Rent trends - Belleville, ON
Preamble: There isn't appropriate flair for this. It is simply data for nerds, LLs, and TTs. If there was a "General Info" flair, I would use it. I find this stuff interesting, and thought others might as well.
I track average rents and unit availability in Belleville (my market) to keep a pulse on my business. Lately a lot of LL's have been bailing out of the market as cap values drop and rents have been stale. At the same time, Belleville has done a great job of getting new rental housing built with a bunch of new high-rise buildings going in.
The increase in high-rises mean that my unit count may be off. Some of the large corporate LLs are advertising whole buildings with a single ad. Also, many folks are migrating to FB Marketplace for their rentals - I just hate Marketplace as a data source because the search is freaking uncontrollable. It seems to ignore distance boundaries, filters, and even what you are looking for to feed you stuff based on your algorithm.
Anyway, the rent stagnation is great news for tenants as rents decline compared to inflation, but even with lower costs to buy houses, it makes it hard for small landlords to set up a business model that works - lower rents aren't supporting the mortgage, utility, tax, and maintenance costs on new buys. (I try to use 1% rent to value as a rule of thumb, and that's tight.)
Anyhow - my methodology, which is not scientific, and is likely influenced by folks moving from Kijiji to FB to advertise...
- Search all long term rentals in Belleville with a 6 km radius on Kijiji.
- Enter advertised prices into a spreadsheet by room count and cost for the first 3 pages of ads. This leaves out stale stuff.
- Calculate unit count, average, 65th %ile rents.
I've been doing this for years, but only started saving it all in one spreadsheet last summer.
So, for you viewing pleasure, here is the difference 2 years makes to rent values around here:
| 2024-08-07 | Room | Bach | 1br | 2br | 3br | 4+ Br |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Count | 4 | 4 | 23 | 23 | 22 | 4 |
| Average | $850.00 | $1,048.75 | $1,623.50 | $1,968.76 | $2,502.73 | $2,687.50 |
| 65th percentile | $985.00 | $1,100.00 | $1,764.50 | $2,100.00 | $2,700.00 | $2,790.00 |
| Max | $1,250.00 | $1,100.00 | $2,260.00 | $3,000.00 | $3,000.00 | $2,850.00 |
And today's numbers... Which show low supply, but stale/soft pricing.
| 2026-06-03 | Room | Bach | 1br | 2br | 3br | 4+ Br |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Count | 3 | 0 | 17 | 29 | 8 | 3 |
| Average | $700.00 | $0.00 | $1,704.41 | $2,020.17 | $2,309.38 | $3,050.00 |
| 65th percentile | $695.00 | $0.00 | $1,758.00 | $2,130.00 | $2,332.50 | $3,115.00 |
| Max | $800.00 | $0.00 | $2,390.00 | $3,200.00 | $2,800.00 | $3,500.00 |
