Canadian renters with aspirations to move are facing much more than a logistical hassle, according to a new report on housing affordability from Statistics Canada (StatCan). The research, which draws from the fourth cycle of the Canadian Housing Survey, shows that moving in today’s private rental market comes at a premium, costing tenants hundreds of dollars more per month.
According to StatCan, the average monthly rent for tenants who had moved in the two years leading up to 2024 was $1,740, compared to $1,290 for sitting tenants who occupied their residence for at least two years. That translates to an average of $450 more per month — or $5,400 more per year — for renters who have recently moved.
And the nuances between sitting and mover tenants don’t end there. The national agency says that 40% of recent movers lived in unaffordable housing as of 2024, with 30% or more of pre-tax household income being spent on rent. That same metric for sitting tenants came in at 32%.
“Recent movers were also more likely to report financial difficulty due to increased rents (44.5%) and dissatisfaction with the affordability of their housing (45.5%) than their renter counterparts who had not moved recently (33.5% and 24.4%, respectively),” the report says.
“Since 2018, the share reporting financial difficulty due to rent increases rose by 27.0 percentage points for recent movers and by 16.5 percentage points for sitting tenants, which led to a widening of the gap between the two groups in recent years.”
StatCan’s findings point to a rental market reality where staying put comes with a significant financial advantage — one that many Canadians can’t afford to ignore, with more than one in ten living in core housing need: that is, housing that's unaffordable, doesn’t have enough bedrooms, or needs major repairs, while living somewhere else in the community is not affordable. At the same time, however, many renters are living in homes that no longer work for them.
According to a separate analysis of the Canadian Housing Survey from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), renters are currently living in dwellings with an average of 1.9 bedrooms, but aspire to have 2.6. That's a difference of around 37%.
Unsurprisingly, the gap is even more pronounced among renters living in “unsuitable housing” — defined by CMHC as a home that does not have enough bedrooms for the size and make-up of the household. Those households currently have an average of 1.8 bedrooms but aspire to have 3.3, marking an 84% difference.
CMHC says this gap illustrates “how far existing housing falls short of meeting their bedroom needs” and speaks to the “rise of overcrowded housing in Canada, especially in high-rent markets like Toronto and Vancouver.”
