Vancouver rentals 44th priciest in world: Study
Rents for one-bedroom apartments in the Vancouver area are the priciest in Canada, but they’re not anywhere close to the most expensive in the world.
An international study of 100 cities by Nestpick, a meta search engine, ranks Vancouver with the 44th highest rents in the world.
But $914 for a small one bedroom Nestpick says is typical for a suite between 420 and 485 square feet will likely be hard to find.
That was at least $100 lower than average rents published by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. in its latest report, from October 2016, for Metro Vancouver apartments: From $1,013 for a studio and $1,159 for a one bedroom.
The 2017 numbers, which will likely be higher, are expected in two weeks, according to a CMHC spokeswoman.
The Nestpick study did show rents for unfurnished two- or three-bedroom apartments, 800 to 1,300 square feet, in Metro Vancouver, at $1,768.
And that was higher than an average two-bedroom in Metro Vancouver in CMHC’s October 2016 report, where a twoto three- bedroom was $1,450 to $1,631.
“The ranking of Vancouver somewhere in the middle (globally) is about right,” said UBC sociology Prof. Nathan Lauster, author of The Death and Life of the Single Family House.
But he said the rents for all size rentals by similar services are “significantly higher” than those provided by Nestpick and he said its numbers weren’t “credible.”
For instance, numbeo.com, which relies on crowdsourcing, puts one-bedroom rents from $1,367 to $1,825, and three-bedrooms at $2,529 to $3,688; and Louie Dinh, a freelance data scientist who runs Quantitative Rhetoric, pegged rents in Vancouver only at $1,600 for a studio, $1,950 for a one-bedroom and $2,950 for a three-bedroom using October online listings.
Nestpick, a rent aggregator designed to provide expats and international students a comparison of rental costs worldwide, said in the study its averages may be lower than actual rents in some cities because Nestpick searched a wider area than just a city’s core.