How Metro Vancouver's Rental Vacancy Rate Hit a 37-Year High
For anyone who has spent the last decade hearing that Vancouver rentals get snapped up within hours, this next fact takes some adjusting to. The Vancouver rental vacancy rate 37 year high recorded through late 2025 marks the loosest that city’s purpose-built rental market has been since before most of today’s newcomers were born.
The timeline
October 2025 — CMHC conducts its annual rental market survey across major Canadian centres, the primary data source behind every vacancy figure that circulates for the year ahead.
11 December 2025 — CMHC publishes its Rental Market Report. Cmhc vacancy data vancouver shows the city’s purpose-built apartment vacancy rate at 3.7%, up sharply from the near-zero rates Vancouver had become known for. That’s the highest level recorded in the city since 1988 — a genuine 37-year high, not a rounding-error headline.
Same report, national picture — Vancouver’s shift was part of a broader national loosening. Canada’s overall purpose-built vacancy rate reached 3.1%, up from 2.2% the year before, described in the report as the loosest the country’s rental market has been in years.
June 2026 — Vancouver vacancy rate 2026 explained in context of pricing: despite the higher vacancy rate, Vancouver still posted the highest asking rents in the country, with a one-bedroom averaging $2,400 and a two-bedroom $3,370 according to Zumper’s Canadian rent report. Looser doesn’t mean cheap — it means fewer bidding wars and slightly more room to negotiate, not bargain rents.
What a rising vacancy rate means for tenants
What a rising vacancy rate means for tenants is less about the headline percentage and more about the day-to-day experience of searching. A vacancy rate climbing from near zero toward 3.7% translates into units sitting on the market longer, landlords more willing to negotiate on price or offer move-in incentives, and viewings that don’t require you to submit an application within the hour just to be considered. It doesn’t mean Vancouver has become an affordable city — it remains the most expensive rental market in Canada by a clear margin — but it does mean a newcomer arriving in 2026 has more room to shop around, compare units, and push back on an asking price than anyone arriving even two or three years earlier.
How Vancouver compares to other major markets
Vancouver’s 3.7% wasn’t the highest vacancy rate among Canada’s big cities in the same CMHC survey — Calgary’s reached 5.0% and Edmonton’s 3.8%, both slightly ahead of Vancouver’s own number. Greater Toronto told a more mixed story, with purpose-built vacancy at 3.0% but condo vacancy stuck near 1%, showing that a loosening trend can move at very different speeds depending on the type of rental building involved, even within the same metro area.
Why it happened
The shift tracks a mix of new purpose-built supply coming online across the region and a broader national cooling in rental demand, the same forces that pushed Calgary’s vacancy rate to 5.0% and the national average up from 2.2% to 3.1% over the same period. Vancouver’s numbers moved from an unusually tight starting point, which is why even a modest absolute increase in vacant units produced a 37-year record. For a newcomer, the practical takeaway is simple: the city is still expensive, but it is no longer the frantic, take-it-or-leave-it market it was through much of the last decade. That Vancouver rental vacancy rate 37 year high isn’t a one-off headline either — it reflects a genuine, multi-year shift in how much room renters now have to negotiate in a city long known for having none.