Kelowna goes from 3rd to No. 14 on list of most expensive places in Canada to rent an apartment

What happened?!

Kelowna plunged from being the third most expensive city in the country to rent an apartment all the way down to No. 14.

It used to be that only Vancouver and Toronto were pricier than Kelowna.

The freefall in placing means Burnaby, Victoria, Kitchener, Ottawa, Halifax, Oshawa, Hamilton, Calgary, Barrie, London and Montreal all leapfrogged Kelowna on the list.

Crystal Chen is the marketing manager at Zumper, the online platform that lists apartments for rent and compiles the monthly Canadian Rent Report.

She describes the Kelowna nosedive as "interesting."

"It has a lot to do with the fact that there's been a lot of new construction of apartment buildings in Kelowna and that means more available apartments," said Chen.

More availability means potential renters can shop around to find lower rents.

Thus, landlords also have to be more competitive and offer lower rents to attract renters.

Let's put this into dollars.

Zumper uses the median monthly rent for a typical one-bedroom apartment in the city for its rankings.

In Kelowna, in June, that was $1,590, a 6% slide from the $1,690 it was in May and a 4% drop from the same month last year.

It was in February 2022 that Kelowna was No. 3 behind Vancouver and Toronto.

Those two cities are still No. 1 and No. 2 with record-high one-bed rents of $2,770 and $2,420, respectively.

While Kelowna rents have slipped, it not so much the 4% drop over the past year that accounts for the rankings' tumble.

It's that other cities have had hefty increases that catapulted them past Kelowna.

For instance, No. 3 Burnaby's June one-bed rent of $2,400 is a 16.5% increase from June 2022.

No. 10 Calgary had the biggest year-over-year spike of 34% to $1,760.

You can see the full top 10 list below.

Lower rents in Kelowna is good news for potential renters who may have previously been priced out of the market and as a result didn't move to the city (even though they wanted to), had to continue living with mom and dad or had to have roommates when they didn't particularly want any.

However, $1,590 a month for a one-bedroom is still expensive and makes it tough for lower, and even mid-range, earners to afford their own place.

While Zumpers rankings are based on one-bedroom rents, its report also includes two-bed rents.

It seems out of sync that Kelowna's June two-bed rent was $2,370, which actually makes it the fifth most expensive city in the country to rent a two-bed, behind Vancouver at $3,780, Toronto with $3,130, Burnaby at $3,050 and Victoria at $2,620.

The cheapest cities in Canada to rent apartments are Edmonton with one-beds at $1,100 and two-bed $1,400, Saskatoon at $1,140 and $1,320, Regina with <1,140 and $13,50 and Winnipeg at $1,200 and $1,530.

See the full report here: https://www.zumper.com/blog/rental-price-data-canada