Montreal asking rents up 71% since 2019: Statistics Canada

Montreal Gazette

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Asking rents for Montreal-area apartments have soared by hundreds of dollars per month since the beginning of the pandemic, Statistics Canada reported Wednesday.
The asking rent for the average two-bedroom apartment increased by 71 per cent from 2019 to 2025, with the typical unit now going for $1,930 compared with $1,130 in 2019. One-bedroom apartments saw a 57 per cent increase from $980 in 2019 to $1,540 in 2025.
The report notes that asking rents tend to be higher than rents paid by long-term tenants, and offer a picture of current market trends.
The data comes on the heels of figures reported last week by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) that paint a similarly bleak picture of housing affordability in a post-pandemic Montreal.
The national housing agency's report shows that mortgage costs and expenses for newly purchased homes in the Montreal area sat at 48 per cent of the average income as of 2024, compared with 34 per cent in 2019 — the worst deterioration in housing affordability of any major centre in the country.
For the CMHC, the solution to rising unaffordability lies in increasing supply.
'There's a lot of things we can do to help foster more supply,' CMHC chief economist Matthieu Laberge said.
According to the agency's model, Montreal-area builders would need to start work on about 72,000 units every year until 2035 to return to the 34 per cent housing-to-income ratio homeowners enjoyed in 2019. But the report says the area is only on track to build less than a third of those units — around 23,000 per year.
'We can't keep doing the same things we've always done,' Laberge said, suggesting affordability can be restored via 'new ways of building, like modular or prefabricated' housing. Regulations restricting housing also need easing, he said.
But a McGill urban planning professor was skeptical, saying increased supply was no antidote to unaffordability.
'This whole idea that building more luxury housing means that we're going to have more affordable housing doesn't actually hold out,' Anna Kramer said.
'I'm extremely skeptical of those supply side reports that are put out by the CMHC and others, because it's really favouring the for-profit development industry,' she said. 'The larger picture is that housing is being financialized,' with developers' goals of increasing profits at odds with solutions to unaffordability.
'Instead of just saying a number of housing units,' Kramer said policy-makers need to make sure that the right types of units are being built — and ensure they stay at the right prices through measures including stronger rent control.
She criticized Quebec's 2025 rent guidelines, which called for 5.9 per cent rent increases for units that don't include heating, leaving room for even higher increases in some cases.
'I'm always a bit cautious when I talk about financialization,' Laberge said, given that housing investments are often a way to save money and fund retirements.
Though he said affordability would improve if housing became a less attractive investment, he pointed to remote work as a major reason that high housing costs spread to cities including Montreal.
During the pandemic, Laberge said people from Vancouver and Toronto — where housing unaffordability was already prevalent — moved to places like Montreal.
'They went elsewhere in the country and propagated the affordability crisis,' he said.
Increasing supply would return affordability to pre-pandemic levels across the country, Laberge said, creating acceptable conditions everywhere but Toronto and Vancouver, where he said more significant change is needed.
Housing costs in those cities continue to top Montreal by a wide margin. Two-bedroom apartments are now listed at an average of $3,170 in Vancouver and $2,560 in Toronto, though average asking rents have slightly decreased in recent months in both cities.
This story was originally published June 25, 2025 at 4:00 PM.