According to the Calgary Apartment Association, vacancy rates at the end of January were between three and four per cent for the city’s approximately 50,000 apartment rental units. This is good news for would-be renters who faced desperate times in 2006 when vacancies hit a historic low of 0.5 per cent.

The price of renting in Calgary, however, remains the highest in the nation. In 2007, average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the city was $1,089 per month in 2007, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CHMC) Rental Market Report for Calgary. This beat out Vancouver ($1,084), Toronto ($1,061) and Edmonton ($958). The report predicts a further five per cent increase in average rental prices for 2008.

Grant Neufeld of the Calgary Housing Action Initiative says that while softening vacancy rates are good news, particularly since landlords will no longer have a “free hand” to increase rents as high as they want, the numbers don’t reflect the significant number of people who remain unable to find housing that they can afford. “The reality is, we’re still massively short in terms of the amount of housing we need, particularly in the rental market and affordable housing,” says Neufeld.

According to the CHMC, the easing of the rental crunch was mainly attributed to a decrease in net migration into the city. The city’s rental market itself actually shrunk by 5.4 per cent due to a lack of new rental construction and the fact that 1,570 existing rental units were converted into condominiums in 2007. (AM)