Kingston Apartment Market

Kingston is the largest city located in eastern Ontario other than Ottawa and has a population of 152,358 people. The city’s rental apartment market has approximately 836 apartment buildings containing 12,401 apartments, giving the city an apartment rate of 8.1 apartments per 100 people, one of the highest proportions of apartments in Ontario. Kingston has 719 buildings smaller than 20 units in size and 117 buildings larger than 20 unit in size. The city is obviously dominated by smaller apartment buildings. Much of Kingston’s affordable apartments supply housing to the student population of Queen’s University, which dominates the area just to the west of the city’s downtown core. 

Vacancy Rates and Average Rents

Kingston has one of the lowest overall vacancy rates in Ontario at 1.3%, which is skewed upwards by the average vacancy rate for 2 bedroom apartments of 1.7%, due probably to an oversupply of this apartment style (2 bedroom apartments make up 55% of the total number of apartments in the city). Average rents are particularly high for 3+ bedroom apartments at $1,135, which is the highest average rent for that apartment style in Ontario except for Richmond Hill. Average rents for other apartment styles in Kingston are slightly below average for major cities and towns in the province. 

For Investors

Kingston has a large rental apartment market and Homestead, a major rental apartment operator, has entered the market several times over the past decade with new apartment construction (6 buildings). Although vacancies are currently extremely low in Kingston compared to most cities in Ontario, the city has a high proportion of apartments to population which means that if demand drops off for some reason vacancies could spike upwards. Investors should be okay in this market for the foreseeable future, but should do detailed due diligence to ensure they buy reliable properties.