Two-bedroom apartments in Hamilton closing in on $2,000 a month

The rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Hamilton is closing in on $2,000 a month - making the city the 15th most expensive across Canada to rent a unit of that kind.

Two-bedroom flats in Steeltown are costing renters an average of $1,940 a month, nearly four per cent more than in January 2022 but 5.5 per cent less than last February, a recent report from property listing service Rentals.ca found.

For a unit of that size to be considered affordable in the eyes of The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. - meaning 30 per cent or less of an individual's income goes toward rent - the average tenant would have to make at least $6,400 a month gross earnings.

That means if they opted to split the rent with a roommate or partner, they'd still have to earn at least $3,200 a month.

Hamilton trails Montreal, Que., where the average two-bedroom apartment costs $1,994. Vancouver and Toronto continue to top the list, where similar units in those cities cost tenants an average of $3,050 and $2,778 a month, respectively.

The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Hamilton saw a decrease of nearly three per cent in February to $1,514. In December 2021, the cost of a one-bedroom unit was hovering around $1,549.

However, the average rate still jumped by a little more than four per cent from last February, making the city the 18th most expensive to rent a one-bedroom unit across the country.

Hamilton and Brampton had the same average cost for a one-bedroom apartment, with both cities falling behind Montreal, Que., where a unit would rent for $1,516 - a difference of just $2, enough to buy a medium coffee.

Vancouver and Toronto top the ranks for single units, costing tenants north of $2,000 a month on average.

Rentals.ca's latest rent rankings, published with residential real estate advisory firm Bullpen Research and Consulting Inc., are the average of all monthly listings on the website. They include basement apartments, rental apartments, condos, townhouses, semi-detached and single-detached homes.

Fallon Hewitt is a reporter at The Spectator. fhewitt@thespec.com