In 2018, the Ontario government removed rent control protections for units first occupied after November 15, 2018. This piece examines how rents have changed across Ontario cities in the periods before and after that deregulation, comparing actual increases against what would have been permitted under the provincial rent control guidelines. [1]
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Maecenas consequat lacus eu dolor dapibus sodales. Aenean venenatis metus id eleifend tincidunt. Nulla ut lacus et urna finibus bibendum sit amet et ante. Aliquam tristique, ex sed porttitor hendrerit, ex odio accumsan ex, eu maximus leo quam quis nulla.
Time period:
Show % as:
Rank cities by:
Raw increase in monthly rent ($), 2025 vs. 2018, excluding inflation
Source: CMHC Rental Market Survey. Average rent for all bedroom types, October surveys. Cities lacking data for the selected period are excluded. 33 cities shown. Nominal values do not account for inflation.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Maecenas consequat lacus eu dolor dapibus sodales. Aenean venenatis metus id eleifend tincidunt. Nulla ut lacus et urna finibus bibendum sit amet et ante. [2]
Source: CMHC Rental Market Survey. Both rent paths start from a hypothetical $500/month rent in 1990. The chart shows the most significant policy changes regarding rent control; for a full history see the Tranjan and Vargatoth (2024). Nominal values do not account for inflation.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Maecenas consequat lacus eu dolor dapibus sodales. Aenean venenatis metus id eleifend tincidunt.
Data & Methodology
Rental data comes from the CMHC Rental Market Survey, which surveys purpose-built rental apartment buildings each October. For each city, we use the "Total" average rent, a portfolio average across studio, one-, two-, and three-bedroom-plus units. The raw CMHC data was preprocessed to handle suppressed values (marked ** when a sample is too small to publish) and zero-change markers (++). This yields a clean annual rent series for each of the 33 Ontario cities shown.
Five periods are examined: three equal seven-year spans (2004–2011, 2011–2018, 2018–2025) chosen to straddle the November 2018 deregulation, plus two cumulative windows (2004–2025 and 2011–2025) for broader context. For each city and period, two measures are calculated. The raw increase is the actual rent change, expressed as a percentage or in dollars per month. The excess above rent control is the gap between actual rent and a counterfactual amount, computed by applying Ontario's annual guideline percentage forward from the period start. A city is excluded from a specific period only if data is missing at either endpoint; all other periods for that city are retained. All figures are nominal and do not account for inflation.
Ontario rent control guidelines come from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Each year's guideline caps the percentage by which a landlord may raise rent that calendar year relative to the prior year.
