Toronto's asking rents sit $490 above what tenants pay

Statistics Canada puts Toronto's average asking two bedroom rent at $2,650 and average paid rent at $2,160. The $490 gap changes what a rented unit is worth.

Statistics Canada and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation published second quarter rent figures on 9 September 2026. In Toronto the average asking rent for a two bedroom apartment was $2,650 a month, and the average paid rent for the same kind of unit was $2,160.

That is a difference of about $490 a month on the same type of home. It is worth understanding before you price a rental, buy one, or decide whether to move.

Why is asking rent $490 higher than paid rent?

Because the two figures count different households. Statistics Canada defines asking rent as the monthly amount a unit is advertised for, and paid rent as the average amount paid by renter households in private dwellings. One is the price of moving in today. The other is the average of every lease already running, including leases signed years ago.

So the gap is largely a measure of how long people have stayed put. A tenant who has not moved is carrying an older rent. A tenant who moves resets to whatever the market is asking.

The pattern is not a Toronto quirk. Statistics Canada found asking rent higher than paid rent in almost every metropolitan area where both were measured, with Calgary, Regina and Edmonton the exceptions.

What does the gap change if you own a condo you rent out?

An occupied unit earns the paid side. A vacant one is offered at the asking side. Those are two different numbers, and they produce two different valuations of the same unit.

If you are thinking of selling a tenanted condo, the buyer is buying the lease that exists, not the advertisement you could run. A unit rented well under $2,650 is a smaller income stream than the listing sites suggest, and an investor will price it on the rent in place. Run the sale on the actual lease rather than the market ask. Our net proceeds calculator handles the sale side, and our guide to capital gains on a second property covers the tax that follows.

If you are buying a rented unit, the same arithmetic works for you or against you depending on the lease. Read it before you write the offer.

Are Toronto rents rising or falling?

Nationally the published direction is down. Across all census metropolitan areas combined, the average asking rent for a two bedroom apartment was $2,130 in the second quarter of 2026, down 3.6% from the second quarter of 2025.

Toronto has been flatter than that. Statistics Canada put Toronto's average asking rent for a two bedroom at $2,660 in the first quarter of 2026, down 1.1% from a year earlier, and at $2,650 in the second quarter. Toronto appears in neither the list of the largest quarterly declines, led by Calgary at 6.4%, nor the list of the largest increases, led by Thunder Bay at 6.5%.

On the asking measure Toronto was still the second most expensive place in the country to rent a two bedroom, behind Vancouver at $3,030 and ahead of Victoria at $2,640.

Should you keep renting or buy?

That depends on your own numbers rather than a national average, but the figures give you a fair benchmark for the rent side of the comparison. $2,650 a month is what the Toronto market was asking for a two bedroom in the second quarter. $2,160 is closer to what a sitting tenant pays.

Put whichever of those matches your situation against a mortgage payment, property tax and maintenance fees before you decide. Our affordability calculator does that arithmetic with your own down payment and income, and our buying page covers what happens after.

One caution on the figures themselves. These are experimental estimates, they cover apartments across the whole Toronto census metropolitan area, which runs from Oakville to Ajax and north past Newmarket, and asking rent is gathered from major rental listing platforms rather than from signed leases. Your building and your neighbourhood can sit a long way either side of an average that wide.