Vancouver's private-apartment vacancy rate nearly doubled to 3.7% (from 1.6% a year earlier) while average rent rose to C$1,963, per CMHC's October 2025 Rental Market Survey. BC's property transfer tax and its first-time-buyer and newly-built exemptions have specific dollar thresholds that most Vancouver purchase prices sail straight past.
Vancouver's rental market: a 30-year vacancy high
The CMHC October 2025 Rental Market Survey puts the Vancouver CMA's purpose-built private-apartment vacancy rate at 3.7% as of October 2025, up from 1.6% a year earlier — a level CMHC's own commentary describes as the highest in more than 30 years. Average rent across all bedroom types rose from C$1,924 to C$1,963 over the same period, meaning rents kept climbing even as vacancy loosened.
For a 2-bedroom apartment specifically, Statistics Canada's experimental rent table recorded an average asking rent of C$3,030 against an average paid rent of C$2,470 in the Vancouver CMA as of April 2026 — a C$560 gap, the widest of any city in this series. That gap is the clearest sign of how much value a sitting long-term tenant is capturing versus what a unit re-lists for.
BC's 2026 rent increase limit is 2.3% for existing tenancies — meaning a Vancouver buyer who inherits a tenant paying near the StatCan average of C$2,470 cannot close that C$560 gap to market in a single year; it takes several years of guideline increases, or a vacancy, to get there.
BC property transfer tax: why Vancouver rarely qualifies for the exemptions
| Bracket | Rate |
|---|---|
| Up to C$200,000 | 1% |
| C$200,000 – C$2,000,000 | 2% |
| Above C$2,000,000 | 3% |
| Residential value above C$3,000,000 (additional) | +2% (5% total on that portion) |
gov.bc.ca, Property Transfer Tax, page dated December 3, 2025.
BC offers two exemptions that matter to a first-time buyer but rarely to a Vancouver investor: the first-time home buyers' exemption (full C$8,000 exemption up to a fair market value of C$835,000, phasing out completely by C$860,000) and the newly built home exemption (full exemption up to C$1,100,000, phasing out by C$1,150,000). Both require the buyer to be a qualifying individual — not a corporation — and neither is available to someone who has already owned property.
BC's principal-residence rule rules out short-term rental income
British Columbia's Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act principal-residence requirement limits short-term hosting to the place where someone actually lives day-to-day, plus one secondary suite or accessory dwelling unit on the same property — and Vancouver is explicitly named among the communities where this applies. A dedicated investment condo the owner doesn't live in cannot legally be operated as a short-term rental in Vancouver at all. The NOI in the worked example above — and in the calculator on this page — should be built on long-term rent (the CMHC and StatCan figures cited), not a nightly-rate projection.
Methodology
Vacancy and average-rent figures are CMHC's October 2025 Rental Market Survey (purpose-built private apartments, Vancouver CMA total, all bedroom types). Asking-versus-paid rent is Statistics Canada's experimental table 46-10-0092-01 for 2-bedroom apartments, April 2026. Property transfer tax figures are the general PTT schedule and the two named exemptions as published by the Government of BC; the worked example uses a C$900,000 purchase price chosen only to sit above both exemption ceilings, not as a claimed average sale price.
Sources
- CMHC — Rental Market Survey Data Tables, Vancouver 2025 — accessed 2026-09-21
- Statistics Canada — Table 46-10-0092-01, asking and paid rent — accessed 2026-09-21
- Government of BC — Rent increases (Residential Tenancy Branch) — accessed 2026-09-21
- Government of BC — Property Transfer Tax — accessed 2026-09-21
- Government of BC — First time home buyers' program — accessed 2026-09-21
- Government of BC — Newly built home exemption — accessed 2026-09-21
- Government of BC — Principal residence requirement (STR Act) — accessed 2026-09-21