The housing and rental market is tight across Saskatchewan with the rising cost of living, but some Saskatoon residents are seeing a notable increase in their rent.
Peter Davey lives in an apartment downtown and was paying about $1,000 a month for rent before disaster struck.
“My carpet was soaking wet and I had water coming in through the front door, I had water coming in from the walls,” Davey said.
Davey said a fire back in June on the 11th floor in the penthouse suite caused significant flooding throughout the building.
He said the walls were removed after a damp test, as well as the ceiling in the bathroom and the vanity unit.
“From the middle of June to two weeks ago they finally came and did some work on renovating the walls, putting drywall back up.”
He said the day after renovations wrapped up he received a notice that his rent was going up.
“I had a notice of an increase of rent, $350 a month, and it’s not just me that its happened to, the rent increase seems to be very widespread – to a lot of people.”
He said since the management company Colliers took over the building, its cleanliness has dropped. They’re even finding needles in stairwells, he says.
Davey noted he expected a rent increase, but added that a 30-40 per cent increase is too much.
He said the increases to rent are disproportionate in the building, claiming one person has a 50 per cent increase.
Davey said he’s spoken to many of the tenants in the building, most of whom are unsure what they are going to do.
“A lot of people are frightened to talk because they think they might be evicted right away, it’s sad.”
Davey said he plans to move as soon as possible.
Global News reached out to Colliers for a response and received an email from them saying they didn’t wish to comment.
According to the government of Saskatchewan, only two months’ notice is required for a rent increase on a fixed-term tenancy when notice is given at least two months before the tenancy end date.
For periodic tenancies, if a landlord is not a member of a prescribed landlord association they can serve tenants with a 12-month notice of rent increase.
Landlords who are members of good standing with either the network of non-profit housing providers of Saskatchewan or the Saskatchewan landlord association may serve tenants an increase with a six-month notice.
Anita Linares is a senior market analyst for the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation for Regina, and Pete Nelson is a senior market analyst for the same company in Saskatoon, and both say they are seeing the tightest housing market conditions since 2014.
“The year-on-year rent increase is the highest that it’s been at any point since that time,” Nelson said.
Nelson said a couple of factors are creating these conditions, noting immigration is picking back up, in-person classes at post-secondary schools are picking up as well, and the economic strength of the province are all contributors.
“More people are going to be drawn to come to Saskatchewan.”
He said the rental market over the next few years will be dependent on what new housing will be coming online, and how that balances out with the other factors.
Linares said she echoes a lot of the same points as Nelson when it comes to the Regina market, but said for the second year in a row the rental market universe in Regina has decreased.
She said there’s a lot of older stock in the market across Saskatchewan.
“These older stocks aren’t usually what we’ll call desirable. There’s a stronger preference for newer and larger buildings,” Linares said.
She said the overall vacancy rate in Regina that was reported in 2022 was three per cent.
Nelson said Saskatoon’s vacancy rate sat at 3.4 per cent.
He noted that when you look at household income, the bottom 20 per cent can only afford about seven per cent of properties in the rental universe.
Linares added that most of those units in that bracket in Regina are one-bedroom units, so larger families won’t have adequate housing.
“Not only do we need to add supply to the market, we need to add adequate supply across all spectrums, for all families, in Regina, and throughout the country.”
Both analysts said this is a call to action to bring a more diverse and abundant supply of housing onto the market.