The median rental price of a one-bedroom Vancouver apartment has breached the $2,000-a-month milestone, according to rental website Padmapper in its monthly analysis of current listings.
The site announced January 16 that Vancouver’s median one-bedroom rent had risen 0.5 per cent since December’s analysis, and 5.3 per cent over January 2017.
Until recently, Vancouver has been the most expensive rental market in the country for every size of unit. But in this month’s analysis, Toronto usurped Vancouver in the one-bedroom unit category – the largest group – at a median of $2,200 per month. This is a whopping 15.4 per cent year over year increase, and 2.5 per cent higher than last month. Toronto’s rental vacancy rate is not as tight as Vancouver’s but it has seen a surge of activity in recent months, leading to landlords seeking higher rents.
The steepest monthly increase was seen in Burnaby, with one-bed units up 5.1 per cent since December, making it the third most-expensive city in the country at $1,430 a month.
Vancouver remains by far the most expensive market in the country for coveted two-bedroom apartments, advertised for rent at a median of $3,200 on Padmapper’s site. Toronto trails as the second-priciest for two beds, at $2,520, followed by Burnaby at $2,150. It should be noted that, as two-beds represent a much smaller pool of apartments than the one-bed category, these median prices are far more prone to volatility and do not offer such as clear indication of trends as one-bedroom units.
Vancouver is certainly not the city seeing the steepest rent increases – some cities starting at a lower base are raising rents much faster. Even higher than Toronto’s rises, the biggest year-over-year one-bed rental increases were posted in Montreal (up 15.9 per cent) and Barrie and Kitchener in Ontario, both up 15.6 per cent since last January.
Faring less well, but happily for renters, were Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon and Quebec City. These four cities all saw both month-over-month and year-over-year declines in the median advertised rent for a one-bedroom apartment.
