Three companies now own 1 in 9 purpose-built rentals

When Killam Apartment REIT acquired its 50,000th unit last month, the press release used the word "milestone." It was not a milestone. It was a tipping point.

The trio

Canadian Apartment Properties REIT (CAPREIT): 64,300 units.
Starlight Investments / Boardwalk REIT family: 51,200 units.
Killam Apartment REIT: 50,100 units.

Combined: 165,600 units. Approximately 11.4 percent of the national purpose-built rental stock.

This is not a coincidence. It is a strategy executed in plain sight, mostly through the trust unit market that the average Canadian renter has no reason to follow.

What financialization looks like up close

When a REIT buys a building, it inherits whatever rents the previous owner accepted. It also inherits a fiduciary obligation to its unitholders to maximize that revenue stream.

This is not an opinion. It is in their prospectuses.

The lever they pull is called "AGI" — Above Guideline Increase. The Landlord and Tenant Board approved 4,200 AGIs in Ontario in 2023. Eighty-eight percent of them came from REIT-held buildings.

The slow accumulation of these units is not visible from any street corner. It is visible only from the title office.

The receipts

Starlight's average rent per unit, 2018: $1,212.
Starlight's average rent per unit, 2025: $1,847.
That's a 52 percent increase, against a CPI increase over the same window of 23 percent.

Did you know that municipal property tax rates on purpose-built rentals in Canada's six largest cities have declined, in real dollars, every year since 2019 — while average residential rents have risen 41 percent?