Vancouver median rent up only slightly during a slow moving season

Even a historically slow season for moving in Vancouver couldn’t stop median rent from climbing ever so slightly in January.

“As we are well into slow moving season, there was not much movement in terms of rankings last month,” said Zumper in their latest rent report. Still, Vancouver remains the most expensive city in the country.

One-bedroom rent inched up 0.4% to $2,480, according to Zumper. Two-bedroom units remained flat at $3,500. Also, the year-over-year percentage column on the chart below shows how much the median has changed from 2022 to 2023, growing an astonishing 28% in Burnaby.

Zumper

Toronto is the second-most expensive city in Canada, but three other cities in BC make up the top five.

Burnaby rent is third-most expensive in the country, where one-bedroom rent fell 1.3% to $2,200, and two-bedrooms increased 1% to $3,170.

Next, Victoria, at number four, saw one and two-bedroom rents settle at $2,100 and $2,540, respectively. Finally, Kelowna, at number five, saw one-bedroom rent dip 1.5% to $1,920, while two-bedrooms dropped 3% to $2,270.

Abbotsford, the 17th most expensive city, saw a big decline in rent last month, falling 4.8% to $1,380.

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Don’t confuse median and average rent, as the two are different metrics. Median means that half of the available units are above and half of the units are below the rates listed in Zumper’s analysis, which looks only at asking prices for rentals, not what folks are currently paying for rent.

“For our monthly rent reports, we aggregate data from over one million active listings to calculate median asking rents for the top 100 cities by population and nearly 300 additional cities within major metro areas.”

You can see the full rent report from Zumper online.

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With files from Amir Ali.