Re: couples (and roommates), you'd think you could split your rent obligation (since, in fact, you are), but rental agencies typically want you both earning 3x rent in case you break up. It's kind of crazy.
These numbers are very interesting. It's not surprising that a lot of the low end is coming in around $14-15, which seems to be the going minimum wage in a lot of places.
The wisdom of crowds. Good posts, everyone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by esquire
It's interesting that the construction of a huge-for-Winnipeg number of MURB units (both rental and condo) over the last 10 years doesn't seem to be having much of an impact in terms of cooling off rents, given that it has seemingly cooled off the actual value of those units... I've read real estate people making comments to that effect in various Free Press articles.
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The simple supply/demand model doesn't really apply to rentals--at least not in real life where building a glut of rental housing in growing cities doesn't happen.
There is a lot of research on the connection between wages and rent though. Basically, rents adjust to what the market will bear. Wages go up, rents go up. So, somewhere like Silicon Valley can have a stagnant population and rents will still climb thanks to super high wages.
Raising minimum wage has an effect on rents too. We've been talking about 30% in this conversation. Interestingly enough, that's about how much the market bumps rents relative to minimum wages. So, if we want our minimum wage to make housing affordable, we have to account for the fact that it's a three steps forward, one step back process.
In part, it's good that rents have gone up in Winnipeg. It's a sign that wages are higher. But this hides another problem for low-income renters: all the cheap apartments converted to condos 10ish years ago. Those will never come back. It'll be a generation before the rentals built now will be affordable.