The pace of increasing the rent of the metro vancouver slowed down in the last year compared to 2023, and the rental stock is growing, but there is a lack of units for families, and the waiting list for social housing is longer, a new report shows.
The Metro Vancouver Regional District published its annual report on apartment data on Friday, which shows that the rent was slowed down to 4.5 percent in 2024, which was a decrease of 9.1 percent in the previous year.
The rental building found a 20th highlight. There was an increase in apartment starts by 35 percent and an increase in the degrees between 2015 and 2024 by 48 percent. The specially built rents made up 37 percent of the apartment starts and 31 percent of the completion in 2024, the report said.
“However, more is necessary to achieve the historical per capita building rates and to meet the requirements of the expected population growth,” says that.
There is a special need for family size rental units. Only 30 percent of all specially built rental units in the region have two or more bedrooms, it said.
In the early 2000s almost a decade, the report said that rent starts and degrees had dropped, which led to a pent -up demand.
The average rental costs for specially built rentals in Metro Vancouver were $ 1,929 last year and rose to $ 2,541 for rental apartments.
The average cost of renting a newly built unit in the region last year was $ 2,739, which was 42.7 percent higher than the average rent for an existing, already occupied unit.
The average rent in the region rose by 143 percent between 2002 and 2024, while the average wages in BC rose by 93 percent and inflation increased by 58 percent in the same period.
While the pace has slowed down, it is expected that rents will continue to rise.
The vacancy rates in the Metro Vancouver have increased to 1.6 percent in 2024, compared to 0.9 percent in the past two years.
In an explanation, however, the district said that the vacancy rates in the region remained “far below a healthy level” of at least three percent. The social housing stock has risen by 5.8 percent since 2022, and Vancouver had almost half of the social housing units in the entire region.
However, the number of households for the waiting list for social housing last year rose by 14 percent and exceeded from 21,500. Seniors and families make up the largest proportion of households in the BC apartments register, the report says.
In the meantime, the number of people with homelessness in the region continues to increase and has increased by 33 percent since 2020. Between 2005 and 2023, it rose by 122 percent, according to the district's report.
Almost 40 percent of Metro Vancouver households are tenants, and the report states that the “trend towards rent continues”.
The proportion of tenants in the region rose to 38 percent compared to 36 percent between 2016 and 2021.
The shift for rent is “particularly pronounced” in younger households aged 25 to 44, the report said.
The middle income of the tenants in 2020 was between 51,600 US dollars in an area, including the University of BC to a maximum of $ 135,000 in the village of Lions Bay.
For homeowners, the report said that the middle income of 78,500 US dollars in the same area, including the university up to $ 170,000 in the village, varied.