Can I show my age here, maybe just for a moment?
After all, fair is fair. It’s every generation’s inherent right to complain about the generation that came after them…
While I understand that the rental market might be a little bit soft, I do not understand why so many young renters in Toronto these days feel that they have this “power” over landlords.
Perhaps “power” is the wrong word, but rather the early-20-something tenants seem to feel that they’re entitled to a pre-delivery inspection for every property they see, and that they’re supposed to submit some sort of “list” to the landlord of all the things they want changed.
Last month, I had a rental listing for a 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom unit in a triplex.
It was nothing special, but we most certainly weren’t worried about finding a tenant.
Showings were steady, and we received many inquiries and eventually an offer.
The offer was being submitted by an aggressive, enterprising young agent who I could picture on the other end of the line wearing a suit-coat with a pocket square merely to eat breakfast.
If you were a bystander to this transaction, I swear, you’d think we were brokering a merger between Rogers and Bell.
Our property was listed for $3,200 per month.
The offer was for $2,980 per month.
Tell me, “David, everybody has the right to negotiate,” and tell me that the young agent was doing his job, but a point needs to be made here:
As a seller, you don’t care who’s buying your property, but as a landlord, you sure care who’s leasing it.
This is why landlords can get the “ick” from certain tenants and decide not to proceed with them, regardless of the money involved, which simply doesn’t happen when you’re selling.
My landlord client said, “I don’t need to see anything that’s below the list price,” and he was well within his rights to do so.
I told this to the tenant’s agent, and he replied, “We would consider a sign-back.”
Oh, you would, would you?
I’m getting Jonah Hill from “This Is The End” vibes right now.
Showings were steady, and we received an offer from another agent, so my landlord client told me not to respond to the first folks.
The next day, that first agent texted (this generation won’t talk on the phone) and said, “What’s the status of our offer?”
I called him, and he didn’t answer.
He texted back and said, “Tied up, can’t talk, what’s up?”
I texted him, “Call me when you’re free,” just because I felt like pulling the legs off a spider on that particular day…
He texted again to ask me for an update, and I texted back telling him to call me.
He eventually called me back, and I said, “We have another lease offer on the table, so we’re likely going to proceed with that.” He replied, “I told you we’d welcome a sign back,” to which I explained that my client wasn’t interested in signing back a lease offer.
To this agent’s credit, he did resubmit later that day.
But his offer was for $3,080 per month.
Then the best part: he sent comparable sales!
Attached within the lease offer itself were a dozen MLS listings for other 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom units across the city.
I had simply never seen anything like that before.
Comparable sales. Really. Actually.
Now, I might need to walk back the “best part” label as described above, because what came next was absolutely sensational.
The tenant had made specific “requests” in the offer to lease, included as clauses in his Schedule A.
How’s this one:
“The landlord agrees to have the property professionally cleaned before closing, including steam-cleaning of carpets, and cleaning of interior and exterior windows, from a cleaning company in good standing, with WSIB coverage, and provide proof of same before closing.”
Oh, really?
So, Berta the hard-working immigrant cleaning lady who works 18-hour days for cash, isn’t good enough to clean for you? And you want the windows done?
What else?
“The landlord agrees to replace the carpet in the primary bedroom and second bedroom with flooring similar in style, colour, texture, make, and model to the flooring throughout the rest of the unit.”
Sorry, what?
We’re past rolling out the red carpet for you, and now you want us to replace it?
On what planet does a landlord spend $7,500 on new flooring just because the tenant asks?
Here’s a good one:
“The landlord agrees to raise the chandelier in the dining room, currently hanging 4’6″ from the receptacle, to 2’8″, and provide a photo to the tenant before closing.”
I mean, I wouldn’t have even thought to ask for that, so kudos for being creative. But also, what the eff was this tenant doing?
Why does this matter?
Even if it did matter, for some ungodly reason, why would the tenant think these are things he or she should be asking for in a standard offer to lease?
Then this:
“The Landlord agrees to provide names and bios for tenants currently living in both the lower and upper units, and provide the same if and when the existing tenants vacate and new tenants take occupancy.”
I can picture this kid’s Grade-1 report card: “Billy doesn’t play well with others.”
Never mind privacy, but on what planet does this kid think he deserves bios of the other folks living at the property?
This offer was just ridiculous, but the agent presenting the offer and the tenant didn’t see it that way.
When I told the agent that his offer was “misguided,” he replied, “We’re open to considering counter-proposals.”
What he didn’t understand was how the tenant was positioning himself, because any experienced landlord would take one look at this tenant’s offer, clauses, requests, and general demeanour, and conclude the following:
“There’s no way I’m going to rent to this high-maintenance, squeaky-wheel, entitled little shit.”
And that’s more or less what my client said in the end.
Do you think the tenant and the agent will ever come to understand this?
Having finished out Q1 not too long ago, let’s take a look at the rental market for condominiums in C01 and C08 as a representation of the overall rental market in Toronto.
Here’s the listing activity:
If this comes as a surprise, it really shouldn’t.
Seeing rental listings decline year-over-year makes sense, since so many people were trying to sell their units in Q1 of 2024, many of whom ended up leasing them.
January and February listings were higher than both 2024 and 2025, although the gap shrank in March, with listings down over 2025, but up over 2024.
Here’s the graph:
When I see this, I can’t help but notice just how many listings we saw in 2025.
But notice how 2025 listings moved in tandem with 2024 in January and February before spiking in March.
As I mentioned above, this is because so many of the condos listed for sale in Q1 of 2025 ended up coming up for lease after failed attempts to sell.
Here’s the leasing activity:
The leasing activity is pretty much in line with the listing activity.
January: -7% vs -10%
February: -10% vs -11%
March: -4% vs 0%
Really not much to write home about here, as the market looks to be operating within a band you’d call “normal.”
When we look at the graph, however, you start to see what looks like it could be the beginning of a trend:
The sheer volume of leasing activity in 2025 was astounding, and nowhere was this displayed more prominently than in July, with an 18.2% increase over July of 2024, and a whopping 56.8% increase over July of 2023.
While leasing activity in January and February started below that of January and February, 2025, the two years drew even in March.
Can we expect the trend to continue from here?
Canada saw a 60% reduction in international students from January to November 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, and yet leasing activity in 2025 was higher.
So say what you want about the rental market being soft, but I’m just not seeing it.
Last, but not least, let’s look at the ratio of units listed to units leased:
Nothing out of the ordinary here.
January is a very consistent month across the board, save for perhaps 2024.
Year-over-year movements of +2% and -1% are essentially rounding errors, as far as I’m concerned, but I will be curious to see if the absorption rate increases from here, not only month-over-month, but also year-over-year.
Here’s the graph, for which you can see there’s far less consistency than with units listed and units leased:
It looks like what my son draws on my computer in Paint.
Yes, I said Paint. I don’t know why, but he’s really into it. Not only that, I don’t know how he’s able to open the program, but I suppose it’s better than his keyboard mashing when my Outlook is open…
Well, folks, perhaps rental statistics aren’t the sexiest blog topic, but at least I’ve given you a good opportunity to ruminate on “the youth of today” after my old-man rant at the beginning.
Happy Monday, folks!
