Prince George Bucks Provincial Vacancy Rates

Canada Mortgage and Housing has released its rental market analysis for the past year. Not surprisingly, Prince George is more attuned to the national average, both for the rental vacancies and the rental costs, than with our peer cities to the south.
Here’s how Prince George fares with other peer BC communities and the provincial average:

        October 2016        October 2017
BC                1.3%        1.3%
PG                4.2%        3.8%
Kamloops      1.1%        1.2%
Nanaimo        1.5%        1.6%

That doesn’t surprise Courtney Steinbach, Property Manager with Pace Realty. She says summers normally are the busiest when people are opting to move. But this summer was anything but normal.
“It doesn’t surprise me at all that the numbers are lower this year than they were last year. A lot of it had to do with what was happening during the summer in the province. A lot of people were holding their breath waiting to see what was going to happen. And then when it was over, they said ‘Okay, we can move.’,” she explains.
CMHC Senior Market Analyst Taylor Pardy breaks down the Prince George rental scene even further.
“Units built between 1980 and 1999 actually have a vacancy rate of 1.3%. Units that were built in or after the year 2000 actually have a vacancy rate of zero. Whereas the units that were built between the 1960’s and the 1979-period have a vacancy rate of 4.2%,” explains Pardy, adding that latter number represents about 75 percent of the overall rental stock and is, in part, inflating the lower vacancy rate.
Prince George’s rental prices are also lower:

        October 2016        October 2017
BC             $1,099       $1,164
PG             $773         $794
Kamloops    $854        $874
Nanaimo      $816        $875