The Decibel - Where is the best place to rent in Canada?

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

Where in Canada is it best to rent right now? The Globe analyzed cities from coast to coast to coast, comparing cities’ median incomes with their average rental prices, to find out which places are the most renter-friendly.The Globe’s personal finance reporter Salmaan Farooqui joins The Decibel to break down where and why rents are trending downward, why it’s a good time to take advantage of the rental market and what advice realtors have for renters.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Housing affordability is a problem in Canada. But today, we're talking about some good news. For those looking for a place to rent, it's actually getting cheaper. And here's some more good news. The Globe recently put together a ranking of the most renter-friendly places in Canada. At a time when buying is still out of reach for many Canadians, and renting is becoming more of a permanent thing. I think it's a reality in the country right now that more

people than ever are renting not just as a way to lead into home ownership, but they're renting as a way of life. Salman Faruqi is a personal finance reporter at the globe. We wanted to kind of reflect that choice and help people make a decision about where they end up moving, where in their community they decide to live, or if they're thinking about moving elsewhere in the country, how that could kind of fit into their financial life. So today on the show, Sal is here to tell us about what's going on in the rental market and what made the globe's list. of the best places to rent in Canada right now. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail.

Hey, Sal, thanks so much for being here today. Thanks so much for having me. I'm glad to be back. So the Globe recently published a ranking of Canada's most renter-friendly cities, which was put together by our colleague and data editor Mahima Singh. What deems the city renter-friendly? Like, what factors did the globe way? So Mahima-Sing took a lot of data from rentals. CA. And she was looking at four categories for this ranking system. She was looking at

affordability, availability, stability, and livability. And let me go into those a little bit more. Affordability is essentially how much rent costs versus the average income in a given area and the neighboring cities. Availability is the amount of listings that are actually available in a given city. Stability is how prices have changed. changed over the last five years. And livability is using a livability index that rentals.ca and its affiliates created. And that looks at things like how easy is to walk in your neighborhood, how easy is to drive around, go to sort of amenities that are important to you, those sorts of things. And, you know, we've done a most livable cities study here at the globe as well.

A very popular story. Yes, yes, absolutely. And we wanted to make this a little bit different. So the real emphasis here was on affordability and availability. Those two categories made up 70% of the waiting for how we ranked the cities in this list. Okay. Interesting. So we won't keep people waiting. Let's just jump right into what's at the top of the list. So which city is the most renter-friendly and why? The most renter-friendly is Edmonton. And to be honest, I wasn't really that surprised by that being up there. You know, Edmonton is a fairly large city from the times that I've been there, it's pretty easy to get around. And it is really cheap. It's really quite cheap when you compare other cities of a size of a million or more in Canada. And I think that

was a big reason why that city was at the top of the list. You say cheap. So how much? Yeah. So if you compare the price of the average one bedroom listing at Edmonton is $1,336. And that's actually down 5.8% from a year ago. Wow. If you compare that to a city like Van Gogh. Vancouver, you're looking at $2,463 for a one-bedroom apartment. So that's a huge difference, yeah. It's drastically, drastically cheaper for sure. And also I noticed in this list that eight of the top 10 renter-friendly places all happen to be in the prairies.

I'm just to name a few, there's Grand Prairie Alberta, there's Regina, Red Deer, Lloydminster. So why are there so many cities from the prairies near the top of the list? I think that it kind of speaks to something that's been going on in Canada, which is that we've seen a lot of interprovincial migration to the prairies. And I think particularly when you look at the affordability, I mean, it takes into account both the price of rent and kind of the average incomes in those areas. And I think the prairies have proven to be a place

where you can find cheap housing and where there is opportunity economically. So I think this list really reflected that. The fact that there was eight cities and the prairies in the top of the list, I mean, again, wasn't really that surprising to me. Let's talk about Vancouver and Toronto because, of course, we've written a lot about this in the recent years. And of course, it's because these markets are very expensive. And I'd assume that they'd be pretty low on the list, given how expensive they are. Where did they end up?

So Toronto and Vancouver were kind of around the middle of the list I found. Toronto was ranked 57th and Vancouver was ranked 140th. I think they landed kind of around the middle because they did have a high score. on the livability index, but they also did have a high score on the availability indexes because these are cities that classically have a lot of renters. They have a lot of rental housing stocks. I think that also did help them a little bit as well. Vancouver scored a lot lower, and I think Vancouver is significantly more expensive, even than Toronto, notably more expensive. So I think the middle of the grand sort of ranking was not that surprising to me either,

but it is interesting that, you know, they aren't anywhere near the top at all. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so the globe also created a separate ranking of cities within these two metropolitan areas of Toronto, Vancouver, because of course, like a lot of people live there. So let's start with the most renter-friendly places in the Toronto area. What did you find? So ranked highest in the Toronto area was Orangeville. And next we had Ajax and New Markets. And those are some pretty far-off suburbs. They were some of the most affordable areas in the Toronto area.

