January 2023 Metro Vancouver Rent Report

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Looking for our full January 2023 Metro Vancouver Rent Report? Download your copy here to get all the latest insights, including a detailed breakdown by neighbourhood.

To begin the year, Metro Vancouver’s average region-wide rent prices have increased slightly following a notable dip in December. Heading into the new year, the Bank of Canada’s interest rate increases are expected to slow, meaning Canada’s sky-high rent prices may gradually fall back down to earth throughout the coming year.

We’ll soon be releasing our 2023 Canada-wide Report with even more rental data and statistics. For access to this and other updates on the Vancouver rental market, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter.

Let’s take a look now at the current rental costs and overarching trends in Vancouver for January 2023. Don’t forget, you can download the entire report as a one-page infographic PDF below.

Jump to the following Vancouver Rent Report sections:

Average rent across Metro Vancouver

Coming off of a relatively large $90 aggregate decline in December, Metro Vancouver’s region-wide rent prices have rebounded to start 2023. For January 2023, the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom, unfurnished unit has increased by $30 – bringing the average to $2,257. Since January 2022, the average rent for an unfurnished, one-bedroom unit in Metro Vancouver has increased by $430.

The Bank of Canada’s interest rate increases are expected to slow heading into the new year, which may see Canada’s sky-high rent prices fall back down to earth throughout the coming year.

Month-to-month rent change

Both furnished and unfurnished units were fairly volatile in terms of average rent this month, with a number of Metro Vancouver cities seeing large price fluctuations.

Looking at unfurnished units, West Vancouver (+24.20%) saw its average rent rebound after falling greatly last month, while Surrey (+7.91%), Richmond (-5.87%), and New Westminster (-4.43%) also saw larger-than-usual changes. In Vancouver itself, the average rent for an unfurnished, one-bedroom unit fell by 4.76%.

For furnished units, Langley (-17.80%), New Westminster (+10.82%), and North Vancouver (+6.05%) saw the most significant month-to-month price changes. In Vancouver, prices for a furnished, one-bedroom unit fell by 3.86% from month to month.

Rent per square foot

Where’s the cheapest place to rent in Metro Vancouver by how much space you get? For January 2023, the least expensive cities for square footage are Langley, Coquitlam, Surrey, and Richmond, while the most expensive is once again Vancouver – though Burnaby and North Vancouver aren’t far behind.

Active listing data

New for 2023, we’ll be looking at detailed statistics for currently active listings available on the market to see which property types and number of bedrooms are the most represented. For renters, these numbers show which types of units you’re most likely to encounter in the Metro Vancouver region, while for landlords, you can get assess how much competition you’ll face based on current supply.

Active listings by property type

For January 2023, the most common rental property type by far was apartments, representing a whopping 81.91% of active listings on the market. Partial houses (e.g. basement suites) were the second-most rented unit type this month, at 9.17% of active listings currently available to rent.

Active listings by number of bedrooms

In terms of the number of bedrooms, we saw a more even spread across active listings on the market this month. Two-bedroom units were the most common type of listing this month at 49.67%, though one-bedroom units still represented 35.52% of all active listings on the market.

Average unfurnished vs. furnished rates

This January, furnished, one-bedroom units rented for considerably more on average than their unfurnished counterparts. As of this month, unfurnished one-bedroom units are, on average, $391 less expensive than furnished units – a much wider margin than what we’ve seen recently. This indicates that landlords who choose to rent their units furnished will be able to charge more for rent, likely as a result of increased demand for short-term rentals.

City breakdown 

Metro Vancouver’s rental averages vary greatly across the region, so we’ve broken up our data by municipality/city to compare the cost of one-, two-, and three-bedroom rates for both furnished and unfurnished units in different areas.

• For one-, two-, and three-bedroom unfurnished units, West Vancouver had the most expensive prices in the Metro Vancouver region this January.
• Furnished, three-bedroom units in Vancouver rented for well over $6,000 per month – at an average of $6,411 this January.
• Langley had the least expensive one-bedroom, furnished units this month with an average rent price of $2,000.

