The rental vacancy rate may have eased slightly across all of Metro Vancouver, but in the Tri-Cities it’s heading in the opposite direction, according to new annual data released November 28 by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).
The federal housing agency said that vacancies in the Tri-Cities over the past year have fallen to 1.2 per cent of total rental housing stock, down from 1.4 per cent in fall 2017.
The high demand is also pushing rents in the region to soar close to double-digit annual growth.
The average rent across the Tri-Cities was reported as $1,178 this year (all apartments), up a whopping 9.0 per cent from one year previously. That's the second steepest price growth in the Lower Mainland, beaten only by the 9.1 per cent annual rise in Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows. One-bedroom rents in the Tri-Cities were up 9.5 per cent to $1,098, while two-beds rose 8.0 per cent to $1,328 on average.
Elsewhere in Metro Vancouver, Burnaby saw vacancy rates ease dramatically from 0.7 to 2.0 per cent, with a host of new-build apartments coming on stream, particularly in Metrotown. North Vancouver (District), West Vancouver, New Westminster, Richmond and Delta also saw slight vacancy rate increases this year. This eased Metro Vancouver’s overall vacancy rate to 1.0 per cent, from 0.9 per cent a year ago.
Vancouver, on the other hand, saw vacancy rates drop from 0.9 per cent to 0.8 per cent this year. Surrey joined Vancouver and the Tri-Cities in a tightening rental market, dropping to a very low 0.4 per cent, compared with 0.6 per cent last year. Surrey has recently seen the launch of the first new rental purpose-built building in the city in more than three decades.
The CMHC said that a strong Metro Vancouver economy and the high cost of entry-level homeownership is fuelling rental demand.
Check out the full Metro Vancouver report to see vacancy rates and rental prices by neighbourhood.
