Average Rent in Toronto: $1,916 If You Stay, $2,577 If You Move

Two numbers answer "what is the average rent in Toronto", and both are correct. CMHC says $1,916 a month. Rentals.ca says $2,577. That is a gap of $2,577 - $1,916 = $661, or 34 per cent, on the same city. Neither firm is wrong. CMHC prices the whole purpose-built stock it surveys, and almost all of it is occupied, including tenants who have not moved in years. Rentals.ca prices the units that are empty and advertised today. If you are staying put, the CMHC figure describes your street. If you are moving, the asking figure is what you will pay.

CMHC's numbers come from its Rental Market Survey of October 2025, published on 11 December 2025 and the newest that exists. The Rentals.ca numbers are for July 2026, published on 6 August 2026.

Why one city has two average rents

CMHC surveys the primary rental market: purpose-built rental apartments and rental townhouses in buildings of three units or more. Purpose-built means the building was put up to be rented out. A condo rented by its owner is not in it, and neither is a basement flat. The survey prices the whole stock, sitting tenants and all.

Rentals.ca and Urbanation count something different: the average asking rent on live listings. Asking rent is the price on the ad. Only empty units get advertised: "The data used in this report is based on the asking rates of available (vacant) units only". The same report is blunt about what CMHC is for. "CMHC rental rates are reflective of what the average household spends on rental housing and not the current market rents for vacant units". Every Rentals.ca figure here is its purpose-built-and-condo apartment series, which leaves out houses and townhouses.

One more label. CMHC grades every figure it prints: (a) excellent, (b) very good, (c) good, (d) poor and to be used with caution. Those letters travel with the numbers below.

A Toronto one-bedroom, from sitting tenant to listing

Six figures price a Toronto one-bedroom, and the order they fall in is the story. The last column is each one minus CMHC's headline one-bedroom average of $1,763 (a).

The headline $1,763 is a blend of the first and third rows, and you can rebuild it. CMHC's one-bedroom vacancy rate in Toronto was 3.5% (a) in October 2025. So 3.5% of units at $2,020 plus 96.5% at $1,754 gives (0.035 x $2,020) + (0.965 x $1,754) = $70.70 + $1,692.61 = $1,763. Only 3.5% of the one-bedroom stock was actually available, and that sliver is the only part you can rent. Across all bedroom types the city rate was 2.8% (a), so 100% - 2.8% = 97.2% of the units CMHC priced had someone living in them.

CMHC measures the gap itself

None of the nine page-one results for "average rent in Toronto" on 27 August 2026 runs this test. In one survey, CMHC prints the average rent of vacant units beside the occupied ones, then tests the difference itself. The final column is CMHC's answer, not ours, at 95 per cent confidence.

One caution. That table is CMHC's table 1.1.9: private apartments only, and its columns split occupied from vacant. So $1,903 is what sitting tenants pay, not the whole stock, and the $1,916 at the top of this article is every purpose-built unit CMHC prices, rental townhouses included. Both are CMHC's own Toronto figures for October 2025.

No timing gap, no geography gap, no property-type gap. One survey, one month, split in two.

The rule that resets the rent

Ontario caps how much a landlord can raise a sitting tenant's rent. That cap is the rent increase guideline: 2.5% for 2025, 2.1% for 2026 and 1.9% for 2027. It follows the Ontario Consumer Price Index and is capped at 2.5%.

The guideline has five holes in it, and two do the work here. The first is new supply: "new buildings, additions to existing buildings and most new basement apartments that are occupied for the first time for residential purposes after November 15, 2018". The second is the one nobody quotes: "rental units upon turnover of a tenancy (the landlord and new tenant agree on the rent amount)". The other three are community housing, long-term care homes and commercial property.

Turnover means the unit changes tenant. When it does, the cap stops applying and the next rent is agreed from scratch.

Now put a number on how rarely that happens. In the City of Toronto, 8.6% (a) of purpose-built apartments changed tenant in the year to October 2025, on CMHC's table 1.1.6. So 100% - 8.6% = 91.4% did not change tenant, and most of those could rise only by the guideline, which was 2.5% for 2025. The exceptions are units in buildings first occupied after 15 November 2018, and increases the Board approves. In Durham the turnover rate was 5.3% (b), so 94.7% did not change tenant, and the same cap held most of them. CMHC's headline average is mostly an average of rents set years ago.

