For months, Nathan Armstrong has been scrolling through apartment listings from a tiny motel room in Woodstock, Ont. He and his wife have had to live there for more than a year as they desperately look for a place to rent.
“There’s not a lot out there, and they seem to be going up. Fifteen, seventeen, nineteen hundred dollars for a one bedroom apartment,” he said. “Our price range is disappearing.”
Armstrong described the situation as frustrating and costly. The couple couldn’t even prepare their own meals in the motel.
“It is very, very difficult,” he said. “Hard to cook as we’re not allowed to have our own cooking material. No toaster oven, that’s against the fire code.”
The couple says they faced denial after denial, losing out on dozens of apartments amid stiff competition during their 16-month search for stable housing.
Rents are indeed rising quickly in the area, according to a recent report by Rentals.ca and Bullpen Research and Consulting. Average apartment rents for the nearest major city — London, Ont. — climbed to $1,933 in June, up 28.5 per cent from the same time last year.
WATCH | How Canadians are being priced out of rental housing:
Soaring rents price out some Canadians
4 days ago
Duration 2:01
Some Canadians are finding themselves increasingly priced out as the cost of rent soars across the country.
Some analysts predict that the rental market may get even hotter throughout Canada.
Ben Myers, president of Bullpen Research & Consulting, a real estate advisory firm, says higher interest rates are pushing potential homebuyers to the sidelines, putting more strain on the rental market.
“These two factors will keep renters in their properties, further reducing rental supply,” Myers said.
Rental supply has also been an ongoing issue in Halifax. There, the vacancy rate is less than one per cent, among the lowest in the country, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
“We have new construction and existing construction, but they cannot keep up with the pace of the number of people who are looking for rental units,” said Lesley Dunn, program director for RentersEd, which educates Canadians on renting.
Rental prices rising across Canada
She says households with lower incomes are rapidly being priced out as rents increase faster than people’s paycheques rise. Dunn says the rental market is so hot it’s putting unfair pressure on applicants.
“Now you’re asked to pay three months rent before you will be considered for an apartment. That’s devastating,” Dunn said.
“For most newcomers, for most youth, for most people who are houseless, for most people who are on a fixed income, there is absolutely no way that they can afford that.”
The market is tight for renters in the biggest cities too, as they are the priciest. The highest average apartment rents in Canada are in Vancouver, at $2,936 a month, almost 25 per cent higher than a year ago, according to Rentals.ca. In Toronto, the average for apartments is $2,463 a month, up nearly 20 per cent year over year. Experts have pointed to a decades-long decline in building housing specifically meant for rental, known as purpose-built rentals, as another reason underlying supply issues.
Murtaza Haider, professor of management at Toronto Metropolitan University, says purpose-built rentals provide more rental stability than condominiums, in which landlords who are focused on investment are more likely to take their properties off the rental market to sell whenever they feel the time is right.
“Purpose-built rentals provide the security of tenure because you know that this is a rental property and it will stay as a rental for them for the time being,” he said.
‘Government has a big role to play’
Haider wants all levels of government need to work together to encourage more construction.
“The government has a big role to play. They can incentivize builders into this market by changing the playing field … in favour of constructing more purpose-built rentals,” he said. “The impetus is on us not to wait for another 50 years or even five years and start making those changes.”
After 16 long months, Armstrong says he and his wife finally found a place to call home.
Nathan Armstrong and his wife lived in a motel in Woodstock, Ont., for more than a year because they couldn’t find an affordable apartment. (Rob Krbavac/CBC)
“It feels amazing. A kitchen to cook in to help save money on food costs, especially now with the price of everything rising,” he said.
He hopes the rental market improves for others just beginning their search.
“It should have never taken over a year to finally get a permanent place to live,” he said.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
