Building a Microsimulation of the Rental Sector in the Greater Toronto Area

This paper presents a microsimulation model of the rental sector in the Greater Toronto (GTA). The main contributions of this research are that it develops a conceptual framework for modeling housing issues and policies, and implements a rental model within the Integrated Land Use, Transport, and Environment (ILUTE) framework developed at the University of Toronto. The key components of the rental model include: (1) the production of rental units; (2) a tenure choice model; (3) a rent setting model; and (4) a rental market model. The rental model is simulated yearly from 1986 till 2006. The preliminary results are presented for the number of households renting, the average rent per census tract, and the number of renter households facing affordability issues. Two areas of future research are proposed that seek: (1) to improve the current model’s accuracy; and (2) to develop a more dynamic model.MAS