Vancouver rents holding steady at eye-popping amounts

It appears the post-pandemic rent price surge in Vancouver has levelled off, but that doesn’t mean prices are coming back down to earth.

The April Canadian Rent Report from Zumper found median asking prices for vacant one-bedroom apartments in Vancouver are holding steady at around $2,650 per month. This is the seventh consecutive month, by Zumper’s calculations, that asking rent prices have either held steady or declined slightly.

Vancouver remains the most expensive major city in the country for renters.

Zumper

Rents in Canada’s most expensive cities are increasing more slowly than rents in smaller markets, as interprovincial migration to cheaper locales leads to massive growth in rental prices in cities such as Saskatoon, where average asking rents jumped 3.4% month-over-month.

“With a large influx of people and many still priced out of the homeownership market, Canada’s rental market will only continue to feel upward pressure on prices until a significant amount of new supply is available to meet this considerable demand,” the Zumper report said.

Canada is also heading into the warmer months when many leases typically end. The report predicts that “demand and competition only picks up from here.”

Zumper’s findings are similar to those of Rentals.ca, which released its April rent report last week. It found asking rents for one bedroom in Vancouver decreased by 1.1% since this time last year, though North Vancouver and Vancouver took the first and second spots, respectively, for most expensive cities in the country for renters.

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