Yardi's Fall 2026 Canadian National Multifamily Report, released October 27, is easy to summarize at the national level: vacancy held at 4.7%, in-place rents rose 1.7% year over year (the slowest pace since Yardi started tracking in 2020), and the post-pandemic growth cycle is, in the report's words, over.[1] The more useful material is in the city tables, and London is one of the 12 CMAs Yardi breaks out.

London's line for the third quarter looks like this:[1]

  • In-place rents: +1.3% year over year, below the 1.7% national figure
  • New-lease rents (lease over lease): -1.9%, meaning a re-let unit signed, on average, below its previous lease
  • Vacancy: 4.6%, roughly in line with the 4.7% national rate
  • Annual turnover: 25.2%, up 3.9 percentage points, the largest increase of any CMA tracked
  • Average length of stay: 38 months among residents who moved out, down from 40 in the second quarter
  • Digital prospect conversion: 15.2%, the highest of any CMA, against 11 digital prospects per 100 units a month, tied with Hamilton for the fewest

The same table can support three different stories. Here is each one, followed by the arithmetic that decides between them.

The optimist's reading

Vacancy isn't the problem. London's 4.6% sits close to the national average, and the unit-level detail is mixed rather than weak: one-bedroom vacancy is 3.9%, below the national 4.7% for that unit type.[1] In-place rents are still rising, which means renewals are doing the work. Nationally, Yardi puts renewal increases at 2.1%. That rate has slowed for 10 straight quarters from a 4.4% peak in early 2024, but it is still positive.[1] On this view, London is a stable market where the rent book grows slowly and tenants who show up actually sign. The 15.2% conversion rate is the best in the country.

The skeptic's reading

The trend in turnover is the warning. No other CMA saw move-outs rise as fast, and tenancies are getting shorter while the national average stay lengthens to 37 months.[1] Each move-out now re-prices a unit downward. The -1.9% new-lease figure is as weak as Calgary's and only slightly better than Toronto's and Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo's (both -2.1%).[1] The high conversion rate comes with the thinnest lead flow of any market tracked, so London buildings are filling from a small pool of applicants. Asking-rent data points the same way. Rentals.ca and Urbanation had London one-bedroom asking rents at $1,628 in September, down 4.7% year over year, and two-bedrooms at $1,998, down 4.6%.[2]

The underwriter's reading: run the arithmetic

The disagreement is really about whether renewal gains outrun turnover losses. A simple illustration helps. It is hypothetical and uses round assumptions, not data from any real building.

Take 100 one-bedroom units at London's Yardi in-place average of $1,402 a month, or about $1.68 million in gross annual rent.[1] Assume one-bedroom turnover runs at the city's 29.1% rate, so about 29 units turn over in a year and 71 renew.[1]

  • Renewals: if all 71 are rent-controlled units renewing at Ontario's 1.9% guideline for 2027, each gains about $27 a month, or roughly $1,890 a month in total.[3]
  • Re-leases: if the 29 turnovers re-let at London's -1.2% one-bedroom new-lease rate, each loses about $17 a month, roughly $490 in total.[1]
  • Net rent change: about +$1,400 a month, or about 1.0% on the rent roll.
  • Downtime: if each turnover costs just three weeks of vacancy, that is about $28,000 a year in lost rent, around 1.7% of gross. That is before make-ready costs, which Yardi counts under repairs and maintenance.[1]

With these assumptions the building's collected revenue goes backwards, even though both "rent" lines look fine. Turnover drives the result. At last year's turnover rate (about 21%), the downtime cost falls by roughly 15%, which still doesn't close the gap. The renewal rate also matters less than people tend to assume: post-2018 units aren't capped by the guideline, but in a market where new leases are signing lower, few owners can push renewals much past it.

This is why the turnover column deserves more attention than the vacancy column. A building can report a respectable occupancy rate while losing money on churn.

What about expenses?

The report's other headline is cost relief. Ontario posted the largest provincial drop in annual operating expenses, down 6.1% to $9,043 per unit, and Toronto fell 7.7% to $9,795.[1] Yardi credits owners' efficiency efforts. Its expense measure includes administration, payroll, repairs, utilities, taxes and insurance.[1]

Treat that as a portfolio average, not a London forecast. Yardi doesn't publish a London expense figure. Locally, property taxes are still rising: London's adopted 2026 budget update set a 3.4% tax increase for 2026, with 4.7% projected for 2027.[4] The Bank of Canada's October Monetary Policy Report expects construction, maintenance and borrowing costs to push shelter-cost inflation from about 1% toward 2% in 2027.[5] A building's own trailing 12-month expenses are a better guide than a falling provincial average.

A note on Windsor and the data's limits

Windsor isn't among Yardi's tracked CMAs, so the report says nothing direct about it. The closest local signal is still asking rents: Windsor one-bedrooms averaged $1,467 in September, down 12.6% year over year.[2] CMHC's 2025 survey put Windsor's purpose-built vacancy at 3.7% and London's at 4.0%.[6]

Three caveats apply to the Yardi numbers as well. First, the sample is limited to properties on Yardi's platform (6,200 properties and about 548,000 units nationally), which leans toward professionally managed, often newer, buildings.[1] Second, several London unit-type cells, including bachelor and three-bedroom new-lease figures, were too thin to report.[1] Third, length of stay is measured only among residents who moved out, so it describes the people who left, not the ones who stayed.

What to watch

The next Rentals.ca report (October data, due in early November) will show whether London's asking-rent declines are narrowing. Yardi's winter report will show whether the jump in turnover was a one-quarter spike or a trend. Municipal 2027 budget updates will show which way the tax line is heading. For now, the main takeaway from London is that renewal increases are being offset by turnover losses.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice.

Sources

[1] Canadian National Multifamily Report, Fall 2026, Yardi (Oct. 27, 2026): https://resources.yardi.com/?mdocs-file=16169 ; release: https://www.yardi.com/news/vacancy-holds-as-canadas-multifamily-market-cools-in-fall-2026/

[2] National Rent Report, October 2026 (September data), Rentals.ca and Urbanation: https://rentals.ca/national-rent-report

[3] Residential rent increases, Government of Ontario: https://www.ontario.ca/page/residential-rent-increases

[4] 2026 Annual Budget Update (adopted), City of London: https://getinvolved.london.ca/budget

[5] Monetary Policy Report, October 2026, Bank of Canada (Oct. 28, 2026): https://www.bankofcanada.ca/publications/mpr/mpr-2026-10-28/

[6] Rental Market Report 2025, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation: https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/professionals/housing-markets-data-and-research/market-reports/rental-market-reports-major-centres