Halifax housing crunch leaves students struggling to find apartments

Lara MacPherson, an Ottawa resident attending NSCAD this year, says she had to fight it out with other students to get a place to live in Halifax.

On Saturday, she hauled a dresser into her new apartment in the city's south end.

"When I would go on the websites for the listings, sometimes I would find one and bookmark it, and then just an hour after it would be gone. So it was definitely a struggle to find the perfect spot," she said.

Thousands of students are flooding into Halifax for post-secondary school this weekend.

Some, like Saint Mary's University student Sven Ambrose, are not too happy with their accommodations.

"You just have to get what's left, honestly. It's very difficult sometimes. Especially if you wait to the last minute. The places aren't good. And prices aren't good," he said.

Halifax: More people, fewer available apartments 

Getting a place in Halifax, especially if you're on a budget, is getting harder.

That's in part because the vacancy rate is the lowest it's been since 2003, according to Katelyn MacLeod, a senior economic analyst with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

"Despite the strong levels of apartment construction, the Halifax vacancy rate in the rental market in 2017 declined to 2.3 per cent. And that was the lowest point since October 2003," she said.

That means there are simply fewer empty apartments up for grabs.

While statistics for new vacancies for 2018 will be released in November, MacLeod says there has been an increase in people moving into Halifax from both around Nova Scotia and outside of the province. That's driving up demand.

"That's quite a bit of a change from recent years, when there were actually more Nova Scotians that were leaving the province," she said.

MacLeod says more apartments are also being built to alleviate some of the demand. But those new buildings aren't necessarily within a student budget.

"A lot of the new construction is at the higher end of the rental market in terms of the asking rental rates," she said.

MacPherson says she's glad to have found a place before she starts school.

"There weren't that many options."