And I think it also reflects a kind of trend that's going on right now, possibly. possibly that we are seeing more people kind of return to the city to Toronto as remote working kind of ends or is getting ended by some larger corporations in Canada and the public service. And there's also the fact that these further off suburbs also did experience a real surge in the completion of housing in general. And so that has also added some downward pressure in these places. So we saw those kinds of far off suburbs as the highest ranking. We saw Toronto and Vancouver kind of in the middle of those regional rankings. And then we saw kind of more expensive places, things like Oakville, kind of lower down in the rankings as well.

Really interesting that, you know, the back to work is kind of possibly affecting this. Because, you know, I guess people, if you're living a little bit further away from the city, say like an hour away as in Ajax, for example, it's like people don't want to take that train ride anymore. They're thinking, I'm going to go to the city and just, you know, take the more expensive rent instead of living further away. Yeah, I think, you know, and a lot of the stories that I've been working on about housing, it's a thing I've heard from realtors that, you know, they used to be able to count on some interest from people in Toronto during the pandemic. And that source of interest is really drying up right now. I think, you know,

if you had to go into the office once every now and then or even once a week, I think going from a place like St. Catharines to Toronto was doable. But, you know, if you have to start going into the office three or four times a week, that's getting a bit much. Let's take a moment to talk about the Vancouver area. Was it a similar story to Toronto in terms of like bedroom communities or further off communities that were more renter-friendly, or what's going on there? Yeah, I think what Rentals.C.A. pointed out about the Vancouver area is it was really the communities that have seen the most housing completions that really had the highest ranking and some of the cheapest rents, or at least some rents that were lowering.

And as a result, Surrey, which isn't really that far away from Vancouver, was the number one city in the Vancouver region. Surrey is about 30 kilometers from Vancouver. And I think that reflects that because that is a region that. has seen a lot of new housing builds as well. So just given, I think, how expensive and how difficult the rental market is in Vancouver, that seemed to be a more important factor. Where are the housing units being completed the most? And I think it points, again, at the prairies.

You know, people continuously talk about how red tape in Alberta and Saskatchewan, there isn't as much of it compared to other jurisdictions. And I think that goes to show that, you know, it's easier to build. housing over there. That's kind of something I hear quite regularly from realtors and even from people who are building things like secondary suites and laneway housing, like it can be easier to do that sort of thing in a place like Edmonton. And that is a factor that is actually bringing rents down over there. So Sal, it's really interesting you talked about kind of red tape and how, you know, in places like Alberta. And so I'm just wondering, are we seeing people, you know, moving to find

more affordable places? Like, what have you learned about that? Well, the stats kind of show that between between 2023 and 24, just under 100,000 people moved into provincially to Alberta from other places in Canada. And I think that does paint a picture that there are people who are kind of seeking out that affordable rent. So yeah, I think that those factors that bring rent down in a place like the prairies does lead to newcomers kind of looking to take advantage of that. So, Sal, what is the state of the Canadian rental market right now? So right now, according to the data that we're working with, with rentals.ca, there are some cities such as Toronto and Vancouver, which are seeing rental prices

that are at a four-year low right now. And across the country, generally, we're also seeing kind of rental prices hitting a two-year low. So rents are down, but can we get a sense of, like, the price here, like, you know, maybe an average across Canada, like how much is rent across Canada right now? This is actually the important thing because when you tell people, oh, rent is a lot cheaper right now that it has been. I think some people get a little bit upset because rent is still really expensive right now. And I think there was one stat that kind of exemplifies that.

And that's that right now the average one-bedroom unit across Canada is priced at an average of $2,123. And that compares to pre-pandemic in September 2019 when the average asking rent was just about, $1,337. So, you know, we've had all these decreases from a time when the market was really going nuts. But still, that has left us at a point where renters are still a lot higher than they have been a long time. And you talked about the time when things were really going nuts. And I want to get a sense of where we're at today compared to that red hot rental market, which is around 2022. Can you paint us a picture, Sal? Like, what was it like for a person looking for a place at that time? Like, what do they have to do to find a...

place. Well, yeah. I mean, in 2022, 2023, we, we had people, you know, lining up around the block just to look at a place. You know, people were, were really struggling to find a rental housing at a time when it seemed like everybody else was also in the market. And you had a lot of outbidding going on. And generally, it was outbidding on prices that were already really high. And if you fast forward to right now, I mean, landlords are, you could say, desperate at some circumstances. to actually get renters in their units. They're offering things like a month or two of free rent, things like free parking, subscriptions to cable,

just to woo renters in. And that was something that renters that I spoke to said they felt when they were searching for an apartment. You know, one person I spoke to said that it really felt like landlords were trying to get him as a renter as opposed to him trying to land an apartment. You know, something I actually looked up a couple of our stories from 2022 to get a sense of like what was

going on. And, you know, there was one, a student had to reach up to, like, 35 different people just to rent a place and, like, didn't hear back from some people. There's bidding wars. I know, renters offering like $200 above rental price. Like, it was a crazy time. And one other side I saw was that, like, the average rent on a one-bedroom apartment in Canada was up, like, 13% in 2022 from the start of the year. So, like, definitely a different time right now. Yeah, it was nuts. I mean, anyone who I talked to who also rented was feeling despair, really at that time. And you compare it to now, I mean, one of the people I spoke to, and he got the second place that he looked at. He just looked at two places. The second one was great. And he went ahead

