Kelowna now 7th most expensive Canadian city for renters

A new report pegs Kelowna as the seventh most expensive city in Canada for renters.

The PadMapper Canadian Rent Report combines third-party information with data from hundreds of thousands of PadMapper listings to calculate the average price of rental units in 25 Canadian cities.

The company’s October report shows that, in just one month, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Kelowna rose $80. In September, a one-bedroom rental in the city cost an average of $920; In October, it was $1,000.

Additionally, two-bedroom rentals in the city also climbed slightly in price, moving from $1,460 a month in September to $1,470 a month in October.

That jump was enough to bump Kelowna to seventh place on the list of the country’s most expensive cities for renters. Last month, Kelowna broke the top ten for the first time ever, when it hit eighth place on the list.

Brian Coyne, who works in data analytics at PadMapper, said the company’s report only reflects current market prices in the city, meaning it looks at what new renters are being charged, not necessarily what everyone (such as people who have been in their units for a long time) is paying.

He pointed out that a city like Kelowna, with a relatively small population and rock-bottom vacancy rates, can produce “noisy” data, but that the trends laid out in the report are “pretty representative of what the market is doing.”

PadMapper reported that, while nationwide rent prices are increasing, there appears to a be “a degree of polarization in the rental market.”

Rents in many of Canada’s most expensive cities continue to rise significantly, the report says, while cities low on the list have seen rents drop.

According to the report, Vancouver remains the most expensive city for renters in Canada, with a one-bedroom unit costing a whopping $1,800 a month, up $50 from September.

Toronto keeps the second-most-expensive spot, with a one-bedroom unit going for $1,370 a month, a $60 jump.

Of the 25 cities in PadMapper's report, Saguenay, in Quebec, is the cheapest. There, a one-bedroom unit costs an average of $490 a month. That’s actually $10 lower than in September.