The two series moved in opposite directions

Over the last year the surveyed stock got dearer and the ads got cheaper. CMHC's own estimate of the change in average rent, all bedroom types, was 3.2% (b) for the wider Toronto area from October 2024 to October 2025, and 3.0% (b) for the City of Toronto alone. That is a matched-sample figure: CMHC works it out on the buildings in the survey both years, so a change to the sample cannot move it. Do not get it by subtracting one published average from another.

Asking rents went the other way. Like for like, all bedroom types on both sides, Toronto asking rents fell 0.6% in the year to July 2026 on Rentals.ca, against CMHC's rise of 3.0%. A Toronto one-bedroom listing fell 3.0% over the same year, and Mississauga and Brampton one-bedroom listings each fell 4.6%. TRREB's completed condo leases fell 4.1% for a one-bedroom over the year to Q1 2026.

Sitting rents step up by the guideline whatever the market does. Asking rents follow the market, and the market softened.

Compare vacant to vacant and the gap nearly closes

If the spread really is occupied against vacant, comparing CMHC's empty units to today's asking rents should almost close it. It does. The CMHC columns below are table 3.1.9, purpose-built apartments and rental townhouses together. These five areas are the closest geography match available. Rentals.ca lists North York, Etobicoke, Scarborough and East York separately from "Toronto", and CMHC's zone groups draw those same four lines.

Against occupied stock the premium runs from 19 per cent in East York to 39 per cent in North York. Against CMHC's own vacant units it drops to 3 per cent in Scarborough, and in East York it turns negative: asking rents have since fallen below what empty units were fetching ten months earlier. Three differences remain. The dates are nine months apart, Rentals.ca counts condos that CMHC's primary survey does not, and its Toronto absorbs the old City of York that CMHC keeps separate.

A second check, from two firms using different methods. For a Toronto one-bedroom, TRREB's completed MLS condo leases came in at $2,246 in Q1 2026 and Rentals.ca's live listings at $2,242 in July 2026. Four dollars apart. Two asking-side measures agreeing that closely, while both sit far above CMHC, is what a definitional gap looks like.

Every GTA city we could match

Below, CMHC's October 2025 figures sit beside Rentals.ca's July 2026 asking rents for the same-named city. The gap is the asking rent minus the CMHC average, and the unit counts are CMHC's own.

The same three warnings ride with every row. The sides are nine months apart. CMHC prices the whole stock, 97% of it sitting tenants, while Rentals.ca prices vacancies only. Rentals.ca counts condos too. The Toronto row also flatters the gap, because its "Toronto" is smaller and more central than CMHC's city. The submarket table is the fair version.

Two oddities there are real, not typos: Oshawa's median ($1,800) sits above its average ($1,777), and Markham's median carries a (d), CMHC's warning to use it with caution.

Why some GTA cities have no number at all

CMHC surveys 282,820 purpose-built rental units in the City of Toronto. In Vaughan it surveys 594, and in Markham 1,631. That is why Vaughan has no published rent: the sample is too thin, so CMHC withholds it and prints only the unit count. York Region is the clearest case. CMHC counts 6,541 purpose-built units there against 20,894 (a) condos rented out by their owners, and the survey covers only the first.

The listings side has its own blind spots. The Rentals.ca report covers the largest markets and applies a minimum listing count. Whitby, Pickering, Richmond Hill, Milton and Newmarket get no asking figure, though CMHC publishes rents for all five. With no like-for-like pair, this article prints none.

What to do with this if you rent

If you are staying put, the CMHC average is the useful one, because it is an average of tenancies like yours. In most cases your rent can rise once every 12 months, by the guideline, with 90 days of written notice on the Landlord and Tenant Board's own form. That is 2.1% in 2026 and 1.9% in 2027, set out on Ontario's rent increase guideline page. A landlord can also apply to the Board to raise it above the guideline.

If you are moving, ignore the CMHC average and budget against the asking figures. For a Toronto one-bedroom that is roughly $2,242 to $2,246, not $1,763. The difference of $2,242 - $1,763 = $479 a month is not a bargain you failed to find. It is the price of the reset when a unit changes hands.

You do have room to push. TRREB counted 24,012 condo apartments listed for rent in the GTA in Q1 2026, up six per cent year over year, and said that supply "continued to provide renters with substantial choice and negotiating power". A listing that has sat unrented for weeks is worth an offer below the ask.

The data is in CMHC's Rental Market Survey tables, the Rentals.ca National Rent Report and TRREB's rental report.