and got it after applying it. Yeah, that sounds like a much better landscape for people that are looking to rent. And how represented are these stories? You mentioned a couple of people that you spoke to about, you know, getting, you know, free parking and perks. How represented are these stories to the broader landscape? You know, I'll be honest, when I was putting out callouts for people to talk to me about their experience in the rental market right now, It wasn't like everyone was saying, hooray, things are really good right now. You know, I think for people who, you know, maybe have a good job and have the income that can withstand the kind of rates that landlords are still asking for right now, then, yeah, you're relatively happy. But, you know, even the experts will say that there is still quite a shortage of affordable rent in this country.

There's not as much affordable rental units. And so it still can be difficult for people for sure. So why are rent prices dropping right now? So there's really three different things going on here. And the first factor is that immigration has really slowed down in the last couple of years. And that has really brought down demand. And at the same time, you've really seen an increase of a lot of different housing units across the country, especially when it comes to the condo market in places like Toronto and Vancouver.

Those are experiencing a real influx of housing completions more so than in previous years. And so that is increasing a lot of supply. and I mean the classic supply demand issue right now, that is leaning towards a position where prices are kind of coming down. And on top of all those things, you have the economy looking pretty weak right now. And that's causing a lot of uncertainty. And it's hard to ask for high rents when you have the market looking uncertain. And you also have people who are dealing with job losses. So those three things together are creating an environment where rent is really decreasing. So Tal, how long do experts anticipate rent prices to stay this way or perhaps maybe even go

lower? I think it's an important thing to consider as a renter because everyone I talk to you says that this market is not going to last and look like this for a long time. And I think the key reason for that is that the current environment is one that is very difficult to get businesses to start actually building housing right now. It's quite difficult to get the funding. People aren't really buying pre-construction condos in the way that they used to. So that has led to a near-record amount of cancellations for building projects in the last year. And that means that, you know, a couple years down the road, we're going to see that that pipeline has had a bit of a bottleneck in it and that less housing is being completed as a result of what's happened this year. And so we're going to be

right back to where we were possibly, which is, you know, a lot of people looking to get a shrinking amount of housing, and that will likely put upward pressure on the rental prices as a result. And I think the sense is that it'll take a couple of years for us to get back there. That is at least what economists from CMHC had to say to me, as well as data analysts from rentals.com. Okay, interesting. So the moment is right now. So, you know, for renters that should be taking advantage of this moment for the next maybe couple of years. It really does seem that way. And, you know, if you're a renter, of course, you want prices to keep coming down further, but it doesn't really look like that is going to be happening for a real

amount of time. Just to end here, Sal, how can renters take advantage of this moment? Like, what do experts say they should be looking out for or are asking for when looking for a place? I think one thing is if you're interested in looking for a condo, know that you can actually kind of exert pressure on a landlord right now. You can, you can negotiate in some cases. You can ask for things like a free month's rent. And you can really take your time. I think that is one key. thing. In the last couple of years, there was a situation where if you managed to get approved for a rental unit, then you kind of had to take it because you didn't know if you're going to get another one soon enough. And that has really shifted right now. I think people are

recognizing that and they're taking their time to find kind of the perfect unit. That's what a few renters that I spoke to said as well. So I think know that you know, you can take your time and you can also potentially negotiate and kind of look for the best possible deal. Those are kind of the biggest piece of advice that I would give to a renter right now. And what about landlords? Like, are there lessons here for those who are renting property that they should be thinking about? Well, I've certainly heard lots of stories of landlords who attempted to raise rent, which obviously is allowed in the marketplace, and just found that their tenants decided

to move somewhere else instead. So, you know, I think in a market like this, some landlords that I speak to also say that, you know, the absolute most important thing is to actually keep your tenant right now because it's a really rough marketplace out there right now for landlords. You know, it's not unusual actually right now for a landlord to actually allow a rent decrease, a slight rent decrease to reflect what the market is as doing right now for existing tenants. So I think landlords should pay attention to that as well because people who are experiencing the marketplace, the landlords who are experiencing having to, get their place rented, are having a pretty tough time right now. But in conclusion, you know, for renters, like, this is your time, you know, ask for what you want right now. I think so. I think also, like, people tend to move in the summer, and I think that's a given, you know, there's lots of students moving in the summer. It's just easier to do that. The winter is

generally a pretty slow time in the rental market, and experts do say is a time where you can, you can find a deal. And so if you're able to, I mean, not only is this year a pretty cheap year, relatively speaking for the rental market, but this winter is probably going to be a little bit cheaper as well, possibly. So it's a thing to consider if you're a renter. That's a great note to end on. Sal, thanks so much for coming on the show.

For sure. It was a pleasure being here. That was Solman Faruqi, the Globe's personal finance reporter. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Tiflam produced this episode. Our producers are Madeline White, Mikhail Stein, and Ali Graham.

David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening and I'll talk to you tomorrow.