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Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

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The biggest city in Canada - Toronto, Ontario has experienced permanent problems with the vacancy rates on residential real estate market in the last 2 and half decades. They began in the late 70s when tens of thousands of English speaking persons left French language province of Quebec and settled in the neighboring Ontario main metropolitan area. This was coupled with the series of oil shocks and related economic and budget crises that experienced the whole Western world. The private rental starts in the province of Ontario from 30-40,000 in late 60s and early 70s dropped to 5-10,000 and less since 1975.

Toronto attracts 40 percent of all new immigrants in Canada or 100,000 each year, which corresponds roughly to the number of the new jobs that have been created in the city annually. Nevertheless so far the vacancy rates remain stable on and around 1 percent (1 out of 100 apartments is physically unoccupied and available for immediate rental).

There are several reasons why even with so many new arrivals the trends on the rental market remain almost stable. Some of them have their roots in the cyclical economic downturns in the city. For example, in 1995, 1997 and 2000 the creation of more than 100,000 jobs led to a drop in the vacancy rate to 0.6 percent. In 2001 the local economy added only 54,000 new jobs and the vacancy rate jumped to 0.9 percent.

One the other hand, nowadays we have lower interest rates, which encourages more and more tenants to leave the rental market and become homeowners. In the last 5 years the new residential starts for detached and semi-detached houses increased from 15,000 to 35,000, which reflects the fashion among the tenant households to become homeowners.

Last but not least, since 1998 rents in the city have increased rapidly (double the annual inflation rate) which encourages not demolishing the oldest rental buildings, as was the case in the last couple of decades.

Although the vacancy rates remain almost stable (in sharp contrast with Montreal) some problems still have to be resolved. More than half of the households in the city of Toronto are renters (57 percent). 80 percent of the new comers in the city go on the rental market. At the same time the average rents in the city are going north and the average incomes of the renters are getting south. Just take two numbers in mind. Between the 1991 and 1996 census the average renter household income in Toronto decreased by 6 percent in real terms. Between 1989 and 1998 the rents in Toronto increased by 38 percent (inflation was just 21 percent).

Thus the seemingly stable market hides the fact that for the low-income households is more and more difficult to meet their rental obligations. The outlook is even less rosy with projected increase of the city population from 4,6 to 7,2 million by 2031. The coming economic recovery is behind the corner and the new wave of migrants will hit the market this summer before the local authorities have taken precautionary measures.

There are two ways to resolve this economic as well as social problem. The first is a trademark of any kind of "socialists" no matter how they call themselves - to use the taxes on the big fortunes to finance the building of more social housings. The second option, which is the real answer to the problem, is to ease further the credit policy and to allow the more and more renter households to move to the owners' residential market. This will create many new jobs in the construction; will ease the tension on the rental residential market and as a result will reduce the social tensions.

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See also the directory of companies providing real estate services in, and general real estate information of Canada.