Two-bedroom unit in the city costs an average of $2,294 per month. Photo credit: Rentals.ca
The average one-bedroom unit rent in Hamilton was $1,901 per month in August, according to Rentals.ca’s monthly market update.
That number is up 2.5 per cent from last month and up 12.2 per cent year over year.
Similarly, a two-bedroom unit in the city costs an average of $2,294 per month, up one per cent month over month and 6.1 per cent year over year.
A three-bedroom unit in the city costs an average of $2,440 per month.
Increases in rental prices are not limited to Hamilton.
Rentals.ca says that average asking rents in Canada reached another record high in August.
Canada-wide averages out of the 35 cities examined by the report are $1,879 for a one-bedroom and $2,339 for a two-bedroom rental.
Hamilton one-bedroom rents are higher than the average while two-bedroom rents are actually slightly lower than the 35-city average.
Regarding rankings, the City of Hamilton is now the 19th most expensive city to rent a one-bedroom unit out of the 35 cities in the report.
Hamilton was ranked number 21 in the July report, meaning that the city is moving in the wrong direction in terms of rent affordability.
Topping the list are Vancouver, BC, Toronto, ON, and Burnaby, BC, respectively.
The report says that new rental apartment completions in Canada over the past 12 months have reached their highest level since the 1970s, but rent prices are still increasing.
The report’s authors attribute this phenomenon to two factors: “the country’s record-high population growth” and a “sharp deterioration in homeownership affordability.”
Other Cities
Other Hamilton-area cities included in the analysis are Burlington and St. Catharines.
Burlington ranks as the eighth most expensive one-bedroom unit rent with an average of $2,209 while St. Catharines ranks as the 26th most expensive with an average of $1,628.
It should be noted that the analysis does not include cities like Niagara Falls or Brantford.
Report Data
The data used in the Rentals.ca analysis is based on monthly listings from the Rentals.ca Network of Internet Listings Services (ILS).
The rankings and report are written by real estate research firm Urbanation.
The data differs from the numbers collected and published by the Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation (CMHC).
The Rentals.ca Network of ILS’s data covers both the primary and secondary rental markets and includes basement apartments, rental apartments, condominium apartments, townhouses, semi-detached houses, and single-detached houses.
The report’s writers say that CMHC rental rates are reflective of what the average household spends on rental housing and not the current market rents for vacant units.
The data used in the Rentals.ca reports are based on the asking rates of available (vacant) units only and reflect on-going trends in the market in order to be “more representative of the actual market rent a prospective tenant would encounter.”
Based in Hamilton, he reaches hundreds of thousands of people monthly on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. He has been published in The Hamilton Spectator, Stoney Creek News, and Bay Observer. He has also been a segment host with Cable 14 Hamilton. In 2017, he received the Chancellor Full Tuition Scholarship from the University of Ottawa (BA, 2022). He has also received the Governor General’s Academic Medal. He formerly worked in a non-partisan role on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
