we're talking about renters, you, you've been in the business of leasing and property management for-

Sydney Robinson: Yeah

Ryan Berlin: ... for a decade. What is it that today's renter, if we can sum it up nicely, is, what are they looking for today?

Sydney Robinson: I mentioned previously, like, the sense of community is huge. I think what we're seeing today in buildings is, especially in the past couple of years, so many people new that are moving into the city and they don't necessarily know a lot of people, and they really gravitate towards purpose-built rental communities because-

Ryan Berlin: Mm-hmm

Sydney Robinson: ... of that. I think, you know, with so many more people working from home, having a place that is almost an extension of your home, having that co-working space, that gym located in your lobby that's easy to get to, those things are just becoming more valued now.

Ryan Berlin

There's been a lot of purpose-built rental coming to market. Like, currently, the pipeline, the construction pipeline is very full.

Sydney Robinson: Yeah.

Ryan Berlin: So we're at a multi-decade high in starts. All of that new supply coming is happening against the backdrop of slowing population growth. We might be moving into a period of population decline. The economics of purpose-built rental have, uh, have to be more challenging today for developers-

Sydney Robinson: Yeah, definitely, yeah

Ryan Berlin: ... than, than they were.

Sydney Robinson: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Berlin: So how are developers responding and adapting to these conditions?

Sydney Robinson: Today, developers are listening more to what renters want in these communities.

Ryan Berlin: Mm-hmm.

Sydney Robinson: And they have to if the, you know, they wanna stay competitive in the industry now, with more projects coming to market, taking in feedback from renters, what amenities they value in buildings-

Ryan Wyse: Yeah

Sydney Robinson: ... what, all the way down to, like, the home design as well.

Ryan Wyse: I mean, it's pretty new for landlords to compete for renters in this market. It used to be the other way around, where prospective tenants-

Ryan Berlin: That's true

Ryan Wyse:... were competing to get the home.

Sydney Robinson: Yeah.

Ryan Wyse: You know, whoever had the best application generally got the home-

Sydney Robinson: Yeah

Ryan Wyse: ... 'cause there were way more applicants.

Ryan Berlin: Yeah.

Sydney Robinson: Which is great, because before, you, it was so scary to have to move, because you would show up at a showing-

Ryan Wyse: Yeah

Sydney Robinson: ... and there would be a lineup of 20 people all with deposits in their hand, and, you know, you may put yourself in a situation, just because you're, you have to find a home to live in.

Ryan Berlin: Mm-hmm. Is there a profile of developer that is able to withstand these conditions better than others, or that thrives in these types of conditions?

Sydney Robinson: Yeah, I feel like today, with like the current economic environment, definitely developers that have been around for a while and they've been in, you know, more lows with the economy, they're able to withstand the market a little bit. Yeah, they just have-

Ryan Berlin: Yeah

Sydney Robinson: ... a little bit more experience with it.

Ryan Berlin: Yeah.

Sydney Robinson: Yeah.

Ryan Berlin: Rents have been softening, I think, for about a year. We forecast over the next two years, based on lots of new supply and demand softening a bit, that rents will decline for the next years. Beyond that, they'll, we expect that, that growth will resume-

Sydney Robinson: Mm-hmm

Ryan Berlin: ... and that by, you know, four years from now, rents are gonna be back at where they were in 2023-

Sydney Robinson: Mm-hmm

Ryan Berlin: ... which is the, the previous peak.

Ryan Wyse: Yeah, and just to clarify that forecast is for asking rents at turned-over units or new purpose-built units.

Ryan Berlin: Correct.

Ryan Wyse: And so existing tenants might still see, like, rent growth of, uh, the allowable, you know, 2% increase, that type of thing.

Ryan Berlin: A- absolutely, you're right.

Ryan Wyse: And so those, we could see a convergence-

Ryan Berlin: Good clarification

Ryan Wyse: ... between existing rents and asking rents, which is probably a healthy thing-

Ryan Berlin: Yeah

Ryan Wyse: ... for this market.

Ryan Berlin: If there are more options-

Ryan Wyse: Yeah

Ryan Berlin: ... right, for existing tenants, then landlords may be less inclined to raise rents.

Ryan Wyse: Also, if you're one of those people that's paying below market rent and your home no longer works for you, maybe it's a little bit easier to shop around for a new home.

Ryan Berlin: Yeah, for sure.

Sydney Robinson: Yeah, I think it, you know, it relieves some of the older stock in the market as well.

Ryan Berlin: Yeah.

Ryan Wyse: Yeah.

