Apartment building
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A new report says the national average asking rent in March was $2,119, marking the sixth straight month of year-over-year declines.

The monthly data provided by Rentals.ca and Urbanation says rents were down 2.8% last month compared with March 2024. On a month-over-month basis, rents rose 1.5% from February, the first increase since last September.

Urbanation president Shaun Hildebrand says renters were more active in March than they’d been in recent months, likely thanks to improvements in affordability, but “rents are likely to continue facing downward pressure in the near-term” as the economy faces challenges from the U.S.-Canada trade war.

The report says average asking rents in Canada are still 17.8% higher than they were five years ago when the Covid-19 pandemic hit in March 2020.

Purpose-built apartment asking rents declined 1.5% from a year ago to an average of $2,086, while asking rents for condominium apartments fell 3.8% to $2,232.

Ontario recorded the steepest rent declines, with combined apartment rents falling 3.5% to an average of $2,327 in March, followed by Quebec’s 2.5% decrease to $1,949.