Image of the day: Vacancies and rents
When vacancies are high, rents go down, even in expensive cities
![https://res.cloudinary.com/apartmentlist/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto,t_renter_life_article/https://images.ctfassets.net/jeox55pd4d8n/5damGwqRnRJP81qq8oOD1J/366ce1f973a42a1932376099394a11a0/rents_falling.png https://res.cloudinary.com/apartmentlist/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto,t_renter_life_article/https://images.ctfassets.net/jeox55pd4d8n/5damGwqRnRJP81qq8oOD1J/366ce1f973a42a1932376099394a11a0/rents_falling.png](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3f7d28b7-1f2b-4e2a-b12b-9bbda3ecca74_1502x1176.png)
People don’t just move around randomly, they go where the jobs are. When Covid hit and a lot of people were suddenly working from home, there were a lot of jobs which were no longer tethered to expensive cities. In those cities, high vacancies resulted in falling rents. In Toronto, asking rents fell 20%.
In the big picture, though, people working from home needed more space, driving up total demand for residential space. Remote work means we need more housing, not less.