Summer is the busiest time of year for Canada’s rental market. As students prepare for the fall semester, young professionals relocate and many households move before September, thousands of Canadians are searching for a new place to live.
The summer edition of our rent ranking is designed to help you find the best place in Canada to rent right now based on your income.
“Renters have more choice and more bargaining power than they’ve had since the pandemic, and the cities topping this list are the ones where rents never got too far ahead of local incomes,” said Shaun Hildebrand, chief economist at Rentals.ca, which partnered with The Globe and Mail on the project as a main data provider.
“But it’s a supply story, and it won’t last. Construction starts are falling, the seasonal upswing that follows the school calendar has already started, and population growth will pick back up after recent policy cuts, so the window won’t stay open long.”
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Aside from the seasonal upheaval, renters face other constant pressures.
The national housing market has been weaker than expected in 2026, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.’s summer market update. Slower population growth, economic uncertainty, high mortgage rates and modest income growth are keeping many buyers from entering the market, making renting a long-term reality for more Canadians.
The rental market, meanwhile, is beginning to ease as new purpose-built housing supply has boosted vacancy rates and slowed rent growth, particularly in Toronto and Vancouver. However, affordability remains a challenge, with rents still high relative to incomes. Nationally, asking rents averaged $2,033 in June, down 4.3 per cent from a year earlier, the 21st straight month of annual declines.
We used monthly listing data from Rentals.ca to rank 243 Canadian cities with populations exceeding 20,000. Our rankings are based on four categories: Affordability, Availability, Stability and Livability.
Affordability looks at how housing costs compare with local median incomes. Availability reflects how competitive it is to find a rental, considering both local demand and nearby commuting markets. Stability identifies markets where rents and availability have remained relatively consistent over the past five years. Livability measures the day-to-day experience of living in a city, including access to amenities, transportation and services.
Since this project emphasizes a city’s affordability rather than its livability, regions where wages are higher relative to rent rise to the top of the list.
Click into any city to explore where you can afford to live within it. You can also enter your income, and we’ll tailor the rankings to your budget and housing type, ranging from studio and bachelor units to one-, two- and three-bedroom homes, and provide recommendations at the postal code level.
Interested in understanding a city beyond its rental market? Explore our complete annual ranking of Canada’s Most Livable Cities, where we rank the best cities to live in based on 10 categories such as safety, health care, demographics and even the weather.
