Vancouver remains the most expensive place in Canada for renters, but prices for empty apartments in the city are slowly coming down from a high last year.
That’s according to the latest rent report from Zumper, which tracks asking rent prices on sites with apartment listings. It pegs the current average rent for an empty one-bedroom apartment in Vancouver at $2,690 per month, a 4.6% decline from this time last year.
Zumper says this is the fourth month in a row that one-bedroom rents in Vancouver have declined.
“This 4.6% annual decline is actually the largest of any other Canadian city on this report,” Zumper said.
The average price of an empty two-bedroom apartment in Vancouver sits at $3,800 per month, 2.6% less than this time last year.
Zumper
The story is different elsewhere in Canada, where markets previously seen as affordable are posting significant rent increases. Winnipeg recently dethroned Edmonton for the title of fastest-growing rent prices in the country, with a 22% increase from August 2023 to August 2024.
Vancouver saw massive rent jumps about a year before these more affordable markets, posting a 30% year-over-year increase in asking rent prices at empty apartments between spring 2021 and spring 2022.
Nationally, Zumper says rent prices are stabilizing due to declining mortgage rates, slower immigration, and a slight increase in supply.