Now is the ‘best time’ to rent in Canada as asking price hits 31-month low: report

The housing market in Canada isn’t just good for buyers. Renters are also finding lower prices as average asking rents hit a 31-month low in January.

The numbers come from Rentals.ca and Urbanation’s latest national rent report, which showed the average rent for all residential properties dropped two per cent year-over-year to $2,057 last month.

“If you’re looking to get into the rental market, this is the best time we’ve seen in years,” said Giacomo Ladas, associate communications director at Rentals.ca. “It really has gone back to the renter, which is a good thing.”

Rents declined for the 16th consecutive month, with the two organizations noting asking rents have declined by 6.3 per cent over the past two years.

Part of the reason for the decline is the size of the units also declining.

The report found the average size of rental listings was 857 square feet in January, compared to 885 in January 2025 and 943 two years ago.

Purpose-built rentals saw a one per cent annual decline to $2,049, while condo apartments dropped 5.7 per cent to an average of $2,093.

Ladas told Global News that some of these smaller units are actually condos that were built to sell, but due to the housing market change has had an impact.

“A lot of them were shoebox condos that, frankly, nobody wanted to buy so now they have come flooding into the rental market,” he said.

When it came to the number of bedrooms, it was one-bedroom units that saw rent drop 3.4 per cent to $1,792 on average. Yet at the same time, larger properties like three-bedroom apartments of all types rose 1.1 per cent to $2,506.

“What I think that reflects is that Canadians want larger rental units because they plan on staying in these apartments for longer because buying a house seems so far out of reach still,” Ladas noted.

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Looking from coast to coast, some of the biggest falls in rent prices were seen in some of Canada’s biggest markets.

In Toronto, rent dropped 4.6 per cent to a 44-month low of $2,495. Vancouver saw an even sharper drop of 9.2 per cent, hitting $2,630 — the lowest rent has been in that city since February 2022.

Other big cities also saw declines, including Montreal with a 3.7 per cent drop to $1,913 and Edmonton by 2.6 per cent to $1,488.

Rent declines filtered up to across entire provinces, too, with Ontario posting a 3.3 per cent drop, Alberta declining by 4.3 per cent and British Columbia by 4.7 per cent compared to a year prior.

Rentals.ca and Urbanation found not all parts of the country dropped, with Saskatchewan and Manitoba seeing increases of 4.6 per cent and 2.6 per cent year-over-year.

Ladas said while rental prices are somewhat increasing in Saskatchewan, with it comes the quality of rentals as newer stock is made available.

“A lot of that has to do with the makeup of the new rental stock,” he said. “That is because so much of our rental stock was so old that now purpose-built rentals offer a lot of really nice amenities that wasn’t the case anymore.”

He added as prices in the two provinces were already relatively low, even a slight increase isn’t breaking the bank. For example, Regina has average apartment rents of $1,374.

As more rentals come to the market, Ladas said the rental decrease is likely to continue and pointed to a mix of federal actions on population growth as a partial cause.

“It is a reflection on the low demand of negative population growth paired with tens of thousands of rental units that are still under construction that are coming to the market,” he said.

“So we wanted a course correction, we’re getting a course correction no matter the bedroom type.”