Neighbourhood breakdown

We’ve broken down Vancouver into its individual neighbourhoods for a more complete look at the city’s individual rental markets. For a further breakdown of neighbourhoods in municipalities and cities outside of Vancouver, be sure to download our complete Rent Report.

Let’s take a look now at some of the latest averages from Vancouver’s many unique neighbourhoods. Downtown remains Vancouver’s most expensive neighbourhood this January at an average of $2,720 for an unfurnished, one-bedroom unit. The same type of unit rented for an average of $1,952 in Vancouver’s cheapest neighbourhood, Sunset-Victoria Fraserview.

We’ve recently added two new neighbourhoods to our monthly reports that aren’t shown in the data below. To see data on these two neighbourhoods, statistics for furnished rentals, as well as full information for other cities in Metro Vancouver, be sure to download your copy of our full report here.

Most expensive cities in Canada

For the fifth consecutive month now, all of Canada’s most expensive cities are in Metro Vancouver. West Vancouver has beccome Canada’s most expensive city to rent in terms of unfurnished one-bedroom units, with the average one-bedroom, unfurnished unit in the municipality going for $2,844. North Vancouver is once again in the number two spot with a monthly average rent of $2,576, while Vancouver, Burnaby and Richmond round out the top five.

Other rental data

These insights are exclusive to our blog and are intended to give more context to each month’s rental data. Based on data sourced directly from liv.rent, these statistics provide a more comprehensive overview of the current rental situation in Canada.

Income-to-rent ratio

Each month, we gather data on renters’ income-to-rent ratio and our most recent data shows that renters in Vancouver who use liv.rent are paying, on average, 37.04% of their income towards rent. This may be considerably above the recommended amount, but isn’t an anomaly given the past few months’ numbers.

While traditional financial advice would be to spend no more than 30% of your income on rent, this advice is perhaps not well suited to the realities of renting in cities like Vancouver – especially as prices continue their rapid climb due to Canada’s rising interest rates.

Still, landlords and property managers should look to see that a tenant can reasonably afford rent compared to how much money they make as part of their tenant screening process.

Renter demographics

On liv.rent, our renter demographics have seen a significant shift over the past year, with more and more renters from different age groups now using the platform. We’re now seeing a much more even spread, particularly with the recent influx of renters aged 35+ as well as increased representation from the younger, under-25 demographic. With that being said, the majority of renters that make up our community are between the ages of 25-34.

Pet-friendly rentals

We’re proud to say that liv.rent continues to be the rental platform with the most pet-friendly rentals. This January, other rental platforms had just 26.00% of units available that were pet-friendly while on liv.rent, 38.00% of all listed units were pet-friendly.

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Downloadable resources

Make Zoom calls fun and informative when you use the latest rental averages and trends as your virtual background.

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Rental resources for B.C. renters

You can read these comprehensive guides for more information on renting in B.C. and using liv.rent to streamline your rental process.

• BC Residential Tenancy Agreement Explained
• Guide to BC Tenancy Forms
• The Complete User Guide To liv.rent For Landlords & Property Managers
• The Ultimate Renter’s Guide To Using liv.rent

Data collection methodology

Our monthly rent reports use data from our own liv.rent listings, as well as data our team manually collects from other popular listing sites – looking at available basement suites, apartments, condos, townhouses, semi-detached houses, and single-detached houses for each area.

When collecting this data, we do exclude luxury properties listed at over $5,000, as well as rooms for rent and shared accommodation. Investing in manual data collection means that we only consider the current month’s listing, since we can filter out duplicate listings and older ads that haven’t been removed.

Another key difference between our data collection methods and some government agencies like the CMHC is that we only include current asking rent prices. Many official reports will include data for entire buildings in their reports, which tends to skew numbers lower since many units are already occupied, and may be rent-controlled or rented for significantly lower than the current rates.

As we are a Canadian rental platform founded and based in Vancouver, we want to ensure that we’re providing a completely accurate depiction of the rental market in the cities we look at.

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Subscribe to receive these monthly updates on the Vancouver rental market. Discover last month’s Rent Reports below:

December 2022 Metro Vancouver Rent Report
December 2022 Toronto Rent Report
December 2022 Calgary & Edmonton Rent Report
December 2022 Montreal Rent Report