Apartment rents in Kelowna are actually coming down

It seems enough is enough.

After two years of steady rises, the monthly rent on a typical one bedroom apartment in Kelowna actually slipped a bit in May.

The drop was not huge -- to $1,750 from $1,800 in April.

But it does indicate the city's housing market may have peaked and is cooling slightly as potential renters and buyers balk at record-high rents and prices.

Such a scenario means renters and buyers are willing to shop around some more and negotiate a better rent or price.

Last month, the benchmark selling price of a standard single-family home dipped just a bit, $1,400, from a record-high $1,131,800 in April to $1,130,400.

Again, that's not much.

But it may mark a break in the trend of rapidly rising rents and prices as the market recalibrates to sanity and reality.

Don't get us wrong, apartment rents and house, townhouse and condominium prices in Kelowna are still high.

In fact, house prices are 20% more than they were last year and rent on a one-bedroom apartment is 15% more than 2021.

Apartment rent statistics come from Zumper (formerly PadMapper), the online platform that lists apartments for rent and creates the monthly Canadian National Rent Report.

Median rents for one-bedroom apartments are used as the yardstick for 24 cities in Canada.

Over the past two years, Kelowna has consistently been the third or fourth most expensive city in the country, flip-flopping with Victoria.

However, with the first-time introduction of Burnaby as a tracked city and rents in Barrie surging in May, Kelowna has been knocked out of the top five.

So, for one-bed rents in May, Vancouver was the priciest at $2,240, Toronto No. 2 with $2,200, Burnaby third at $1,960, Victoria No. 4 at $1,840 and Barrie fifth with $1,760.

When looking at two-bed rents, Kelowna remains in the top five at No. 5 with a median monthly of $2,310.

Barrie is No. 6 at $1,940.

The top four are Vancouver at $3,300, Toronto with $2,630, Burnaby at $2,610 and Victoria with $2,500.

The cheapest rental markets in the country are Edmonton (one-bed: $950 and two-bed: $1,220) and St. John's ($880 and $950).

The full report can be found at https://www.zumper.com/blog/rental-price-data-canada