Report: Waterloo Vacancy Rate Falls to 1%

By Benjamin Bach, the Wealth Team on December 16, 2009 in Featured Articles, kitchener waterloo, Real Estate Investment

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) just released their Rental Market Report for the Kitchener and Guelph CMAs. This report outlines the vacancy rates, average rents, availability rates etc., and breaks the information down by category – i.e. vacancy rate for 2 bedroom apartment vs 1 bedroom apartments, or comparing rates in new apartment buildings vs older ones.

The vacancy rate in the City of Waterloo fell slightly to 1%, the tightest rental market in the entire region.

The vacancy rate for Kitchener City went up to 3.4%, and the Cambridge City rate was the highest at 5.6%. CMHC does not break Cambridge CMA down at all, so we don’t get to see the differences between the older core and the newer areas.

CMHC speculated that the higher rate in Cambridge was caused by “two factors: completion of a 133-unit rental apartment building in July and the movement of renter households to newly completed homes in the City of Cambridge.”

CMHC attributed the increase in the vacancy rates to a number of factors, including young many people becoming home owners (the cost of ownership decreased with mortgage interest rates staying near historic 60 year lows), as well as lower income renters moving home or taking on a roommate to save money on housing due to the downturn in some sectors of the economy.

The report reinforced something our investor clients already knew. Newer properties, those built after 1990, have the lowest vacancy rate, and the highest average rent. Buildings built prior to 1960 have the highest vacancy rates. Most of our clients are buying newer properties, for a few reasons including this.

If you have any questions about the real estate market in Kitchener Waterloo, or about buying or selling investment property, you can call me at 519 772 4376 or email me. You can find me on twitter at www.twitter.com/BenjaminBach