Kijiji Rental Trend Report: April 2021

Kijiji’s Rental Trend Report for April puts a focus on the performance of Canada’s most populous province: Ontario. As always you can find the national and regional Kijiji Rental Trend Reports for download here.

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In April 2021, over 61K new properties in Ontario were listed into Kijiji Real Estate’s For Rent category. 

Engagement from users in Ontario stayed consistent month over month with 490K email replies, phone reveals and URL clicks compared to March’s 495K. 

The Real Estate category saw Kijiji users from Ontario get more serious about their search for their next home, establishing yearly highs in ‘Return visits per user’ and ‘Time spent per user’: 

• Return visits per user came close to 3 visits in April 2.96 (compared with March’s 2.88)
• Time spent per user increased by a full minute from 14.8 minutes per month in March to 15.6 minutes per month in April

Top 5 Rental Prices for a 2-bedroom in Ontario

In March 2021’s Rental Trend Report we observed that Toronto experienced a 10% year-over-year decline in rent/month when compared to March 2020. The YoY trend continued into April 2021 with a 12.8% decline when compared to April 2020 – reflecting the initial shock the city experienced last spring in response to COVID-19. 

In this report, we’re also taking a look at the month-over-month change from March to April 2021 – where there appears to be a shift in prices of two-bedroom homes across Ontario. 4 of the 5 most expensive cities to rent a two-bedroom property – Toronto, Hamilton, Barrie and Ottawa – all increased by at least 2% MoM while Guelph remained flat.

Affordability Rankings

Expanding beyond two-bedrooms and including all property types across the province of Ontario, there is less of a noticeable pattern. The largest swings in price occurred outside the Greater Toronto Area:

• Renting a home in Barrie went up by 13% in April when compared to just a month prior
• Sault Ste. Marie and Renfrew both experienced 11% and 8% declines in rent month over month

Popularity

It’s been about fourteen months since the first lockdown in Ontario. While the province continues to face some unevenness in its return to normalcy, residents (and those searching from out of province) are clearly showing interest in new properties for rent:

• Properties listed from across London to Kitchener and Toronto to Ottawa all experienced double digit increases in engagements (email replies; phone reveals; and URL clicks) year-over year.
• Hamilton, which is in the top five Ontario cities in terms of engagement, remained flat year over year – but when compared to the city’s engagement in March 2020 was up 4% in April.