Available Rentals Cost $75 More Than What Recently Rented
Apartments currently available for rent in Quebec are priced 5-6% higher than apartments that recently rented. That's roughly $75 per month, or $900 per year.
Most rental market data only shows what's currently available. But what actually rents tells a different story. I analyzed 250,000 listings from the past 6 months to compare the two.
The Numbers
Here's the breakdown by apartment size:
| Size | Avail.Available | Rented | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | $1,160 | $1,090 | +6.4% |
| 1-bed | $1,250 | $1,195 | +4.6% |
| 2-bed | $1,580 | $1,500 | +5.3% |
| 3-bed | $1,795 | $1,700 | +5.6% |
This is based on approximately 187,000 available listings and 65,000 rented listings across Quebec. Larger apartments (4+ bedrooms) were excluded due to smaller sample sizes.
Why This Happens
Two possible explanations:
-
Cheaper units rent faster. Well-priced apartments rent quickly and disappear from the market, while pricier ones linger. At any given moment, available listings are skewed toward the slower-moving, higher-priced end.
-
Landlords negotiate down. Some landlords start high and reduce their asking price before signing a lease. The final rent is lower than what was originally advertised.
Either way, the result is the same: available listings are priced higher than what apartments actually rent for.
What This Means
If you're apartment hunting, the listings you see represent what landlords are asking, not what apartments actually rent for. The last listed price of rented apartments is consistently lower than what's currently advertised.
There's also a perception bias at play. When you browse available listings, you're mostly seeing what's been sitting on the market, the units that didn't rent quickly, often because they're overpriced. The better-priced apartments already found tenants and disappeared. So your sense of "what rent costs" gets skewed by the leftovers.
The takeaway? Be patient, be ready when a good deal appears (Dwellup alerts can help, wink wink), and don't assume the listings you see today represent the real market rate.
Three Ways to Measure Rent
Not all rental stats measure the same thing. When you see numbers in the news, it helps to know where they come from:
-
Listed price — What's currently advertised on rental platforms. This is what most periodic stats report, and what you see when browsing. As this data shows, it skews high.
-
Last price before renting — The final displayed price before a listing gets taken down. This is what our analysis captures. It's 5-6% lower than listed prices.
-
Rent actually paid — What landlords and tenants report in CMHC surveys and the census. This includes negotiated deals and long-term tenants, so it's always lower than our figures.
Most people only ever see #1. That shapes their perception of what rent "costs", and it's the highest of the three.
A Note on the Data
All figures use median rent across Quebec over the past 6 months. Listings with extreme prices (above $10,000) were excluded. "Rented" refers to the last displayed price before a listing was marked as rented, not necessarily the final negotiated rent, which could be even lower.
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