Rental rates for condos in Mississauga continued their ever-upward trend in the third quarter of 2018.

According to the Toronto Real Estate Board’s latest quarterly tracking report, the average monthly cost to lease a one-bedroom condo in Canada’s sixth largest city rose to $1,962 between July and September.

That represented a 3.8 per cent increase over the second quarter of this year and a year-to-date spike of 9.4 per cent from the $1,794 average monthly rate recorded in the first quarter of 2018.

The data is based off a total of 701 leases recorded by TREB member realtors in Mississauga over the past three months.

Rent for an average one-bedroom condo in Mississauga has spiked 21.6 per cent in just two years since the same quarter in 2016, when a unit fitting that description could be had for $1,614 per month.

All types of apartments saw quarter-over-quarter increases. The monthly rent for a bachelor grew 8.5 per cent between the second and third quarters from $1,500 to $1,628. The cost of a two-bedroom unit grew from $2,290 in Q2 to $2,429 in Q3, while three-bedroom condo units jumped from $2,741 to $2,807 over the same period.

“Average rents are continuing to increase at annual rates far beyond the rate of inflation in the GTA as rental demand remains very strong relative to the supply of units available. We will need to see a sustained period of time within which growth in the number of rental units listed outstrips growth in the number of units leased before we see the rental market return to balance,” said TREB’s director of market analysis Jason Mercer in the organization’s quarterly report.

TREB doesn’t expect the upward trend in rental rates to stop anytime soon without government intervention.

“Policy-makers, including those running for election at the municipal level, need to identify and fix existing policies that are hampering the ability to bring more rental supply on line. These same policy-makers also have to develop new policies that could promote the development of more rental units moving forward,” said TREB president Garry Bhaura in the report.

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