Hey guys,
So, I'm born and raised Albertan, but I moved to Australia several years ago. I still come on here sometimes because I really care about Canada, and I hope that I can at least offer encouragement or insights as far as I'm able, to help make it a better place (one I'd love to be able to return to someday and have it be recognizable, haha).
So, I recently learned from a friend in Edmonton that rental agencies have become a thing over there. So like, a person can buy a home, and hire an agent to manage it for them - taking payments, finding tenants, managing repairs, etc.
When I left Alberta, that kind of thing was virtually unheard of (and I've been a renter my whole adult life, and been around the block, so I should know - I guess I can't speak to other parts of Canada but at least I hadn't heard about it elsewhere either). But in Australia, this kind of thing has been common, the usual norm even, for 20 years already.
And oh man, guys, given that Australia has been on this path longer - take it as a warning from the future. You guys need to pressure all your politicians at all levels to ban this practice, make it so that no professionals of any kind can manage private rentals.
I'll lay out for you what Canada could look like if it's allowed to grow and continue.
The experience of being a renter is not only hard or unstable, it's actually, truly dehumanizing. Agents treat tenants like second-class citizens, lying to them and gaslighting them. They slow down communication with the landlord (whom you never, ever meet) and often prevent repairs from getting done. They force rent increases and add to costs inherently (since they take a cut of the rent).
Because people can get agents to do the work for them, it's increased demand for housing all across the country - because people can buy multiple homes in cities and states they don't even live in and rent them out through an agent. Here, the cost of housing in Adelaide went up so much that locals were struggling to afford it, and the reason is that random people in Sydney (who could no longer afford to buy there) - halfway across the country - were buying up homes as rental properties and renting them out through agents. It's very common here to hear stories of families trying to buy a first home getting outbid by small-time investors. I once had a roommate who was renting in the part of Sydney his business was in, but he owned *six* rental properties in a city 3 hours away. The only reason he could do that - and add to the competition on the houses, along with God knows how many other people bidding on them from all kinds of places - is because he can get agents to manage it for him.
It's so common that the cultural norm here is not to talk about buying your first home to live in for your family; people talk about getting on the property ladder.
Also, it makes it easier for landlords to be dodgy, because they never have to see their own homes or deal with any problems themselves. The quality of rental properties here is atrocious, and that is part of the reason. I'm talking like, nightmare-level bug infestations, mould problems, unrepaired water damage, rotting carpets, "furnished" apartments that in practice are the landlord's storage area that you pay to live in, mushrooms growing from the ceiling, like seriously. That is so common that I'd even say it's the norm here. Last time I moved, I looked at 15 different places, and only 2 of them didn't have obvious unrepaired water damage (we moved into one of the decent-looking places, which turned out to have *hidden* water damage and related mould issues).
So, I know a lot of you are already feeling a bit down in the mouth about prospects in Canada. So again, take this as a warning from the future - write your MPs, municipal government, MLAs, whatever, write all of them and pressure them to not allow this practice to continue.