Low vacancy rate in Vancouver is a renter's headache
High price of apartments are forcing tenants to dig deep in their pockets
Francois Tremblay was hit by rental sticker shock when he moved to Vancouver from his home in Quebec City and found the money he'd pay for a furnished one-bedroom suite in Quebec gets him little more than a bare room here.
Tremblay's plight is one shared by many accommodation seekers as the rental vacancy rate for the Vancouver area has plunged to its lowest level since 1989, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's 2006 rental market survey released Thursday.
At 0.7 per cent, the vacancy rate for the Vancouver census metropolitan area has dropped by half from last year's 1.4 per cent and leaves the city trailing only Victoria and Calgary, both at 0.5 per cent, as the toughest place in Canada to find rental accommodation.
Today's rate is only marginally ahead of 1989 when the Vancouver CMA recorded a vacancy rate of 0.4 per cent and the rate has only dropped below one per cent twice since then, in 1990 and 1994.
"In Vancouver you have to be quick, if you don't rent right away when you see a place it will be gone," said Tremblay, a Web developer who moved here both for the city's natural attributes and for the opportunities it provides in his work in multimedia.
Tremblay is looking for new digs, but with a budget around $450 he holds out no hope of finding an apartment and will settle for a room.
"I pay $450 and that doesn't include anything; I pay for my gas, hydro, cable, Internet and phone," he said of his current accommodation which he is leaving in the wake of a rampage by his roommate that left the apartment trashed. "For the same price as a room here in Quebec City you can have a fully furnished one-bedroom apartment."
The rental squeeze has driven up rates with Vancouver coming second only to Toronto as the most expensive city in Canada to rent an apartment. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment Vancouver climbed to $1,045 a month this year, up from last year's $1,004.
In Toronto, the same apartment would cost a few bucks more at $1,067 while two bedrooms in
Calgary would set you back $960 a month.
Figures from the CMHC survey show renters would fare better in Windsor, Ont., where the vacancy rate at 10.4 per cent is the highest in Canada. Atlantic Canada has some of the highest vacancy rates with Saint John, New Brunswick and St. John's, Newfoundland coming behind Windsor at 6.8 and 5.1 per cent respectively.
The vacancy rate for Abbotsford was down to 2 per cent in October from 3.8 per cent a year earlier and Victoria's rate was unchanged, leaving it one of the tightest rental markets in the country for the third year running.
Overall, vacancy rates across the country dipped a marginal 0.1 percentage points to 2.6 per cent in October 2006 compared to last year as job growth and income gains drove up demand for both home ownership and rental accommodation, according to the CMHC.
Tremblay, who has been in Vancouver for three months, is part of a migration here that is at its highest since 1997. According to the CMHC, some 28,000 new residents arrived in the Vancouver area in 2005, many coming from other parts of Canada and the world.
Vancouver Real Estate Agent Peter Raab can answer any questions you may have on these listing.