Sydney Robinson: So we see people that are moving up.

Ryan Berlin: Right.

Sydney Robinson: They've been, you know, in their home for the past, like, ten years. They're paying low rental rates, but, you know, they want to move to something new, and, you know, they're adding that supply to the market that may not be able to, you know, afford the high rents.

Ryan Berlin: Yep, yep.

Ryan Wyse: Especially if you're in that pre-1980 stock.

Ryan Berlin: Do you wanna share any-... thoughts on projects that you're working on or developers that you're working with? Anything that's exciting that people want to hear about?

Sydney Robinson: Yeah, yeah, definitely. So we have a project that is just coming to market now. It's located in Marine Gateway in South Vancouver. It's called Signal, and it's a project by Intracorp and Oxford, both two very renowned developers.

Ryan Berlin: Mm-hmm.

Sydney Robinson: And it's two towers, 524 homes, which is exciting.  So our first move-ins are going to be September 1st, so we're just kind of starting hard hat tours now. Yeah, it's located right next to the Canada line. So super easy to walk over. You could get to downtown, you could go back to the airport. Yeah, very convenient.

Ryan Berlin: Awesome.

Ryan WyseL: Cool.

Ryan Berlin: Any others?

Sydney Robinson: Another one we're working on is in Kelowna, actually. It's called Kovo. It's a project by P.C. Urban and it's, uh, located right on the outside of downtown of Kelowna. And it's been very exciting to be working on a project up there-

Ryan Berlin: Mm-hmm

Sydney Robinson: ... 'cause I used to live up there.

Ryan Wyse: That's nice.

Sydney Robinson: So it's nice to be able to go back to the Okanagan and spend some time there, especially in the summer. I try to make as many trips as I can.

Ryan Berlin: Yeah [laughs] 

Sydney Robinson: [laughs] And we're just starting tours there with our first move-ins for August 15th.

Ryan Berlin: So if anybody's listening and is interested in learning more about these projects and wants to get in touch with you-

Sydney Robinson: Mm-hmm

Ryan Berlin: ... how can they do that?

Sydney Robinson: Um, yeah, so you're welcome to send me an email. My email is srobinson@rennie.com. Of course, you could call the rennie office and they could direct you to my phone as well, or you could visit the rennie website to, uh, see further details about the projects that we're working on.

Ryan Berlin: Super.

Ryan Wyse: Awesome.

Ryan Berlin: Awesome, thanks for sharing that. Let's move on to our beneath the headline segment.

Ryan Wyse: I had to bring two.

Ryan Berlin: Oh, you brought two? Okay.

Ryan Wyse: So I picked out a rental headline that I have an issue with that I really wanted Sydney to get your take on it.

Sydney Robinson: Okay, I'm excited.

Ryan Wyse: But before we get to that, there's a second one that just came up today that really bothered me, and I just have to vent for a sec. So the headline is, "60% of Canadians could face higher mortgage payments by 2026, Bank of Canada." And they say... They're attributing this to the Bank of Canada. If you click on the Bank of Canada report, that's not at all what they say. The Bank of Canada says that 60% of mortgages renew by 2026.

Sydney Robinson: Hmm.

Ryan Berlin: Okay.

Ryan Wyse: And 60% of those people could face higher payments. There's still a disconnect here because two-thirds of Canadians own a home, as we talked about earlier.

Ryan Berlin: Mm-hmm.

Sydney Robinson: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Wyse: And only 60% of those owners have a mortgage. So you take 100% of Canadians, 66% are owners, 60% of those have a mortgage, 60% of those are renewing by 2026, and 60% of those could face higher payments.

Ryan Berlin: [laughs]

Ryan Wyse: There's a lot of sixes.

Sydney Robinson: [laughs]

Ryan Wyse: So if you do the math, it is 14% of, of Canadians could face higher mortgage payments by 2026, which is not insignificant.

Ryan Berlin: Yeah.

Ryan Wyse: And I'm sure if you're one of them, you don't want to hear me be dismissive, but it's just a false headline.

Ryan Berlin: That's one out of seven versus three out of five.

Ryan Wyse: Exactly.

Ryan Berlin: So this is a very different, uh, narrative there.

Ryan Wyse: So I just... Yeah, I just had to vent on that one.

Ryan Berlin: That's fair.

Ryan Wyse: So that one aside, the other one I have, and Sydney, just go ahead and answer. The- this headline is a question.

Sydney Robinson: Okay.

Ryan Wyse: Is Canada building too many rental apartments?

