New data from Statistics Canada reveals that large institutional investors are not dominating the rental housing market in British Columbia, challenging claims that corporate landlords are driving up home prices and rents in the province's most expensive cities.
StatCan Report Findings
The report, released Tuesday, analyzed ownership data from 2022 across 12 large metro areas in B.C., Ontario, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia. It found that Vancouver and Toronto—Canada's two most expensive rental markets—were the least concentrated and most competitive, meaning they are not dominated by a small number of large owners. Instead, rental homes in these markets are owned by a mix of small, medium, and large investors, with small-scale landlords making up the biggest portion.
In B.C., large institutional investors owned 20.3 per cent of the assessed value of residential rental real estate, compared to 23.6 per cent in Ontario, 33.6 per cent in Manitoba, and 38 per cent in Nova Scotia. Institutional investors are defined by StatCan as entities making up the top 0.1 per cent of investors based on assessed property value, including pension funds, real estate investment trusts, and large family-owned businesses.
Expert Reactions
Tsur Somerville, a professor at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia, said the new data makes it “really hard to support the claim that large institutional investors are somehow dominating the market.” He added, “The data is inconsistent with any notion of market power to set rent at the metropolitan level.”
However, some experts caution that the snapshot from 2022 does not capture long-term trends. Jeremy Withers, a senior researcher with New Housing Alternatives at the University of Toronto, noted that research has shown the rise of big financial firms acquiring rental homes in recent years. He also pointed to studies in Toronto indicating that tenants in buildings owned by large corporate landlords, such as private equity firms, faced higher rates of evictions and rent hikes.
Implications for Housing Policy
Withers argued that if governments are committed to making housing more stable and affordable, they should direct funding towards helping non-market actors build and acquire more homes. The debate over institutional investors' role in housing markets continues, with some viewing the new data as dispelling myths about corporate landlords as bad actors, while others say it paints an incomplete picture of the financialization of housing.
