How Much Rent Can You Afford in Regina?

Regina is the proof of the whole comparison

The claim this calculator rests on is that the gap between the quoted average and the advertised rent is created by low turnover, not by high prices. Regina tests it.

More than a quarter of Regina’s rental stock re-lets each year — the highest rate in the country — and the gap is 1.2%, essentially nothing. Hamilton, at half the turnover, has a gap of 32.2%.

No cap, and no need for one to explain the numbers

Saskatchewan does not limit rent increases. Notice is required; a ceiling is not.

With rents free to move and units re-letting constantly, the surveyed average and the asking rent describe almost the same population. There is no accumulated difference for a mover to walk into.

Regina by zone: Northeast at $1,289, Northwest at $1,626

Regina’s CMHC zones sit within $337 of each other on a two-bedroom — a spread almost as flat as Calgary’s. The Northeast is $1,289 and the West $1,302; the Northwest — Harbour Landing, the newest stock — is $1,626 and the East $1,597. Downtown and the Cathedral area, the Central zone, average $1,509.

The cheap zones are also the tight ones: Northeast vacancy is 1.1% and Northwest 1.6%, against 2.9% in the Central and West zones. Regina’s older stock is fully occupied and its newer stock is filling.

CMHC Rental Market Survey, October 2025, survey zones, row and apartment units. A dash is a cell CMHC suppressed for sample size. Zone averages include row houses, so they can differ by a few dollars from the apartment-only citywide figures quoted above.

Both university zones — Lakeview/Albert Park at $1,461 and Wascana at $1,448 — land mid-table, which is unusual: in most cities the campus zone is the expensive one. Regina’s premium is in the new south-west suburbs, not around the university.

Regina renters, by the census

• 31%of households rent
• 35.4%of renters spend 30%+ on shelter
• $90,000median household income (2020)
• 14.9%of renters in subsidized housing

31% of Regina households rent, and 35.4% of those renters spend 30% or more of income on shelter — eleventh of the sixteen cities here — on a median household income of $90,000 that is one of the higher figures on this site. Public-sector wages and low rents make a comparatively comfortable combination.

14.9% of renters are in subsidized housing, third-highest here after St. John’s and Winnipeg. That stock is concentrated in the Central and Northeast zones and is a large part of why those averages are what they are.

Statistics Canada, 2021 Census of Population, Census Profile, Regina census metropolitan area. 31,520 renter households out of 100,210.

What that means if you are moving

In most Canadian cities, a tenant who has been in place for years faces a step change on moving. In Regina that step is $17 a month.

It makes the surveyed average genuinely useful here, which is not true in Toronto, Hamilton or Halifax. You can budget from the published number and be close.

The smallest reset in the country

A tenant of eight years in Regina who moves next month faces a rent $17 higher than the survey average. The same tenant in Toronto would face several hundred dollars more.

That is what makes Regina the useful control case in this set. It has no rent control and the highest churn, and it produces the smallest gap — which is the opposite of what most people assume rent control does.

Where it is heading

A 2.7% vacancy rate is close to what housing economists treat as equilibrium — enough slack that tenants have choices, not so much that buildings sit empty.

Regina rarely appears in national rent coverage because nothing dramatic happens here. For someone actually renting, that is the point.

Saskatchewan’s rules on a Regina lease

Increase cap

NoneNo limit on the amount, but not within the first 18 months of a tenancy and not more than once every 12 months.

Deposit

Up to one month’s rent; only half may be collected up front

Notice

12 months’ written notice (six if the landlord belongs to a recognised association)

Disputes

Office of Residential Tenancies (ORT)

No cap on the amount, but twelve months’ written notice of any increase (six for landlords in a recognised association), nothing in the first eighteen months, and a deposit of at most one month of which only half can be collected up front. On a $1,473 average the asking rent ($1,490) is barely above it — the narrowest gap of any city on this site — so the notice rule is rarely tested. What it does is give a Regina tenant a full year to plan a move, which is more than any cap does.