All of the talk of people moving to Miami over the last two years is certainly coming through in the numbers. According to this recent rental report by Realtor.com, residential rents in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metro area increased 55.3% on a year-over-year basis (as of February 2022). And the next 2 metro areas on the list are also in Florida. This is compared to a 17.1% increase for national rents, which is quite a bit lower, but still a massive increase. These are clearly unsustainable numbers and eventually things will settle down. How exactly things settle down is yet to be determined. But for right now, the above figure feels to me like a pretty good answer to the following question: If you had the flexibility to work from anywhere, where would you go? Somewhere sunny, I guess.

Urbanation released its Q3-2021 rental report for the Greater Toronto Area at the beginning of this week. The vacancy rate in purpose-built rental buildings fell to 3.0%. This is down from 5.1% in Q2-2021 and 6.4% in Q1-2021. For the former City of Toronto (the city pre-amalgamation), vacancy rates declined to 3.8% in Q3-2021, down from 9% in Q1-2021. So people are renting apartments.

At the same time, rents are growing. The average rent for newer purpose-built rentals was $2,389 per month or $3.30 per square foot at the end of last quarter. This is up 3.8% from Q2. But what is also interesting to see is how quickly the core / downtown is snapping back. Looking at condominium rentals, the former City of Toronto had the lowest leases-to-listings ratio at the start of the pandemic in Q2-2020. But in Q3 of this year, its ratio was the highest. See below.