UNLUCKY NO. 7? CITY CLIMBS IN MONTHLY RENTAL RANKING

It was good while it lasted. The online property rental platform Zumper says Barrie rose to seventh in its March list of most expensive Canadian cities in which to rent a onebedroom apartment. The city ranked 11th last month.

Barrie's median single-bedroom rate currently sits at $1,780, up $100 from February's report.

Year-over-year data shows median rent has climbed 14.8 per cent within the city.

Atop the one-bedroom list sits Vancouver, B.C. ($2,550), Toronto ($2,350), and B.C.'s Burnaby ($2,300), Victoria ($2,060) and Kelowna ($1,910). Most of those municipalities also saw double-digit yearover-year price increases, except for Kelowna, where the price grew by a slimmer 6.1per-cent margin.

"Canada continues to see large spikes in rent prices with a majority of cities in this report

experiencing double-digit year-over-year growth," Zumper spokesperson Crystal Chen said. "No city experienced a year-over-year decline in rent. While the (United States) has seen rents flattening in the last few months, Canada's rents have only continued to climb."

She said a combination of increasing interest rates, large numbers of new immigrants settling in Canada in recent years, and a failure to build an

adequate supply of new units to meet demand is pushing rental costs higher across the country.

"Until Canada is able to develop more housing supply, rents will remain high and rising," she said. "With high-interest rates ... many consumers are staying in the rental market for longer, which lowers vacancy rates and puts upward pressure on rent prices."

Meanwhile, at $2,030, Barrie is tied with Ottawa for 10th in the two-bedroom market. That median price has risen by 6.8 per cent year-over-year.

Vancouver ($3,600), Burnaby ($3,050), Toronto ($3,000), Victoria ($2,600) and Kelowna ($2,270) topped the double-bedroom list.

Chen said Kitchener, London and Toronto are seeing rates climb at a faster pace than Barrie. "While Barrie rents have normalized more when compared to other Ontario cities, it still is not immune to the fact that Canada overall is in need of more available housing," she said, noting Barrie had 145 active listings last month.

The March report used rental data from hundreds of thousands of active listings across Canada in February. Listings were then aggregated to calculate median asking rents for the country's top 23 most populous metropolitan areas.

Data does not include shortterm rentals. For the full report, visit zumper.com.