Cheapest Toronto Neighbourhoods to Rent, 17 Zones Ranked

The cheapest place to rent a one-bedroom in Toronto is the strip of Etobicoke along the lake. CMHC calls it Zone 5, and it covers Mimico, New Toronto, Long Branch, Alderwood, Islington/City Centre South and Stonegate-Queensway. A one-bedroom there averaged $1,493 a month in October 2025. Across the whole City of Toronto the figure was $1,763. Zone 5 is the cheapest of the 17 survey zones inside the city, and CMHC grades that number reliability a, its best. The full ranking is below, with the neighbourhoods CMHC puts in every zone. One warning before you start searching: the cheapest zone changes when you look at what is actually free to rent, rather than at what everyone is already paying.

The 17 zones, ranked on one-bedroom rent

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation surveys the rental market every October. It splits the Toronto area into 31 survey zones, which are its own geographic units, each covering a group of neighbourhoods. Seventeen of those zones sit inside the City of Toronto. Those 17 are the study set here. Together they hold 282,820 purpose-built rental units, 120,073 of them one-bedrooms.

We ranked the 17 on the one-bedroom average, because every zone publishes a figure there and 16 of the 17 carry CMHC's top reliability grade, the most of any bedroom size. Ranking on the all-units figure instead would flatter any zone with a lot of bachelor apartments in it. The ranking uses the figures exactly as CMHC prints them, and there are no ties: all 17 published values are different.

The gap between the ends is real money. Take $2,042 in central Toronto, minus $1,493 on the Etobicoke lakeshore, and you get $549 a month. The middle zone of the 17 is Zone 2, Toronto (East), at $1,692. Eleven of the 17 zones sit below the $1,763 city average, nine are under $1,700, and four are under $1,600.

The four cheapest are Etobicoke South at $1,493, North York Northwest at $1,517, North York Southwest at $1,567 and East York at $1,578. Two names the popular lists lean on sit further down. West Hill is in Zone 12, seventh of 17 at $1,633. Rexdale-Kipling is in Zone 7, eleventh at $1,718. Both are below the city average, and neither is in the cheapest four.

Which neighbourhoods are in your zone

A zone is not a neighbourhood, so the ranking is only useful if you know what is inside one. CMHC publishes that itself. Its mapping service tags every named neighbourhood with the survey zone it belongs to, and the 17 Toronto zones cover 111 named neighbourhoods between them. Those lists are below, straight from CMHC, not from us.

A few of the groupings are worth knowing before you search. Zone 17, second cheapest on a one-bedroom, is only two neighbourhoods: Downsview and Black Creek. Zone 3, second dearest, is the Yonge and Eglinton to Forest Hill run. Zone 4 puts South Parkdale and King West in the same bucket as Roncesvalles and High Park, and its one-bedroom figure is the only one of the 17 graded b rather than a.

The average is not what a new tenant pays

Here is the part that changes how you should read the table. CMHC's average rent is a weighted average of every unit in the survey, whether somebody lives in it or not. It includes tenants who moved in years ago and have had guideline increases since. Its data tables also split that average into two halves, and the halves are far apart.

Across the City of Toronto, a vacant one-bedroom averaged $2,020 in October 2025. An occupied one averaged $1,754. That is $2,020 minus $1,754, or $266 a month more to be the new tenant. CMHC ran the test in every one of the 17 zones and found the vacant average higher in all 17, at 95 per cent confidence.

You can check the arithmetic on the cheapest zone. Etobicoke South had a one-bedroom vacancy rate of 3.8 per cent. Its vacant units averaged $1,820 and its occupied units averaged $1,480. So $1,820 x 0.038 plus $1,480 x 0.962 comes to $1,492.92, which rounds to the $1,493 CMHC publishes. The advertised price and the published average are $1,820 minus $1,480, or $340, apart.

Rank the same 17 zones on the vacant-unit figure and the order moves. North York Southwest comes first at $1,782, which is $38 less than Etobicoke South's $1,820. Etobicoke South drops to second, Etobicoke North is third at $1,855, and Zone 17 is fourth at $1,863. Treat the Zone 15 number carefully: CMHC grades it c, the weakest of that group, while the Zone 5 figure is graded a.

Cheapest depends on the size you need

No single zone is cheapest at every size, so the answer changes with what you are looking for.

For a bachelor, the cheapest is Zone 17, North York Northwest, at $1,167, though CMHC grades that one c. For a one-bedroom it is Zone 5 at $1,493, graded a. For a two-bedroom it is Zone 17 again, at $1,751, graded a. For three bedrooms or more the cheapest published figure is Zone 11, Scarborough North, at $1,811, graded a. The city averages for those sizes are $1,499, $1,763, $2,055 and $2,342.

So Zone 17 wins on two of the four sizes and comes second on a third. If you want the broadest cheap search in the city, Downsview and Black Creek are the two names to start with.

One figure is missing. CMHC suppresses Zone 5's three-bedroom-plus average, which means the estimate was not reliable enough to print. We have not filled that gap with a guess. Of the 68 average-rent cells in this study (17 zones by four unit sizes), 67 are published and that one is suppressed. The table above prints three of those four sizes. The three-bedroom column sits on CMHC's own zone page.

Cheap is no use if nothing is free

A low average does not help if nothing comes up. The vacancy rate tells you how much choice you will have, and CMHC publishes one for every zone.

The City of Toronto sat at 2.8 per cent across all units in October 2025, and 3.5 per cent for one-bedrooms. Among the 17 zones, one-bedroom vacancy ran from 2.4 per cent in Zone 1 and Zone 7 up to 4.4 per cent in Zone 17. Every zone published a one-bedroom vacancy rate, so nothing is hidden in that column.

That combination is the useful bit. Zone 17 is second cheapest on a one-bedroom and has the loosest one-bedroom market of the 17, though CMHC grades that vacancy figure c. Zone 5 is cheapest and sits at 3.8 per cent, a bit above the city's 3.5.

Stock size matters too. Zone 1 holds 18,551 one-bedroom units and Zone 7 holds 948. A small stock means fewer listings.

What these numbers are and are not

The Rental Market Survey is a specific thing, and knowing its edges keeps you from over-reading it.

It runs in the first two weeks of October, so these are October 2025 conditions. It covers privately initiated buildings with at least three rental units that have been on the market at least three months. Social and affordable housing is not in the survey frame at all.

That means condominiums rented out by their owners are not in these numbers. Neither are basement apartments, rented houses or rooms. If you are shopping the listings sites, a lot of what you see there is not what CMHC counted.

Rent here is the amount tenants actually pay. CMHC makes no adjustment for whether heat, hydro, parking or hot water are included, so two zones can differ partly because of what comes with the unit. The one exception to "what people pay" is the vacant-unit column, which is the rent the owner is asking.

Finally, the letters. CMHC prints a reliability code next to each figure: a is excellent, b very good, c good, d poor. It suppresses a figure entirely when the estimate is too uncertain or fewer than four operators answered. The one-bedroom letters are in the ranked table above, and the rest sit beside each figure on CMHC's own zone page. A figure graded c or d deserves more caution than the a beside Etobicoke South's $1,493.

How to use this when you search

Pick your unit size first, then read the right column, because the cheapest zone is not the same for a bachelor and a two-bedroom. Then look at the vacant-unit figure rather than the headline average, since that is what a new lease is likely to cost. Then check the vacancy rate, because a cheap zone with nothing available is not an option. Finally, take the neighbourhood list for the zone you have chosen and search on those names, not on the zone number, which no listing site uses.