When central banks model inflation or adjust interest rates, they often rely on mortgage and consumer credit data. Yet more than one-third of all Canadian households rent their homes, and the proportion is similar in the United States. Rental payment behavior represents one of the largest and fastest-updating financial datasets in any economy, but it rarely appears in formal monetary analysis.

Nathan Levinson, founder and CEO of Royal York Property Management, argues that this gap hides early signs of financial stress that policymakers could use to manage risk more effectively. 

His company manages more than 25,000 properties across Ontario. From that scale, he sees monthly rental activity as a high-frequency indicator of household resilience.

Early Signals That Policy Misses

Mortgage performance tells policymakers how existing homeowners respond to debt. Rental data, by contrast, shows how households adjust spending when costs rise.

The CMHC Rental Market Report, Fall 2024 noted that rent arrears increased across several major Canadian cities between 2023 and 2024 even as national mortgage defaults remained below 0.2 percent. These patterns suggest that economic stress often emerges among renters first.

Levinson explains: “Rental payments respond immediately to job changes or cost-of-living pressure. When rent delays rise in multiple regions, it signals wage strain long before it appears in credit data.”

Because property management companies record transactions monthly, their data can reveal changes in affordability weeks before quarterly mortgage or retail-credit reports.

Property Management as Economic Infrastructure

Companies such as Royal York Property Management maintain large datasets covering rent collection, maintenance requests, and regional demand. In aggregate, this information captures the micro-movements of the economy: employment shifts, income timing, and consumer liquidity without breaching individual privacy.

Levinson believes property management should be recognized as part of national financial infrastructure. “The same way payroll data helps economists track employment, rental data can help them track real affordability,” he says.

A parallel example exists in labor analytics: the ADP National Employment Report supplements official U.S. labor statistics by providing near-real-time payroll data to policymakers. A similar public-private model could allow housing data from management firms to improve economic forecasting.

Investment Insight from Rental Behavior

For investors, understanding rental data is equally valuable. CBRE’s 2024 Market Outlook shows that institutional ownership of rental housing in Canada continues to grow as investors seek predictable yield.

Levinson argues that reliable management data converts property performance into measurable financial behavior. “When landlords can track every rent payment and expense in real time, they start managing property like a financial asset, not a side business,” he says.

At Royal York Property Management, systems integrate rent collection, maintenance, and compliance tracking in one platform. That digital record creates transparency for both owners and analysts evaluating long-term housing stability.

Building a Stronger Feedback Loop

Traditional policy indicators, such as the Consumer Price Index or quarterly housing surveys, provide only partial visibility into household conditions. By combining those reports with real-time rental data, governments could shorten the feedback loop between policy decisions and ground-level economic outcomes.

Levinson sees collaboration as the next step. “If policymakers and management firms share anonymized, standardized data, we can move from reactive to preventive economic policy,” he explains.

Such cooperation would not only help central banks gauge inflation pressure earlier but also support local planning by identifying where rental demand and income stress are diverging.

The Broader Impact

Rental data is no longer a niche concern. It reflects wage growth, consumer liquidity, and migration patterns: the same fundamentals that drive monetary policy.

As housing costs continue to influence inflation in both Canada and the United States, integrating rental data into financial modeling could make policy more responsive and equitable.

Levinson summarizes the opportunity simply: “Every rent payment is a signal. When you track those signals, you understand the economy at street level.”