Burnaby rents second-highest in Canada, despite nationwide decline

There is good and bad news for renters across Canada. The good news is that rents have declined by 3.2% in 2024, the lowest rate they have reached in the past year and a half. The bad news is that rents are still 16.8% higher than before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic nearly five years ago. This information is based on a new report by Rentals.ca and Urbanation published on Rentals.ca. The report predicts that rents will continue to decline in 2025. 

The news is a bit less rosy for Burnaby renters, while rent has declined ever so slightly in the city, Burnaby is still number two on the list of the highest rents in Canada, second only to neighbouring Vancouver. In the Lower Mainland and the rest of BC, apartment rents declined by a mere 0.5% overall, with small units such as studios experiencing the sharpest decline of 2.3% in 2024. 

In Burnaby, rents for one-bedroom apartments declined by 9% to $2,366 on average. Two-bedroom apartments decreased by 3.1% to an average rent of $3,055. Overall, in Canada, three-bedroom apartments outperformed the other categories of rental units, while purpose-built rentals were the only category to experience growth, with an increase of 3.1% for studios and 5% for three-bedroom units. 

“Across property types, rentals within houses and townhouses experienced the largest annual decline in asking rents in 2024, falling 7.4% annually in December to an average of $2,181. Condominium rents ended 2024 down 5.2% to an average of $2,219, while units within purpose-built rentals experienced only a 0.3% year-over-year decrease in average asking rents to $2,070. This followed a 12.8% annual increase in purpose-built rents in 2023,” said the Rentals.ca report. 

For landlords and would-be landlords, BC remains the best province to be a landlord as the declines were steeper in other provinces, especially in Ontario. There were, however, a couple of “winners” when it comes to rent increases. 

“The decline in rents last year was mainly concentrated in Ontario, where average asking rents for apartments fell 4.7% to $2,332. This followed a 3.7% increase in apartment rents in Ontario during 2023,” the report said. “Manitoba led all provinces in 2024 with a 5.0% annual increase in rents to an average of $1,618, which was consistent with the 4.9% increase in rents for the province in 2023. Rent increases decelerated the most in Alberta last year, where rent growth slowed from 15.6% in 2023 to 1.6% in 2024, with average rents reaching $1,718 in December.”

This piece was made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative.

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