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After 15 straight months of rental price declines, the power balance may finally be swinging back into the hands of tenants, something that should come as a relief to cash-strapped Canadians, though not all will be in position to take advantage.

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At the end of 2025, the average asking rent for all properties in the country was $2,060 per month, according to rentals.ca, still high by historical levels but below the peak of $2,202 hit in May, 2024.

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“I think this will be an interesting year because by the end of 2025, we had negative population growth, which was pretty surprising,” said Giacomo Ladas, associate director of rentals.ca, which tracks rental prices across the country.

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On the supply front, there are still 180,000 units under construction across the country, a small fraction of the existing three-million-plus apartments out there, but significant enough to impact the market.

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“Vacancy rates are increasing, and for the rest of 2026, supply will outweigh demand,” said Ladas. “I don’t think incentives are going to be going away. Renters are taking a lot more time with their choice because of the slowdown in demand.”

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Carl Gomez, chief economist with Centurian Asset Management, which owns a private REIT with 23,000 units, said the market needed that supply after decades of undersupply, but warned that not all of it is hitting the mark.

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“There is a lot of excess, which has helped the vacancy rate. But you do have to dig beneath the surface of what is being added, and a good chunk of supply is not filling the gap for the demand in the market,” he said, pointing to small one-bedroom units. “They come to market, and they are not necessarily affordable for the average renter.”

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Despite rents being down 5.4 per cent over the last year, they remain 14.1 per cent above the levels seen at the end of 2019, according to rentals.ca.

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It is an established principle that no more than 30 per cent of your gross income should go towards rent. That would mean an average income of $82,400 just for a typical apartment in Canada, with the figure much higher in Toronto and Vancouver. So, yes, we are still talking about affordability.

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It’s not a real shock to see groups like the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, opposed to even a modest 2.1 per cent guideline increase for rent in Ontario. People just can’t afford that in some parts of the rental world.

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The picture, though, may be worse for landlords, whose profits don’t look all that tangible today, and who are seeing the value of their holdings weaken in a softer market.