DOWNTOWN TORONTO CONDO RENTAL MARKET

While the focus of RE/Max Condos Plus is on sales and not rentals, we do represent a lot of investors who ask us to rent or lease out their condos. In fact we rent out more condos than any other brokerage in Toronto. Hence our Monthly Market Report has a small section devoted to the rental market. We do not publicize all of the rental prices each issue but just try to highlight the trends.

The most accurate way to measure the trend in rental prices is to track a specific unit over a period of time such as we do with our sales analysis in our Market Reports. Unfortunately it is almost impossible to do that with rentals and hence we run a statistical analysis of rentals by type each month.

A number of researchers have asked for more information and some rental agencies have accused us of playing with the numbers. Also the number of leases in a single category such as studios can be so small that focusing on the averages for just a single month can be misleading and you have to look at the numbers over several months.

For those who care, here are the actual results that we based are Twitter remarks on.

2012         2011          % Increase

Studio                             1425            1300              10%
1 Bed No Park               1700            1500              13%
1 Bed + Den No Par     1800            1600             13%
1 Bed + Park                  1780           1575               13%
1 Bed + Den + Park      1900         1700               12%
2 Bed No Park               2300         2000              15%
2 Bed + Den No Park   2500           2200            14%
2 Bed + Park                  2500           2200            14%
2 Bed + Den + Park      2700           2500             8%

The sample size of 3 bedroom units is very small and the average rental price varies significantly month to month from $3300 to $4500 depending on the type of units leased in that month.