Montreal asking rents up nearly 71% since 2019, says StatsCan

The average asking price of rent in Montreal has shot up nearly 71 per cent since 2019, according to a rent report released by Statistics Canada on Wednesday.

Between 2019 and the first quarter of 2025, asking rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the country's second-largest city has grown from $1,130 to $1,930, the data agency said in its first-ever quarterly rent statistics report.

Elsewhere in Quebec, the cities of Drummondville and Sherbrooke — which had the lowest average asking rents at the start of this year — saw the biggest uptick in average asking rents for two-bedroom apartments since the first quarter of 2019.

The report draws from asking rents to illustrate the latest market trends, because "prospective renters typically face higher rents compared with long-term tenants" whose rents reflect past leases, the report said.

Some Canadian cities with large renter populations, including Montreal, "have experienced very, very high rent growth" in just a few years, said Mike Moffatt, an assistant professor of business, economics and public policy at Western University's Ivey Business School.

Some of those rates are now coming down year-over-year: in Montreal, for example, asking rent for a two-bedroom declined slightly between the first quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of 2025. That drop is more pronounced in places like Ontario's Kitchener-Waterloo region or Kelowna, B.C.

While "it's nice to have a decline of three or four per cent, that doesn't necessarily make up for the big changes that we've seen since 2019," said Moffatt.

In the rest of Canada, the average asking rent for a two-bedroom apartment was highest in Vancouver, where the figure stood at $3,170 in the first quarter of 2025. It was followed by Toronto ($2,690), Victoria ($2,680) and Ottawa ($2,490).

Montreal ranks 17th on that list, according to Statistics Canada.

Advocates for affordable housing recently told Radio-Canada that they're on high alert in the lead-up to Quebec's July 1 moving day, with the province's housing tribunal having authorized the largest rent increase in at least three decades earlier this year.