Quebec's rental board has come out with its new rent increase guidelines for 2019.

The recommended rental increases depend on the type of apartment that's being rented.

In most cases, a tenant’s rent will only go up a couple of dollars per month – particularly if your apartment is heated with electricity or natural gas.

If it's heated with oil, though, it could rise by much more.

Others factors like maintenance costs, service costs, tax increases and renovations could also be reasons behind a rent hike.

The landlord's corporation said it isn’t pleased with the new guidelines for several reasons.

For one, it said the guidelines can be confusing because tenants and landlords are free to negotiate rent increases. These guidelines only apply if the two don’t agree.

Another issue is money.

“The guidelines don’t reflect the inflation rate in Quebec in general. That’s the problem we have, so the rent increases are always year after year lower than they should be,” said Hans Brouillette of CORPIQ. “We also have a major problem with the fact that when we do repairs, renovations in our apartment buildings, we are not able to recover the investment.”

On the other hand, tenants’ rights advocates argue there shouldn’t be any increase because of high occupancy rates in Montreal.

They worry that rent increases combined with the lack of affordable housing mean people already struggling to pay rent will struggle even more.

The new guidelines kick in on April 1.

More details here.