Windsor rental interest surges as apartment supply dries up: national report

Windsor is now ranked No. 10 among the 25 cities included in the survey.

A new report suggests demand in Windsor’s rental market has shot up faster than any other large Canadian city since the start of 2026. The spike in renter interest in Windsor was driven by a 72 per cent year-over-year decline in available apartments in the city, according to the latest Renter Interest Report by RentCafe.com, a rental search website which provides a quarterly analysis of apartment-search activity across 25 Canadian cities. The drop in available listings in Windsor represents “the steepest supply tightening among all cities tracked” since the start of 2026, the report noted.

Windsor is now ranked No. 10 among the 25 cities included in the survey for renter interest in 2026, a jump from 13 spots since the previous quarterly report. Hamilton (No. 2) and Kingston (No. 3) are the only Ontario cities ranked above Windsor in renter interest. RentCafe.com gives a score for renter interest out of a total of 100 based on four factors: total available listings in a city, number of listing views, number of apartments saved as favourites, and number of saved personalized searches.

The “dramatic supply drop” in the Windsor rental market is a result of developers scaling back rental housing projects due to a combination of higher interest rates, economic uncertainty and elevated construction costs, Doug Ressler, data analyst at Yardi Matrix, the sister company of RentCafe.com, told the Star. Related Developer plans to dismantle historic CBC Windsor building, erect 1,602 housing units Development boom along Howard Avenue puts Windsor sewer near capacity According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Windsor saw 931 new multi-unit and 331 single detached unit starts in 2025, a 41 per cent drop from 2024.

Housing starts for 2026 are similar to 2025 so far, Ressler said. That may put upward pressure on rent prices if elevated home prices continue to “push people out of buying into renting,” Ressler said. Windsor’s lower rental prices remain one of the city’s biggest draws, particularly from higher-priced markets such as Toronto, but that may change if new rental supply fails to keep up demand, Ressler noted.

The Ontario cities ranked below Windsor in the survey include Ottawa (No. 11), Oshawa (No. 14), Toronto (No. 16), London (No. 17), Kitchener (No. 19), Guelph (No. 21), Niagara Falls (No. 22), St. Catharines (No. 23) and Barrie (No. 24). phogue@postmedia.com