Sydney Robinson: Definitely not the case. People look around, they went so long without seeing any rental development that the development that's happening today just seems like so much. But as you mentioned kind of earlier, we're still seeing, you know, rapid population growth in the past few years, and we expect it to go back up in the next-

Ryan Berlin: Yeah

Sydney Robinson: ...few years. And it's important that we have to, you know, keep building more homes. Otherwise, it's just going to be continue to become unaffordable for people.

 Ryan Wyse: So I want to pull a quote here, and I'd love for you both to chime in on this from this article. "Since 2024, rental supply has grown faster than new demand."

Ryan Berlin: [laughs]

Ryan Wyse: What happened before 2024? Did we-

Ryan Berlin: Well-

Ryan Wyse: Yeah, you already said it.

Ryan Berlin: I mean, we have- we have data. I mean, we've looked at this, and if you go back to 1990, it's kind of a crude measure, but go back to 1990 in Metro Vancouver, and there were 71 purpose-built rental homes per 1,000 residents. 71.

Ryan Wyse: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Berlin: You fast-forward to last year, 'cause that's our last data point, there were 42.

Sydney Robinson: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Berlin: So it's an almost, almost 50% drop in the number of rental homes per capita, essentially.

Sydney Robinson: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Berlin: So it's not to say necessarilyt that 71 is the magic number, but we've seen this downward trend as our population has grown. And by the way, when we grow, we grow through migration, and migrants are young and migrants rent, right?

Sydney Robinson: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Berlin: So, to your point, Syd, it's not about building a lot now, pulling back, building in waves, right? The fits and starts that we see often in construction and development. We want to ensure that we're building a lot of rental for a long time. I think right now there might be a bit of a surplus of new rental coming given current conditions.

Ryan Wyse: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Berlin: But all of those rental homes are needed-

Sydney Robinson: Mm-hmm 

Ryan Berlin: ... in the fullness of time. Like, you just go out, like to your point, Syd, about population growth resuming fairly robustly beginning in 2027. Like, we are going to need lots of new homes.

Sydney Robinson: Mm-hmm.

Ryan Berlin: So I think it's, it's way oversimplifying things to say, "Oh yeah, we're building too much."

Sydney Robinson: Yeah, I think one thing that we're also seeing, particularly on the North Shore, is it's not just young people renting, it's also older people that are renting as well.

Ryan Berlin: Hmm.

Sydney Robinson: They want to, you know, sell their home, they wanna move somewhere that is going to be easier to take care of, that they could spend half the year down somewhere warm. Renting is more... has become more of a lifestyle. And also with these new projects, they're just more accessible than before. While prior you had a lot of rental projects that may not have like an elevator-

Ryan Berlin: Oh, that makes sense, yeah

Sydney Robinson: ... or other accessible needs. So it just becomes easier for, you know, that group to live in rental projects as well.

Ryan Berlin: So we have a listener question from Sophie in Burnaby.

[Listener Question]: Hey, Ryans. This is Sophie from Burnaby. I love tuning into the rennie Podcast every month. My question is regarding the rental market. Uh, there's been a lot of talk about it being a renters' market right now. There seem to be much more listings available and landlords offering incentives, like two months free rent. Uh, do renters have more negotiating power or is it just temporary noise without much traction? I look forward to hearing your insights on this.

Sydney Robinson: Yeah, no, I agree. Renters do have more, uh, negotiation power than they did previously. But I think that's a good thing because, you know, it made developers really take some renter feedback and really design projects that are more livable and more thoughtful communities, which in turn benefits renters.

Ryan Berlin: : Thanks for that, Syd.

We'd love to answer your real estate questions. You can either email us at intel@renny.com or you can leave us a voicemail at speakpipe.com/therennypodcast and we'll try to respond to your question in the next episode. Syd, thanks again for being on. That was great.

Sydney Robinson: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Ryan Berlin: It was a lot of fun.

Sydney Robinson: Yeah.

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The rennie podcast was created as another way of sharing our passion for homes, housing, community, and cities. We hope that this will spark the same curiosity in you that we have for everything real estate.

Our rennie intelligence team comprises our senior economist, market analysts, and business intelligence analysts. Together, they empower individuals, organizations, and institutions with data-driven market insight and analysis. Experts in real estate dynamics, urban land economics, the macroeconomy, shifting demographics, and data science, their industry-leading data acquisition, analytical systems, and strategic research supports a comprehensive advisory service and forms the basis of frequent reports and public presentations, covering the Vancouver, Kelowna, Victoria, and Seattle marketplaces. Their thoughtful and objective approach embodies the core values of rennie.