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Canada’s rental market is often framed as a battlefield between tenants and big institutional landlords, but new Statistics Canada findings complicate that picture. In five of the six provinces studied, the largest share of rental-property value was held not by the biggest corporate players, but by small-scale individual investors.
The result lands at a sensitive moment. Housing affordability remains one of the country’s most debated issues, and renters are still navigating tight supply, elevated asking rents and a shrinking path to ownership. The data does not remove concerns about large landlords, real estate investment trusts or financialized housing, but it shows that Canada’s rental system is more fragmented than many headlines suggest.
Small Landlords Still Dominate Much of the Rental Market
StatCan Says Small Investors Own Most Rental Properties in 5 of 6 Provinces Studied
Statistics Canada defines small-scale individual investors as investors who own five or fewer properties, excluding properties held for personal use. In 2022, those investors owned the largest share of the assessed value of rental properties in Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia. Their share ranged from 35.9% in Nova Scotia to 57.1% in Prince Edward Island.
That means a large part of Canada’s rental stock still sits in the hands of people closer to “mom-and-pop” landlords than national institutions. This could include a family renting out a basement apartment, a retiree holding a duplex, or a couple who kept a condo after moving. For renters, that can mean dealing with a landlord who is local and personally involved. For policymakers, it means any rental-housing reform aimed only at major institutions may miss a large part of the market.
Nova Scotia Stands Out as the Exception
Nova Scotia was the only province in the study where small-scale individual investors did not hold the largest share of rental-property value. Instead, institutional investors owned the largest share of the province’s assessed rental-property value, at 38.0%. Statistics Canada identifies institutional investors as the top 0.1% of investors by the assessed value of investment properties owned in a province.
That distinction matters because Nova Scotia has been one of Canada’s most pressured rental markets in recent years, especially around Halifax. A larger institutional presence can influence how tenants experience the market, particularly in buildings where rent-setting, renovations and portfolio management are handled at scale. Still, the data does not show institutional dominance everywhere. It shows a more uneven pattern, where the Atlantic rental market can look very different from Ontario, Manitoba or British Columbia.
Big Investors Are Mostly Absent From the House Sector
One of the clearest findings is that institutional investors own only a tiny share of the total stock of houses in the six provinces studied. In 2022, their ownership ranged from 0.1% of houses in Prince Edward Island and Manitoba to 0.4% in Ontario. Statistics Canada’s “house” category includes single-detached homes, semi-detached homes, row houses and mobile homes.
This challenges the idea that large institutions are broadly buying up ordinary houses across the country. Houses remain mostly owner-occupied, and when they are used as investments, they are more often held by smaller individual investors or people using properties for personal reasons. A familiar example is a homeowner who adds a secondary suite, rents a former family home, or buys a small townhouse as a long-term asset. The policy challenge is that these units can add rental supply, but they can also compete with first-time buyers.
Newer Rental Properties Show a Different Pattern
The picture changes when looking at newer rental properties. Statistics Canada found that more than half of the total assessed value of rental properties built since 2011 was owned by institutional investors in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The shares were 63.1% in Nova Scotia and 61.5% in New Brunswick, showing how newer supply can be more concentrated even when the broader market is not.
This matters because new rental construction often requires larger pools of capital, especially for apartment buildings. A small landlord may be able to buy a condo or convert a basement, but building or acquiring newer multi-unit rental stock usually takes deeper financing. That is where institutions, real estate investment trusts and larger corporations can become more visible. The tradeoff is complicated: larger investors may help finance new rental units, but tenants and housing advocates often worry about rent increases, renovictions and profit-driven management.
Toronto and Vancouver Look Less Concentrated Than Expected
Statistics Canada also looked at rental-market concentration in 12 census metropolitan areas across the six provinces studied. The findings suggested that Toronto and Vancouver had lower rental-market concentration than the other CMAs analyzed. That may surprise people, given how often both cities are used as shorthand for Canada’s housing crisis.
Lower concentration does not mean affordable. Toronto and Vancouver remain expensive markets, and previous Statistics Canada work showed a high share of investment properties among condominium apartments in both regions. But it does suggest that ownership is spread across many investors rather than controlled by a small number of dominant players. In practical terms, the rental problem in these cities is not simply about one landlord type. It reflects high land values, condo-heavy supply, investor demand, population growth, limited family-sized units and years of underbuilt rental housing.
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