Apartment hunters in St. John's 'desperately' searching as renters grapple with plummeting vacancy rate
CBC
Stacey Crant has a one per cent success rate when it comes to actually getting her foot in the door of a rental property.
The 33-year-old St. John's retail worker has been searching with her roommate for a new apartment since July — and says out of over 100 listings she's responded to, only one actually offered a viewing.
"We're good long-term tenants," Crant said. "We're basically a landlord's dream. We're quiet, we're clean, we don't cause any trouble."
But despite her glowing reviews, Crant said, she can't compete with the overwhelming number of people looking for a place to live.
St. John's has been grappling with an unusually low rental vacancy rate for the past couple of years.
Today it's bottomed out at 1.5 per cent — the lowest it's been in over a decade, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation data. That's despite the number of private rentals actually increasing by just over 400 units since 2020.
Four years ago, the city's vacancy rate was 7.5 per cent.
It's not clear what's caused the rapid decline in available places to rent, but Crant says the reality of apartment hunting feels like a second job.
"When landlords are making these posts on [Facebook] Marketplace and such, they're getting so bombarded it's impossible for them to read all the messages," Crant said.
"It's not getting scary. It has been scary for quite some time now."
Crant and her roommate finally landed an apartment in the Kenmount Terrace neighbourhood last week, after nearly three months of searching. If they hadn't found a new place by October — when a new owner was set to take possession of the house they're renting and evict them — Crant says she'd either have had to move home to Grand Bank and quit her job, or move into her car.
It's not an unusual scenario these days, said Sherwin Flight, who oversees the Newfoundland Tenant and Landlord Support Group on Facebook.
Flight, who's had his finger on the pulse of the St. John's rental market since 2012, says he's seen a clear shift in recent months.
"It's getting harder and harder for people to find a place," Flight said.
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