Victoria generating more demand than Vancouver for renters
Despite the city’s notoriously high rents, Vancouver is among the most popular places in Canada for rental interest, but not quite as much as Victoria.
According to a new report from RentCafe, a rental search website, recently released its Canada Renter Interest Report, which looked at millions of renter interactions on RentCafe.com in the first quarter of 2026.
It then ranked cities based on available listings, listing views, apartments saved as favourites, and saved personalized searches.
Vancouver ranked eight out of the 25 cities RentCafe looked at, one spot lower than it was the quarter before.
Vacant rental prices have been dropping in Vancouver, according to rental platforms like Rental.ca. For example, the average asking rent for a one-bedroom rental in Vancouver is $2,385 per month, down 6.3 per cent compared to May 2025.
But RentCafe said the rental market is tightening, with a whopping rental availability falling by a whopping 40 per cent year-over-year — the most in any big Canadian city.
It pointed out that at the same time, page views were 47 per cent lower, and both favourited listings and saved searches dropped by 42 per cent.
RentCafe said this is “a broad pullback across all engagement metrics rather than a sign of urgency.”
“Across all four engagement metrics, year-over-year declines of similar magnitude … suggest renters pulled back rather than moved faster — a pattern more consistent with softening demand and tighter household budgets than with a fast-moving search cycle,” it wrote.
Would-be renters are staying out of the market due to economic uncertainty, with younger Canadians choosing to stay at home longer or keep living with roommates. This causes new renter demand to fall, according to Giacomo Ladas, the associate director of communications, who Daily Hive interviewed in April.
Further, B.C.’s population fell by 41,000 in 2025, due to the federal government’s policy shift to reduce the number of non-permanent residents in Canada, especially international students and temporary workers. Non-permanent residents tend to make up a large share of renters, and as their numbers decline, vacancy rates are rising.
What about the rest of the country?
Victoria was another B.C. city in the top 10 for renter demand, coming in at number six.
“Renters continue to be drawn to Victoria’s climate and proximity to Vancouver, further reinforcing its position as a popular smaller rental market in Western Canada,” wrote RentCafe.
RentCafe noted that the first quarter highlights a “demand toward mid-sized cities,” like Victoria.
It added that the “rental story split in two.” In big cities, rents went down, vacancy rose, and engagement softened. Meanwhile, smaller and mid-sized cities’ rental availability tightened, and competition got fiercer among people looking to rent.
The city with the highest renter interest in Canada was Moncton, N.B., followed by the two Ontario cities of Hamilton and Kingston.
With files from Daniel Chai