Quote:
Originally Posted by Dion
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The government is in between a rock and a hard place on this issue. There are pensioners and retirees out there who see there pension increase with inflation, but of course inflation does not take into account housing costs. Rents will undoubtedly increase as housing costs and inflation go up, to the point where some tenants won't be able to afford it. Some social program needs to be put in place to help those retirees or pensioners afford a place to live. Nobody wants to see Alberta become a place where we kick out our pensioners.
Rent control is the solution that has been proposed to keep some of these spiraling rise in costs in check. There are fundamentally some large problems with rent control. Right now you are already seeing the effects of rent control in that investment property owners are raising the price on rents because they are afraid rent control will limit them to 3 or 4% per year. They don't want to get behind the eight ball so they raise it by a couple hundred before the legislation comes into effect.
As well, new investors wanting to purchase homes will not buy new homes because they will not get the return they are looking for, thereby effectively reducing the number of new rental properties available in the city.
Even current landlords may sell their homes before raising the price in rent because they don't want to be the bad guy. They sell their property to a family to live there and just like that another rental property is off the market.
The best solution would be to make secondary suites legal and see how that plays out over the next year. This would open up a number of potential rental suites available and would undoubtedly help the market.