Rental Yield Calculator Canada

Gross yield: which rent figure to use

This calculator's gross yield is nothing more than annual rent divided by the property value you enter — a fast screen, and one where the rent figure does all the work. Statistics Canada's experimental rent-price series shows why that figure needs care: in Toronto, the average two-bedroom asking rent in Q2 2026 was C$2,650, but the average rent tenants actually paid was C$2,160 — asking rent running about 22.7% above paid rent. Vancouver showed almost the same gap (C$3,030 asking vs. C$2,470 paid, about 22.7% above). If you price your yield off a listing site's asking rent rather than a comparable unit's actual paid rent, gross yield on this calculator will run meaningfully high.

StatCan itself flags this as an experimental series still under methodological review, so treat the gap as a directional signal rather than a precise city-wide multiplier — but Calgary's near-zero (even slightly negative) gap versus Montréal's 34% gap shows the size of the correction varies a lot by market, and can't be assumed away with a flat discount.

Net yield's costs exclude the mortgage — and this calculator's default is a placeholder

In manual mode, this calculator subtracts whatever annual running costs you enter — property tax, insurance, condo or strata fees, maintenance, management — from annual rent before dividing by value. In percentage mode, it deducts a flat share of gross rent instead, as a placeholder for when you don't have exact numbers yet. Either way, the mortgage payment is never part of net yield — that's what separates yield from cash-on-cash return, which does subtract debt service. If you have even rough figures for property tax and insurance, using manual mode will get you closer to a real net yield than accepting the percentage-mode default.

Rent control caps how fast net yield can grow — and the cap differs by province

Gross and net yield are both snapshots at today's rent, but an investor evaluating a property with a sitting tenant needs to know how fast that rent — and therefore the yield — can legally increase on renewal. The rules vary sharply by province. Ontario's 2026 guideline caps most sitting-tenant increases at 2.1% without Landlord and Tenant Board approval (though units first occupied after November 15, 2018 are exempt from rent control entirely). British Columbia's 2026 limit is 2.3%. Manitoba's is lower still, at 1.8%, effective January 1, 2026 (though units renting at C$1,670/month or more, and buildings first occupied after March 2005, are excluded). Nova Scotia runs a temporary, higher cap of 5% per year, in force since January 1, 2026 and scheduled to sunset December 31, 2027. Alberta sets no cap at all on rent increases for sitting tenants, though a landlord still can't raise rent more than once every 365 days. Québec runs differently again: the Tribunal administratif du logement doesn't publish a ceiling — it applies a calculation grid, and a new calculation method took effect for lease-modification notices given on or after January 1, 2026, with landlords proposing an increase that tenants can contest.

The practical takeaway for this calculator: a net yield you project three or five years forward by simply inflating rent at some assumed market rate will overstate what's achievable on a unit with a sitting Ontario or Manitoba tenant, and understate what's achievable in Alberta. Turnover — a new tenant at a new market rent — resets the yield to whatever the current market supports, which is a different exercise than renewing an existing lease.

Vacancy sets the ceiling on what rent you can actually collect

CMHC's October 2025 Rental Market Survey shows vacancy climbing in the two markets where yield compression is most discussed. Toronto CMA's total vacancy rate rose from 2.5% to 3.0% between October 2024 and October 2025, with average rent up from C$1,850 to C$1,913. Vancouver CMA moved from 1.6% to 3.7% vacancy, the highest level in decades for that market, with average rent up from C$1,924 to C$1,963. Rising vacancy alongside rising rent is an unusual combination — normally the two move in opposite directions — and it's worth checking current local vacancy before assuming last year's rent growth rate will repeat when you project this calculator's yield forward.

Vacancy and rent across all 13 tracked markets, not just Toronto and Vancouver

The vacancy-ceiling section above covers Toronto and Vancouver. CMHC's October 2025 Rental Market Survey covers eleven more centres this calculator can be applied to: Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, Halifax, Winnipeg, Victoria, Saskatoon, Québec City, Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, London, and Montréal all showed vacancy rising between October 2024 and October 2025, alongside rising average rent in every one of them — the same unusual combination flagged for Toronto and Vancouver above, not an anomaly limited to those two markets.

Rising vacancy alongside rising rent breaks the usual assumption that more available units should soften rent growth. For a yield projection, that means a market showing higher vacancy today — Winnipeg's rate nearly doubled year over year, for instance — is not automatically a market where rent growth (and therefore net yield growth) is about to slow.