National asking rents fell 4.8 per cent year over year in August, but the decline is not landing evenly across the country. In Canada’s 10 cities most exposed to U.S. tariffs, average rents have dropped nearly four times faster since January 2025 than in the 10 least-exposed markets, according to an analysis by Rentals.ca and Urbanation that cross-references the firms’ rent data against the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s tariff-exposure rankings.
The August 2026 National Rent Report, published Sept. 9 by Rentals.ca and Urbanation, put the average asking rent for all property types at $2,035, the 23rd consecutive month of year-over-year declines and the lowest August figure since 2022. Purpose-built rental apartments averaged $2,038, down 3.3 per cent annually, while condo rents fell 7.7 per cent to $2,050 and rented houses and townhomes dropped 8.3 per cent to $2,014.
Layered against that report is the Business Data Lab’s tariff-exposure index, first published in February 2025 by economist Stephen Tapp and revisited in the Canadian Chamber’s commentary through this year. It ranks 41 census metropolitan areas by combining each city’s trade intensity with the United States and its dependence on U.S.-bound exports, both measured against the national average. In the 10 metros it scores as most exposed, Calgary, Windsor, Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, Brantford, Guelph, Hamilton, Trois-Rivieres, Lethbridge, Thunder Bay and Oshawa, average asking rents have fallen about 3 per cent since January 2025. In the 10 least-exposed markets, Vancouver, St. John’s, Saskatoon, Halifax, Victoria, Regina, Winnipeg, Nanaimo, Kamloops and Greater Sudbury, rents are down just 0.8 per cent over the same period.
Oshawa, an auto-manufacturing hub about 60 kilometres east of Toronto, posted the steepest decline of any market in the analysis: average asking rents there have fallen 10.8 per cent since January 2025, more than double the drop in Windsor, another auto-sector city, at 2.4 per cent.
“On the demand side, economic uncertainty will keep renters in place and delay new household formation,” Shaun Hildebrand, president of Urbanation, said in the report.
The pattern tracks with recent federal labour figures. Ontario has shed about 27,200 manufacturing jobs since the tariffs took hold, with primary metals production in the province down 18.4 per cent year over year, while Canada-wide manufacturing employment fell by roughly 40,600 jobs in 2025, according to labour force data cited in BNN Bloomberg’s reporting on the rent analysis this week. In Alberta, where Calgary tops the exposure rankings on the strength of its oil and gas exports, an estimated 21.4 per cent of employment sits in manufacturing, construction and resource sectors considered tariff-exposed.
Purpose-built rentals now account for more than 60 per cent of new housing construction nationally, Rentals.ca and Urbanation reported, a share that has climbed as condo presale activity has stalled in Toronto and Vancouver. Urbanation cautioned that tariffs are only one factor behind the softer rents in exposed cities: new supply and slower population growth are also pulling asking rents down across most of the country, exposed or not.
The rent analysis lands a week after the Bank of Canada held its key policy rate at 2.25 per cent on Sept. 2, citing trade-war uncertainty as a risk to the broader recovery. For renters in Oshawa, Windsor and Canada’s other manufacturing-heavy markets, that uncertainty is already showing up on the listing page.
